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ha470

274 karma · joined July 25, 2011

Cofounder/CTO - The Browser Company
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ha470··on Gaining access to anyones Arc browser without them even visiting a website
Ya this is fair! Honestly this was our first bounty ever awarded and we could have been more thoughtful. We’re currently setting up a proper program and based on that rubric will adjust accordingly.
ha470··on Gaining access to anyones Arc browser without them even visiting a website
We did but we closed the roles by hiring folks. They just haven’t joined yet.
ha470··on Gaining access to anyones Arc browser without them even visiting a website
We’re working on a proper security bulletin site that will have these front and center! This was a bit of a stopgap for now.
ha470··on Gaining access to anyones Arc browser without them even visiting a website
I’m Hursh, cofounder and CTO of The Browser Company (the company that makes Arc). Even though no users were affected and we patched it right away, the hypothetical depth of this vulnerability is unacceptable. We’ve written up some technical details and how we’ll improve in the future (including moving off Firebase and setting up a proper bug bounty program) here: https://arc.net/blog/CVE-2024-45489-incident-response.

I'm really sorry about this, both the vuln itself and the delayed comms around it, and really appreciate all the feedback here – everything from disappointment to outrage to encouragement. It holds us accountable to do better, and makes sure we prioritize this moving forward. Thank you so much.

ha470··on The Hard Problem of Consciousness Has an Easy Part We Can Solve
It's disappointing that he seems to confuse the field in which intelligence and perception take place (the subjective experience of being alive) and the sensory perception and thought inside it. It'd be a much more interesting article if he focused on how and why the former shows up out of physical neurons.
ha470··on Ask HN: How to develop accurate self-understanding?
You can either get information from other people you trust and you think would give you accurate feedback or by trying to develop a clearer sense of how your own mind works via ego dissolution.

For the former, its probably ideal to pick someone you trust and respect, and try to be clear with them you want critical or constructive feedback.

For the latter, meditation, therapy, and Vedanta-style self-inquiry can all trigger more self-awareness and self-dissolution. As the amygdala shrinks and prefrontal cortex gets more activated, the fear-based, survival-oriented self erodes and you start to be able to see more clearly and objectively.

ha470··on SQLite 3.32
While I love SQLite as much as the next person (and the performance and reliability is really quite remarkable), I can’t understand all the effusive praise when you can’t do basic things like dropping columns. How do people get around this? Do you just leave columns in forever? Or go through the dance of recreating tables every time you need to drop a column?
ha470··on Google bans niche browsers from Gmail?
Anyone have any idea how they're doing this? Switching user agents doesn't seem to help.
ha470··on Ask HN: GSuite users, how do you do Knowledge Management?
We tried a ton of tools but Notion does pretty much everything we need perfectly. It's probably what you're looking for.
ha470··on Ask HN: Have you been on a meditation retreat? How has it changed your life?
Yes! The first few were super tough (and not fun) but I got a lot out of them and gradually they've gotten easier, although just as productive.

So many people in the comments mentioned retreats but I'm surprised not a single person mentioned enlightenment. The whole point of retreats is to get you to a point where you willfully and intentionally seek freedom from suffering, but it seems like a ton of people get stuck in the retreat treadmill. Living a happier, more peaceful life is one thing but it's very possible to completely eradicate the subjective experience of suffering (or at least eliminate enough of it that it's largely unnoticeable). Enlightenment is very accessible and super achievable, especially now with the internet.

I highly recommend reading Living Realization (https://www.amazon.com/Living-Realization-Simple-Plain-Engli...) or Falling Into Grace (https://www.amazon.com/Falling-into-Grace-Insights-Suffering...) to see if any of it resonates. Once you get what all this is about then retreats become a practice ground towards a goal rather than a stabilizing mechanism or a way to feel better for a bit.

ha470··on Elixir 1.9
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do releases fit into the deployment story with containers so prevalent these days? (As in why is this a benefit when you can just package code into a single container to ship it?) Is it that it works with hot code updates? Or it’s a more Erlang-sanctioned way of deploying code?
ha470··on Ask HN: What tools do you use for note-taking, progress tracking and TODO lists?
Bear.app is incredible! It's been my daily driver for todos, notes, thoughts, planning, etc for a while.
ha470··on Ask HN: What are engineers rewarded for at your company?
Ideally you (and everyone else) should be rewarded for business impact- which can come from communication, code quality, velocity, and any number of other things.
ha470··on Welcome to Shanghai, the capital of the future
Having lived in both India and China for some time, I can assure you that the scale and magnitude is completely different.
ha470··on Ask HN: Nomads, How Do You Manage Your Mail?
Never tried it but https://www.virtualpostmail.com/ seems like an interesting solution.
ha470··on Going Solo, Successfully
This is so helpful- thanks for sharing! Also your own website is such a great example of taking selling yourself as a consultant seriously. Congrats on all the success here!
ha470··on Ask HN: What do you do to avoid back pain?
I had upper and lower back pain (and RSI in my forearms) for years with tons of physical therapy, meds, and acupuncture to fix, but nothing stuck. Eventually what fixed it all was eating healthy, lifting, and now CrossFit. I know this is an unsatisfying answer and I don’t know what you’re doing atm, but for me having a generally healthier and fitter body pretty much fixed all my chronic pain issues.
ha470··on Ask HN: Where can I get a whole project reviewed?
The only service I've seen for this is https://www.pullrequest.com/. Seems more for teams but it may work.
ha470··on Ask HN: How do you all deal with lack of motivation?
I’ve often found that lack of motivation is a symptom of some other problem. Often the direction you think you need to motivate yourself toward isn’t the right direction, or sometimes there is a lot of FUD that’s blocking natural motivation from shining through. We’re inherently curious and excited creatures, so if you can find a way or area where that curiosity and excitement shines and unleash it without stress/worry, it flows naturally.

Byron Katie’s work has been really helpful here for me to weed through + dismantle whatever is causing FUD that blocks motivation. http://thework.com/en

ha470··on Ask HN: How do you get over the executive wall?
I really think your network is the way to go here. Contact VC funds you've worked with, pitched to, or are otherwise connected with and talk to them about portfolio companies. As someone mentioned, recruiting/headhunting firms are usually on the lookout for executives as well.

Definitely not a needle in a haystack with a bit of networking. I have a similar story (not even as impressive as yours - 2x return to investors on an acquired seed-stage startup) and in 1-2 months of networking have plenty of inbound from Series B companies looking for VP/C-level folks.

ha470··on Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach
Maybe just call them "conversations"?
ha470··on Ask HN: What’s it like working at Facebook as a Software Engineer?
Maybe check on Glassdoor? Unsure now, but when I worked there (~2015) teams had a lot of autonomy to do what they felt was right, projects (while choices were sparse in remote offices) were varied and you could choose teams based on what you enjoyed. Work/life balance wasn't awful depending on the team. During crunch-time on a project you're expected to grind but I don't think I often put in a ton of time over 40 hrs/week.
ha470··on Show HN: A Fortran web framework
An accomplishment, certainly, but...

http://i.imgur.com/TnQRX6v.gif

ha470··on Facebook nixes access to chats outside of Messenger walled garden
> Less work for developers?

Seems the most likely.

ha470··on Is it better to buy or rent?
Agreed, this is an insane (and insanely stressful) way of saving.
ha470··on Contracts.ruby – Code contracts for Ruby
Is there any way to do static analysis using these contracts? Or is the way to find issues at runtime?
ha470··on Facebook Rooms
You can be totally anonymous - don't need to provide email to use the app
ha470··on Fast Clicks in AngularJS
We've had a lot of luck using https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick, as well. It's even easier - just add a few lines and all click targets (angular or otherwise) on the site will be fast clicks.
ha470··on Ask HN: When did people start paying for your SaaS and why?
FWIW, we <3 you guys
ha470··on Ask HN: Top Python/Django Shops in NYC?
Betaworks uses a lot of Python and churn out some fantastic companies. I'd check them out.
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