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jtchang

5,764 karma · joined July 28, 2010

jeff.tchang (at) gmail.com jeff (at) literatorapp.com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/tachang; my proof: https://keybase.io/tachang/sigs/3k4EnKOxZt-oQ7OIWzClI8l0yzGg3pl4mvp040CRyDQ ]

d5b3b0

Creator of OpenMiko (opensource firmware for security cameras) https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko

submissionscomments
jtchang··on 25-Dec. Shout-out to everyone else at work
I'd be stoked to launch a space telescope as a christmas present! Congrats to them!
jtchang··on Docker Hub Registry is down
Ugh there goes all our CI stuff.
jtchang··on Summary of the AWS Service Event in the Northern Virginia (US-East-1) Region
The complexity that AWS has to deal with is astounding. Sure having your main production network and a management network is common. But making sure all of it scales and doesn't bring down the other is what I think they are dealing with here.

It must have been crazy hard to troubleshoot when you are flying blind because all your monitoring is unresponsive. Clearly more isolation with clearly delineated information exchange points are needed.

jtchang··on Black couple ‘erases themselves’ from their home, its value goes up by $500k
I'm dubious that the appraisal difference was due to racial issues. Yes it might be but there is already an insane amount of random variance even between appraisals done during the same time. These appraisals were done with significant time between. A few days could mean huge differences by itself due to way comps are pulled (something new could have closed within that timeframe).
jtchang··on Black couple ‘erases themselves’ from their home, its value goes up by $500k
Lenders don't get to pick appraisers anymore. They submit into a system and the system spits out the next appraiser. This was done to prevent gaming the system that happened in 2008.
jtchang··on This shouldn't have happened: A vulnerability postmortem
I have 16MB of flash and I wanted to link in some webrtc Go library and the binary was over 1MB. As I had other stuff it seemed like C was smaller.
jtchang··on This shouldn't have happened: A vulnerability postmortem
I'd like to write go or rust but embedded constraints are tough. I tried and the binaries are just too big!
jtchang··on Ask HN: Advice on Colocating Servers?
These days you have to treat colocation as a fungible resource. It's good for batch processing and things like that where you can distribute the work.
jtchang··on The Surreal Horror of Pam
Whenever I come across some code and think "who could possibly have thought this was a good idea?" I realize there is usually a story behind it.

I feel like this comment belongs right along side the PAM source, if only to remind others that we weren't all that nutty coding it this way.

Thanks for this writeup!

jtchang··on 55 GiB/s FizzBuzz
The amount of low level CPU architecture knowledge to write such a program is mind boggling. Just goes to show how much room for improvement a lot of programs have.
jtchang··on Academics discover hidden layer in China’s Great Firewall
How much hardware does this require on a country level to basically run everything through a proxy? Seems quite a lot.
jtchang··on Coinbase Breach Notification
I like this. They are basically making a call to self insure against these types of incidents and paying out of their own coffers. It makes sense since recovering the stolen crypto is near impossible (as designed).

It's funny how everything old is new again. We are just reinventing FDIC insurance for crypto.

jtchang··on Heatshrink: Data compression library for embedded/real-time systems
I wonder how this compares to xz or lzo. Is the main draw the fact that it runs in really low memory?
jtchang··on Why satellites are manufactured in clean rooms
All this sounds insanely expensive. Just makes me double down on the fact that it is cheaper to make disposable satellites than make them last forever. Especially if it is cheaper to get them into space as well.
jtchang··on Mēris botnet, climbing to the record
How does fingerprinting them help? You can fingerprint them but they are just desktops/mobile phones/laptops that have been compromised to be part of the botnet.

The compromised hosts that are part of the botnet look exactly like normal traffic.

jtchang··on Mēris botnet, climbing to the record
To block something like this you need to determine what is botnet traffic vs legit traffic. It's hard.

Source IP doesn't work since it is random and changes. You need to look at things such as HTTP headers, TCP window and any odd flags that might be set. If you're lucky the botnet isn't capable of running a copy of Chrome or Safari or using a random sample template from legit traffic. Lots of botnets are made up of low power IOT devices so once these devices are capable of running a full headless chrome it will get harder.

Not to mention when you do figure out how to discriminate traffic you have to code it. And the code to determine valid traffic vs invalid better run fast because you are getting hit with 100k requests per second. Oh did I mention the attacker can change their algorithm whenever they want? Hope you have a full tensorflow ML/AI pipeline that configures your hardware based ingress of choice just in time. All this while making sure your current production traffic is being served at a speedy pace and not blocking legit customers.

These are some of the issues Cloudflare and companies like them have to deal with.

jtchang··on Amid a Pandemic, a Health Care Algorithm Shows Promise and Peril
Should Epic's algorithm be open to critique or is it IP that they can keep secret? If challenged should they be forced to explain it or at least provide the inputs? It's worrisome to me that the process behind these numbers is fairly opaque and is going to get even so with ML. It's often fairly difficult even for data scientists to precisely explain their own algorithms and weights that produce an output.
jtchang··on The SEC has told us it wants to sue us over Lend. We don’t know why
I mean why not go after Coinbase? The argument that everyone else is doing it why not go after them doesn't hold much water. Sometimes it makes sense to go after the biggest fish first.

Also, is Coinbase saying Lend isn't an investment contract? It sure sounds like one to me. Lend my crypto to Coinbase and I get a 4% return? I like the idea but it sure sounds like an investment contract to me.

jtchang··on Toyota suspends all self-driving vehicles at PG after collision with athlete
Weird way to phrase the headline. Someone manually controlling the vehicle with a joystick hit the person.
jtchang··on Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity [pdf]
You should risk it because the risk really is minimal and the greater benefit for society is enormous. I don't think people have cognitive bias. There are plenty of arguments in favor of getting it.
jtchang··on Why not generate React code from Figma? (a.k.a. why did PageDraw YC18 fail?)
Because the issue is the interactions between the components and not the components themselves.
jtchang··on GNU nano is my editor of choice
Nano feels a lot like windows notepad. Still my favorite editor and beginner friendly (as far as unix editors go).
jtchang··on Ask HN: Which systems programming language(s) is/are beginner friendly?
C is not friendly but it sets you off on the right path.

Adding a bit of C to your tool belt will give you success wherever you go. The concepts it teaches are invaluable in understanding why things are built the way they are today. Everything from memory management, to trying to solve all these vulnerabilities, to why new languages have these crazy constructs.

jtchang··on Django app only works on my local PC, not heroku?
You haven't run migrations.
jtchang··on What I know about cleaning and seasoning cast-iron skillets
I disagree that you can pretty much do whatever you want with them.

Modern conveniences such as a dishwasher coupled with a focus on healthy eating (less fat) result in poorly taken care of cast iron pans.

Dishwashing soap these days are also a lot more efficient than they use to be. More and better surfactants eat away at any pantina that develops.

Yes you can drop a cast iron and nothing will happen to it. But to get eggs not to stick to it takes a bit of upkeep.

jtchang··on IPv6 Watch
IPv6 has barely a carrot and no stick.

Does anyone give me more money for using IPv6? Sure I might be able to save some money by not using IPv4 but that is rare.

Government doesn't incentivize it. Ad networks don't either. There is very little penalty (financial or otherwise) for not going to IPv6.

IPv6 will not happen until those sticks and carrots get bigger.

jtchang··on IPv4 pricing
How is that solved then if no one setups any of the security parameters correctly? That sounds like the exact opposite.
jtchang··on IPv4 pricing
ARIN has been constantly raising prices on both IPv4 AND IPv6 registrations and fees. It's really annoying because you'd think you'd get a break for adopting IPv6 but nope.

I've expressed my disagreement on the public mailing list but it seems like it is happening anyway.

jtchang··on SSD belonging to Euro-cloud Scaleway was stolen,then turned up on YouTube
Is there anything on the consumer level like this?
jtchang··on Amazon SQS is 15 Years Old
The last time I used SQS it was kinda expensive because I had to poll every minute or so it ate up the free tier. If I wanted to poll faster (like every 5 seconds) it was even more expensive. Maybe not the best use for my use case.
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