Hacker News Reader

Skalmanon Persona makes signing in easy for Gmail users

I use Firefox... and I don't think I wan't to be logged into multiple accounts - it's just that now Persona requires it.

Skalmanon Persona makes signing in easy for Gmail users

Huh - it does work, as you say. I guess I misremembered.

EDIT: Now I remember my use case.

My email is actually myname+randomstring+website@otherdomain.com, and so I want to sign in with the same randomstring every time. Previously when signing in to Persona with my Gmail email address it would suggest all alternatives, and I'd choose the appropriate one. Now it logs in with Gmail directly instead.

Of course, this is such an edge case that it's probably not worth doing anything about. And I can simply sign into Persona with myname@otherdomain.com for the previous functionality.

Skalmanon Persona makes signing in easy for Gmail users

The only bad thing with this new Gmail integration is that it gets more annoying if you have multiple Gmail accounts, or aren't logged in to the Gmail account you want to use.

And some things, like using myname+website@gmail.com doesn't work at all.

Skalmanon HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

It would also prevent throwaway accounts. Sometimes throwaways do provide insightful comments.

Skalmanon The White Hat's Dilemma

I'd say that a clear goal of that post is to emphasize that it was a choice. To me Spothawk is rubbing in the fact that it was a decision.

Skalmanon After NSA's XKeyscore, Wikipedia Switches to HTTPS

I sent them a proposal to change that. :-)

Skalmanon After NSA's XKeyscore, Wikipedia Switches to HTTPS

Yes. However, if you do that, perhaps you're less motivated to find solutions to other, equally important problems with HTTPS.

  Enabling perfect forward secrecy is only useful if we also
  eliminate the threat of traffic analysis of HTTPS, which
  can be used to detect a user’s browsing activity, even
  when using HTTPS.

Skalmanon Animatable: One property, two values, endless possiblities

Yeah, it seems to work better in Chrome than in Firefox. :-(

Skalmanon Stereogram Tetris

Not possible with Firefox.

Skalmanon Scoping in CoffeeScript and JavaScript

New JavaScript features do just that:

2) Globals with 'x = 1' throws an error when run in strict mode.

3) They couldn't change the meaning of 'var', but they introduced 'let' which does just that - applies to a block rather than the whole function.

Skalmanon The slippery slope

Well, considering 97% percent of the page load is images (average size: 400 kB), and the page contains slides that explain and complement the article... yeah, I think it does!

Skalmanon Seafile

Yeah, that sounds like a bug. I filed it: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/299

Skalmanon Linus on "acting professionally"

If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it.

Why? Wouldn't you achieve the same thing by calling the commit fucking stupid? Why resort to personal attacks?

Skalmanon Switching to DuckDuckGo and Firefox

On my Linux fullscreen (F11) shows nothing but web content.

Skalmanon Switching to DuckDuckGo and Firefox

Because at the very least it doesn't use tracking cookies, which we know Google does. Whether it tracks based on IP and/or browser fingerprint is impossible to tell - there we have to take their word for it.

Skalmanon The Search Engine that Vows Not to Track You [video]

Not my searches. If I need something location sensitive, I have no problem adding the location in the query.

Skalmanon DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)

Try http://ddg.gg/.

Skalmanon Chrome 28 arrives with Blink, rich notifications for apps

And since XUL is not standardized, Mozilla has removed support for that in webpages.

Try going to http://www.hevanet.com/acorbin/xul/top.xul in Firefox: "This page uses an unsupported technology that is no longer available by default in Firefox"

Skalmanon RC4 in TLS is broken: now what?

But... aren't headers also encrypted? Won't the "Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:20:43 GMT" header make it unlikely that there will be more than x000 copies of the exact same data encrypted?

Skalmanon Perfect Forward Secrecy can block the NSA, but almost no one uses it

Assuming you're sarcastic, but don't you think it's right to punish sites that don't use the best encryption strategies?

I'd support three stages: 1) no encryption, 2) some/partial encryption, 3) "perfect" encryption.

For the partial encryption, the browser would provide an explanation of exactly how it could be compromised. For the case where the encrypted version does not have perfect forward secrecy, it could explain that if the server is compromised, this session can also be decrypted.

I don't think browsers should cover the banks' asses here.

Edit (since I can't reply deeper): I thought you were being sarcastic since I consider a gradient to be a really horrible idea. I'd want something where the browser tells me something. I don't want to wonder whether the new browser version changed the gradients slightly or a site improved its encryption strategy. Clear symbols and language is a must.

Skalmanon Maybe buses should be free

I agree. The solution is a token fee.

Skalmanon Maybe buses should be free

I lived in a city where there were free buses for a few months. It didn't work, since drunks would come sit in the bus for warmth (and drink, despite the rules).

My conclusion is that, though I like the idea of free buses, there should at least be a token fee to discourage people taking a ride for the roof.

Skalmanon Terms of Service; Didn't Read

Scroll down to see the ratings of some popular sites' ToS. The extension shows you that same rating when visiting a website.

Skalmanon Don’t Hash Secrets (2008)

I think the point is that that is not necessarily true for all hash functions, since reordering your example with SHA1 renders it weaker.

If I understood correctly sha1(sha1(secret) + message) is not safe, because from that hash you can calculate sha1(sha1(secret) + message + ANYTHING)

Skalmanon PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

I think you're not quite understanding how it works. They retrieve the data from e.g. Bing behind the scenes and the 3rd parties have no way to connect a query to an individual user.

That said, maybe there'd be an issue if you enter personally identifiable information as a query. But who does that?

Skalmanon More Americans see man who leaked NSA secrets as 'patriot' than traitor

It's almost an anagram: patriot -> traitoP, so replace 'p' with 'r'. So the difference is literally the letters PR.

Skalmanon NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers

I found it suspicous because in most other threads I've seen a large portion commenters are more worried about the details of the surveillance than Snowden's motives - here it seems reversed.

Additionally, to me it seems very possible that this is part of the smear that Snowden will have to endure, the point of this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5868853.

Skalmanon NSA leaker Edward Snowden: U.S. targets China with hackers

Many on this thread are suspiciously skeptical of Snowden. I could easily see this as the Washington Post trying to portrait him as cooperating with China. I can't imagine China being interested, and I highly doubt Snowden would think they are. The only value to China would be PR.

Skalmanon Where did all the HTTP referrers go?

HN has been available over HTTPS for longer than that.

Skalmanon JQuery 1.10.0 and 2.0.1 Released

I understand it as 1.12<>2.2, and 1.13<>2.3 and so on.

How is the link 1.(9+x).y<>2.x.y clearer than 1.(10+x).y<>2.x.y?