Salt + shotgun = Bugasalt | Hacker News Reader

Salt + shotgun = Bugasalt

bugasalt.com

21 pointsbeebs9314 comments

As nifty as this is, I can't help but think that I'd be a lot less excited about the green Jell-o in this video [1] after blasting it with salt.

Also, the FAQ [2] doesn't address whether or not it works against horse flies [3]. Those fellows don't always go down when you swat them against your skin. If you've been fortunate enough to never have been bitten by one, I can assure you that it's not for lack of effort. A horse fly bite will get your attention in a hurry.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i...

[2] http://bugasalt.com/faq/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_fly

Horse flies were the number one cause of running around like crazy on the pool deck and then jumping into the pool and holding your breath when I was a kid.

I had to upvote you for that. You just reminded me of some great memories from 2 decades back that we're otherwise lost :)

The faq does say that a point blank shot should "do in" a wasp or cockroach. So, if you can aim that well it should kill horseflies.

(I agree about the bites! I've only been bitten once but it's not the kind of thing you forget.)

The fly bouncing around on the page is incredibly annoying.

$('#home #fly').click()

$('#up_5210503').click()

And now you have me wondering if your comment gets a new id when you update it. If so, convincing people to execute random javascript code could be a good way to build karma. Let's find out :-)

$('#up_5210561').click()

EDIT: Comment id's remain the same when you update them. Now for the social engineering aspect...

Ideally one would embed a webpage with a hidden image that loaded the upvote URL for a particular post of yours. Every logged in user would unknowingly upvote that post ID. Thankfully HN is built with form keys, so that particular CSRF attack won't work.

Social engineering would be more difficult, I seem to remember that Chrome prevents javascript strings from being pasted into it's URL (you can still type them), in order to prevent attacks just like this. There was a number of attacks on Facebook that involved asking users to copy and paste a dodgy looking javascript string into a Facebook tab in order to "win" something. Of course it just spammed posts and stole session information, but it was still an interesting attack.

This method was abused last year (a submission with 3800+ upvotes): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902

If you're using firefox and can install extensions, I recommend noscript [1]. Admittedly, it'll take some time to whitelist all the stuff you actually want to work, but it does cut down on silly stuff like the fly (which for me remains parked in the upper left-hand corner). There's apparently a Chrome extension called ScriptSafe if that's your browser of choice.

[1] http://noscript.net/

[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmn...

Thought it was an interesting way to combat flies without flimsy fly-swatters or lick-me-when-you-are-drunk electric swatters.

Got one of these for my parents for Christmas. Waiting for flies to come out for a true functional test, but the device is solidly built and does a number on a sheet of tinfoil :) a little pricey but a interesting and seemingly well-made gadget.

I wonder how you would first go about testing whether something like this is viable or not.

Did he just throw salt at a fly? Or maybe blew some through a straw?

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