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badkins

31 karma · joined January 17, 2011

I am the cofounder of Light Point Security and spend my time building the world's most secure web browser.

http://lightpointsecurity.com

submissionscomments
badkins··on Ask HN: Monthly billing software for SaaS site
Go with stripe. They are the only one I have seen with no monthly fees. Great product too.
badkins··on Chrome sandboxing makes it the most secure browser, vendor study claims
Kinda cool. My startup makes a sandboxing plugin for Firefox, but we plan to extend it to Chrome and IE later. Our sandbox works by doing all the browsing on a completely different computer - sort of a super sandbox.
badkins··on 100+ of my business ideas
Cilent side: Firefox plugin for graphics and extension for browser integration. Server side: openvz for process isolation, webkit for browsing, openssl for crypto. I started using vnc as the protocol but it is too slow. Now I'm using NX.
badkins··on 100+ of my business ideas
I am sort of doing the browser in the cloud idea. Except the value of mine is security, not tab management.

If you really wanted tab management, that seems like an easy job for a simple browser add-on.

badkins··on Ask HN: Does anyone use an IDE for Rails? Which one is best?
I use netbeans with the rails plugin. All free. I have not used any others, so I can't say how good it is.
badkins··on Ask HN: Anyone want to help me build a browser?
You can do the automatic sign ups with extensions pretty easily.

As for the offline access native apps: does each site then have to write a native app module for your browser for it to work. This doesn't sound like something you can do without work from each site owner.

The same for locally stored data. You could keep a local copy of any files you upload to sites, but if you are uploading, you already should have a copy. But you can't do anything in a browser to make facebook serve images from your computer instead of theirs. This is another feature which requires work from every site to make happen.

badkins··on Ask HN: Best Approaches to Prevent Session Hijacking?
The solutions mentioning IP addresses won't solve the problem. For someone to use firesheep to steal session keys, they have to be on the same network, such as a coffee shop's wifi. Your website will see any request from that network as the same IP address.

this solution will not stop the attacker until he leaves the coffee shop.

badkins··on How I doubled the price of my software product and sold ten times as many copies
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with testing the "bargain-bin" hypothesis with subscription based payments?

I can see a one time purchase of $10 for a piece of software as appearing cheap, and therefore low quality. But what about a $10/year charge, or $10/quarter.

badkins··on Legal docs should be written like code.
that's my point. If something can't be specified unambiguously in code, it shouldn't be in a law. Whether the verdict is innocent or guilty shouldn't rest on who happens to be sitting on the bench that day.
badkins··on Legal docs should be written like code.
man, I have been thinking this for years. If ilaws were written in code there would be no reason to have judges or lawyers. We have those only because spoken language is ambiguous and open to interpretation.
badkins··on Ask HN: What personal projects/goals are people working on for this summer?
Officially launch my company's first product and snag a sale to a total stranger.
badkins··on Ask HN: Why is GMail the best email client?
honestly, I hate gmail. I can't exactly put my finger on why though. I'm definitely not a fan of the threaded view.
badkins··on Any PaaS or IaaS providers come up in seconds, bill per minute?
Check out vps.net. They take a few minutes to come up, but are billed by the minute. However, when you create a vm, they bill you for the remainder of the month up front. When you destroy the vm, you are given an account credit for your unused time.
badkins··on Five Reasons why Google's Linux Chromebook is a Windows killer
Maybe in 1998. Computers don't go "out of date" as fast as they used to. I bought my desktop in 2004 and it wasn't top of the line then. What's it got? Dual core 3.2 GHz, 2G RAM, 400 Gig HD. 7 years old and it still comparabe to what I'd get if I bought another one today.
badkins··on Ask HN: Evaluate my startup, PoundWire
I just read your post here, and your homepage and I still have no idea what this is supposed to do.
badkins··on Ask HN: Is it a good idea to invest my lifesaving in facebook shares?
You don't get a tax deduction for contributing to a Roth IRA. And if you have high income (above 100Kish) you won't get a deduction for a traditional IRA either.
badkins··on ASK HN: What methods do you use to gain early customers for your startup?
Wait a minute. The owner of a start up that helps other startups gain early adopters is asking for advice on how to gain early adopters?
badkins··on Ask HN: Project Management Software or Google Docs?
I use trac. It has ticket/backlog management, a built in wiki, subversion integration, and it's free. I highly recommend it.
badkins··on Ask HN: What did you do to become an expert in C++?
My first real project was writing a game engine, and then using it to write a couple games. After that, I learned a whole lot writing a compiler for a C like language.
badkins··on For me, Firefox 4 stumbles at the first hurdle
I see a similar problem on my palm pre. I type my creds, hit login, and I'm back at the home screen, but not logged in. I've found out though that if I close the browser, and start a new one, it will be logged in. Weird.
badkins··on Ask HN: How are you changing the world with your startup?
Our startup, lightpointsecurity.com is building software to make it virtually impossible to be exposed to malware while web browsing.
badkins··on Ask HN: Facebook alternative, are users willing to try something different?
I doubt 5 is enough to switch away from a social network. I think you would need at least 25% of a persons friends before that person would consider following.
badkins··on Ask HN: How to start-up when you are not technical?
I have to say skip straight to #4. Finding a tech founder will be the best thing you can do to get started. But you better decide what role each nontech has beforehand. I doubt the tech founder will be happy with 20% equity with the other 4 just coasting on the idea for the same amount.
badkins··on Ask HN: Facebook alternative, are users willing to try something different?
Sorry, but people won't move away from Facebook for something else until all of their friends do.
badkins··on Ask HN: My web startup is growing fast what next?
When optimizing, don't do it blindly. Do some actual tests or profiling to find the true bottleneck. It might be a specific query, the DB as a whole, etc. But unless you fix the biggest bottleneck, other improvements won't make much diference. Once you fix the biggest bottleneck, go back and do it again for the next biggest.

This way, you will know for sure if you need another machine, more RAM, or just another table index.

badkins··on [dead]
I just tried the site from my phone, and had a couple issues. First, the main report page is in flash, so I couldn't see it. That's not a big deal since I can look at the other links at the top of the page to see the results. But on these pages, the vulnerabilities are shown as a collapsed category. When I try to open them, they close back up immediately so I can't read them.

otherwise, the site looked good.

badkins··on In what cases is Java faster than C++?
From this article, it seems that the answer is: "When the C++ coder is intentionally trying to write slow code."
badkins··on Why Starting Justin.tv Was A Really Bad Idea, But I’m Glad We Did It Anyway
A really good read. More proof that a great team is worth more than a great idea.
badkins··on Ask HN: What Did You Learn At Your First Start-up?
In my first startup now. The biggest thing I have learned is the roughness of the emotional rollercoaster. When things are going well, it is an amazing rush. Bur when things are going wrong, the lows can be absolutely brutal. You NEED someone to provide support in these times. The best trait to have in a startup is persistence, because without it, you will want to give up during these times.
badkins··on Ask HN: When should I raise price for my product?
From what I have read (but I do not have personal experience here yet), if you do decide to raise prices, be sure to grandfather your existing paying customers at their current price. People become furious over raising prices of a subscription, even if it is a tiny amount.

To decide if you should think about raising them, I think it would be nice to know what your current profit margin is per paying customer.

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