HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

abduhl

3,278 karma · joined July 11, 2011

shalmanese 1 hour ago | undown | parent | flag | favorite | on: Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without he...

One of my favorite low key social engineering hacks is that I used to have a keylogger installed on every machine I own. Whenever a friend needs to hop on my machine to show me something, they'd log into an account they own and I would have their password.

Then I'd do the same Luigi-like low key messing with them for a while. My favorite was when a friend had a VNC server running on their machine with control capabilities. I would sit next to them and subtly jerk the mouse pointer right before they were about to click on something and it drove them mad for a good 20 minutes before I couldn't hold onto the giggles anymore.

edit: To add a bit of context, this was in the Windows 98 era, before the age of social media where we started putting all of our secrets onto our machines. And it was among a group of friends where everyone was trying to hack everyone else and pretty much anything was considered fair game. All of us were high school kids so there wasn't some super serious reputation we had to protect.

submissionscomments
abduhl··on U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
Are we reading different articles? The headline says immigrant visas. The first paragraph says immigrant visas.

“The Trump administration has paused processing of immigrant visas, which allow recipients to move permanently to the U.S., to train visa officers on new guidance ensuring that applicants have enough financial means to support themselves after they arrive.”

abduhl··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
First they came for those that were far away from me and I did not speak out because… I didn’t know them?
abduhl··on GrapheneOS Defends Data-Wiping Function That Blocked US Border Search
Whoever explained this to you has done you a terrible disservice. The border is the border - on one side you are in the USA and on the other side you are outside it.

If there was a strip of land where you are not in a country then how can CBP assert any authority? No, you must be in America. There is no "no man's land," and there is no such thing as "international land" at America's borders where no law exists.

abduhl··on Data centers have hiked electricity prices on the public by $23B
I’m saying local officials are the ones where your vote counts the most.
abduhl··on Data centers have hiked electricity prices on the public by $23B
Comments like this are even more tiring. Everyone knows that there are moneyed interests in politics. But decisions on these issues are made at a local level and so are the most addressable by local political actions.
abduhl··on Data centers have hiked electricity prices on the public by $23B
Do you need apples to turn on your lights? Was there a sudden new influx of pie makers? Is growing apples a government granted monopoly business?

If the answer to these questions was yes, yes, and yes then I think you would grumble.

abduhl··on Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
Is the child of a diplomat a US citizen if they are born during a diplomat’s commercial activities?
abduhl··on The bottleneck was never the code
I think our disagreement is with respect to what it means to "claim" to be following a principle. Most people do not say "my principle is X," they just make statements that hint at a core principle. In many cases this is willful, as you aptly point out for corporations, and it is specifically for the reason you are articulating now: if you never state a core principle you can always back into one later that is not hypocritical. I reject your framework where a principle must be explicitly articulated and cannot be inferred by statements/actions.
abduhl··on New stainless steel can survive conditions for hydrogen production in seawater
>> Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science.

This statement sounds like the type of language one uses when trying to get a patent.

abduhl··on The bottleneck was never the code
This is shifting the principle/value discussion up to a level where it's meaningless. Let's use a different example.

Old value: Returning value to shareholders.

How to do it? Treat your employees like family and don't be evil.

New value: Returning value to shareholders.

How to do it? Treat your employees like human resources and get away with what you can get away with.

Is this hypocritical? Most people would say yes, but in your framing it's not because we've backed up to the least specific articulation of an underlying principle. It's a species of the motte and bailey fallacy.

Agents may be changing the game for how software gets produced, but all it's really done is switch software developers from being managed to being managers. And software developers trying to square their historic value/principle that management tasks are useless, easy, and ceremonial (to borrow GP's word) tasks that should take a back seat to ~flow state coding~ with their new view that management is an integral, difficult, and requisite part of writing code reeks of hypocrisy.

abduhl··on The bottleneck was never the code
Well it is hypocritical. Hypocrisy is an action or statement that is contrary to a stated value or principle. Just because your values or principles changed doesn’t make you a suddenly no longer a hypocrite, it just admits that your former opinions are no longer tenable.

I’ve noticed this push to try to clothe hypocrisy in made up virtues like intellectual curiosity and mental plasticity a lot lately. All I can think is that it’s some kind of ego satisfaction play people make when their place in the world is threatened.

abduhl··on Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition
Civil contempt isn't some roving criminal charge that jumps out of the jury box randomly. It's meant to make somebody comply with a court order. Anybody in civil contempt holds the keys to the jailhouse door in their own hands, all they have to do is comply.

This statement should make you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable because it is a pure expression of the power of the state. But it's still due process.

abduhl··on Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition
This is a bit hyperbolic and the exaggerations really undermine what I think is your broader point (that there is rarely recourse when you're held for short to moderate amounts of time). It is hard for me to believe that someone was held for 16 years on civil contempt without due process or that someone was held for half a year without due process after being deemed dangerous. The reason that is hard for me to believe is that the due process is implicit in the action you describe. Civil contempt is from a judge which implies that you're already in court - that's due process. Someone being labeled "dangerous" implies that a finding was made by a neutral party - that's due process.

Just because you disagree with the outcome doesn't mean that due process wasn't given.

abduhl··on The Government Told Courts It Could Easily Refund Tariffs. Now It Says It Can't
In its court filing, the US government admits that "In addition to refunding the IEEPA duties, CBP must also pay importers interest, as required by law." So one silver lining here is that we (because it is the taxpayers who ultimately pay) will actually pay more than was collected on tariffs once interest is considered.

The second silver lining is that, even if CBP does its job, there is another step where the Trump administration will certainly drag its feet again: "If it is determined upon liquidation or reliquidation that excess moneys have been deposited, such that a refund with interest is due to the importer, CBP certifies the refund and interest amounts to the Department of the Treasury, which then employs its own processes to disburse the certified amounts to the importers of record."

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cit.193...

abduhl··on Y Combinator will let founders receive funds in stablecoins
Trump v Cook is not upcoming it has been argued already

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2025/25A312

abduhl··on 'No One Lives Forever' turns 25 and you still can't buy it legitimately
You already can do this. It’s called a declaratory judgment.
abduhl··on FDA described as a "clown show" amid latest scandal; top drug regulator is out
>> Instead of just reporting the facts of the case (as was done by the Stat piece, which they're ripping off) they spend multiple paragraphs making ad hominem attacks about the CDC, Prasad, etc. Almost unbelievably, they put those things first.
abduhl··on FDA described as a "clown show" amid latest scandal; top drug regulator is out
So, again, you’re not showing how it’s an ad hominem, you’re just disagreeing with the biased reporting.
abduhl··on FDA described as a "clown show" amid latest scandal; top drug regulator is out
I don’t think these are ad hominem attacks. The article seems to just state the (perhaps biased) facts: people are calling it a clown show, Prasad was ousted, Prasad did gain popularity on social media as a COVID-skeptic. It doesn’t become an ad hominem just because you don’t like the way the facts are stated or the inferences your own brain makes.
abduhl··on Company That Bought Publishers Clearing House Won't Pay Past Prize Winners
The effective tax rate on 260k/yr is 22% federally. The person we are discussing lives in Washington state. Their effective tax rate is 22%.
abduhl··on Company That Bought Publishers Clearing House Won't Pay Past Prize Winners
You are conflating upper class income with being wealthy in the Bay Area (and not just wealthy, uber wealthy; I know plenty of comfortable wealthy people who aren’t meeting congresscritters and making VC/PE calls). They’re different metrics. GP said $260k/yr was BARELY middle class. That statement is farcical: 260k/yr is a top 10% income in America. It is upper class income under all but the most ludicrous of definitions.

By the way, the solution to your “I want to buy a house in SF” problem isn’t to move to SF and pay an insane amount of rent for 5-10 years, it’s to keep living like you did and doing your normal job that you were doing before you won 260k/yr for 2 years while you save.

I won’t even bother digging into how warped your view of what it means to be upper class is, I’ll just say stay on that hamster wheel and keep chasing that dream dude.

abduhl··on Company That Bought Publishers Clearing House Won't Pay Past Prize Winners
There is nowhere in America where $260k/year is “barely middle class.” 260k/yr is a top 10% income nationally. Calling it anything other than upper class is ludicrous, especially since the payment requires no geographic tie like a salaried job would.
abduhl··on Reports: EA set to be sold to private investors for up to $50B
This is just your gambling addiction showing itself. There may not be any potential gains in value after the transaction. In fact, most take privates result in massive up front losses for the new owners.

And anyways, shareholders are paid a premium on today’s stock price (which theoretically reflects the current value of future profits, or at least the market’s view on it) in order to compensate for the exact loss you mention.

abduhl··on Apple Demands EU Repeal the Digital Markets Act
Apple has a vested interest in maintaining a presence in the Chinese market because that is where a large portion of its supply chain exists. It isn’t appeasing the CCP because Chinese users, it is because of Chinese manufacturers.
abduhl··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
Google flights actually has an option for Economy (exclude Basic) now. I’m not sure when this was rolled out. Previously, you could accomplish the same functionality by adding a single carryon bag in the drop down to force non-Basic.
abduhl··on Find SF parking cops
What a strange line to draw when in both hypothetical scenarios the stalker actively engages in a creepy conversation with the target before “you see where I’m going with this?” happens.
abduhl··on Find SF parking cops
This is a wild hypothetical that tries to blame a tool for the problem of a user. Won’t anyone think of the children?

Let’s modify your post to highlight the absurdity:

Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find physically attractive. They follow them for a bit in their car and when they write up their last ticket, the stalker gets in their car and follows the officer back to the station and then to their home. The next day they pull up to the warden’s house and follow them to see where the warden is working that day - they drive over there. They strike up a creepy conversation and the parking warden eventually leaves, disturbed. The next day, the parking warden is working a night shift - they've been told to patrol a dark neighborhood where there are plenty of alleyways that nobody can see into...

See where I'm going with this?

Anything which allows someone to follow a person in a vehicle who they've just come across on the street is inherently a danger to the surveilled person.

abduhl··on Federal judge lifts administration halt of offshore wind farm in New England
So is everyone else invested in the stock market.
abduhl··on Morgan and Morgan takes Disney to court over 'Steamboat Willie' in ads
I’ve never heard of a regulation governing attorney’s fees. Which regulations might you be referring to?
abduhl··on Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?
In this HN subthread: users slowly converge on the conversion formula for Celsius to Fahrenheit (32+9C/5) in greater and greater precision while calling it an “approximation.”
Page 1 of 34Next →