Hacker News Reader

jtchangon Cloudflare, OKTA Hacked

Devices such as cameras are usually isolated on their on VLAN. In addition just because you are on the network doesn't really mean anything if there is a zero trust security model.

jtchangon Hackers break into thousands of security cameras, exposing Tesla, jail, hospital

I'm making it -- https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko if you want to help!

jtchangon Hackers Break into Security Cameras, Exposing Tesla, Jails, Hospitals

Cloud enabled cameras that I don't fully control are concerning to me. My guess is we will be seeing more of these types of breaches in the future.

jtchangon Ask HN: What is your current side-project?

https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko

Software to completely replace the core functionality of cameras like WyzeCam while allowing it to be used in a purely local (ie. cloud free) setup wihtout phoning home to anywhere.

jtchangon Fusion startup plans reactor with small but powerful superconducting magnets

These are the kind of advances we need in fusion research. Who knows what these new magnets will unlock.

jtchangon Any C/C++ software engineers want to bounce ideas and work on project together?

Currently working on a project for a cloud free camera: https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko if you'd like to help.

jtchangon AWS faulty UX cost our business $7k and they refused to do anything about it

Okay that sucks and I understand where the author is coming from. There are definitely some rough edges in the AWS interface. I do believe as a large corporation Amazon does have some responsibility to waive some of the charge. In this case the intent was not to store things in S3 and just leave it there (especially if there was no access).

Amazon has traditionally been good about waiving charges for account compromises and things along that nature. However you do have to keep up on it since they bill you every month. If you're running a company part of the responsibility is at least checking in on your financials every so often. Right when you see a charge for $700+ when you expect $50 is a red flag. At that point if he had contacted Amazon I'd be surprised they didn't waive the charge.

I'd be curious if Amazon was willing to waive any part of the charges at all.

jtchangon The Therac-25 Incident

I can say when I was doing my CS degree this was definitely covered. In fact it is one of the lectures that stood out in my mind at that time. My professor at the time (Bill Leahy) definitely drilled into us the importance of understanding the systems in which we were eventually going to work on.

Not sure if this is still covered today.

jtchangon Banned in Boston

America's puritan based roots along with a continuing culture of anti-intellectualism will eventually be our undoing. This is slightly strange though given the premises on which our country was founded.

jtchangon Google Has Been Allowing Advertisers to Exclude Nonbinary People from Seeing Job

I don't think this is malicious. Even in the article it states that Google offered this targeting option because advertisers wanted it. Not necessarily defending them but I can definitely see why the option is there. It probably means just not able to be determined (i.e. null?)

jtchangon One address is home to 285,000 US businesses, including Apple and Google

How much mail do they get?

jtchangon Preparing to Issue 200M Certificates in 24 Hours

Always nice to see some private companies stepping up. Specifically Cisco, Luna, Thales, and Fortinet. I'm sure there are a bunch others that donate their resources to Lets Encrypt.

jtchangon Ask HN: Where do you put DIY servers?

You start looking at colos in your area that are within your parameters (as well as theirs).

The reason the box you linked doesn't get put in a colo is primarily power consumption and space. Colos charge mainly per amp. And that thing looks like it will draw a ton of power. Also some colos don't allow anything but standard racked computers. So you need to put it into a standard rack unit. This is primarily so they can standardize on cooling/airflow (generally racks have hot and cold aisles).

That said if you rent a whole rack you can probably get away with it. But then again it is expensive and you pay for transit as well.

Other options include at an office or even at home.

jtchangon Ask HN: My WiFi password changed over night

Ubiquiti did disclose a breach on Jan 11, 2021. Is it possible that your data was compromised and they logged in and reset your data?

jtchangon Ask HN: How to track tickets across DevOps

I read this over a few times and am having trouble understanding the workflow you are trying to achieve. PBIs are Pending Backlog Items?

I think where you are going wrong is that you are saying Tasks or Backlog Items should map to CI/CD statuses. This is not always the case. Depending on the actual task (or feature) you may not always have a status in your CI/CD pipeline.

The "Done" state of a task is something I've had conversations about in many organizations as they try to mature their processes. In many cases it needs to be broke out more (waiting for QA / done but waiting for internal verification / etc).

jtchangon The first commercial astronaut mission to orbit Earth aboard Dragon

In the sweepstakes it says the Approximate Retail Value ("ARV") is $2.21 Million. That is one expensive ticket!

jtchangon Google Stadia shuts down internal studios, changing business focus

This is a fantastic move by Google. The war for gaming as a service will be on the platform level and something that Google is well positioned to win in. Not saying that Steam, Nintendo, Nvidia won't be some serious contenders as well but the outlook for gamers is quite positive.

I expect to see what the web went through in the early 90s as far as turmoil goes. Lots of platforms with all their quirks and developers getting behind various ones. Eventually (hopefully?) some standards enabling cross platform development of stream gaming. Bandwidth/latency still needs to play catch up but 5G is getting there. Cellular connections are getting more and more stable while landline methods are lagging.

I expect to see each platform playing to their strengths with Google pushing their expertise in infrastructure and Nvidia with their hardware. Also expect to see the space get even more crowded as traditional players join the market.

jtchangon Chronicles of a Bubble Tea Addict

Definitely spoiled living in the bay area where there seems to be way too many bubble tea places. One of my favorites though (which I can never get unless I am in south bay) is roasted buckwheat at Rabbit Rabbit.

jtchangon "ERROR: could not open temporary file" after upgrade to Mac OS Big Sur

Funny how we are still learning from what we built 40 years ago.

jtchangon Show HN: Are you playing your violin (viola, guitar, etc.) in tune?

Cool. I tried it with my viola but noticed the notes didn't appear correctly on the staff. Also it did jump a bit when I was playing a C major scale.

Could you make the staff and notes a big larger? The colors also are really difficult to discern.

I like it!

jtchangon Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?

About 20 paid subscriptions. Have over 100k students. The paid subscriptions are from a point where we are starting to monetize but everything was hacked together.

jtchangon Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?

I have a company that has over 10k teachers and am interested in anyone who wants to help drive it forward: https://www.go.literatorapp.com/ It consists of a webapp and iOS/Android apps that help teachers track student literacy. Previously had about 20 or so monthly subscribers but due to covid and time haven't been able to keep it up.

jtchangon A half-hour to learn Rust

This article was excellent and will be saving it for the future when I'm ready to give rust a try.

jtchangon SolarWinds hackers were able to access Microsoft source code

On the whole this does not affect my perception of Microsoft. In fact it probably tilts it in their favor. They were able to conduct a thorough investigation and figure out the attackers had access to the source. The reality is that while it makes future attacks easier it has already been taken into account for a large majority of risk assessments.

People trash Microsoft a lot but some of the people there are the best in their respective fields.

jtchangon Ask HN: Co-founder wants me to leave but won't entertain a buy out offer

This is commonly referred to as a shotgun clause.

jtchangon All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)

Does a bathroom count?

jtchangon A Crypto User Sent $50k to a Smart Contract. It's Gone Forever

When you hand someone cash you can get the cash back. You know the person you can chase them down.

jtchangon Treasure hunter in jail for 5 years

If you want to find something you should let that person go and then follow them closely. Clearly this person either really doesn't remember or doesn't want to tell. You can't really coerce it out of them at this point.

jtchangon Highly Evasive Attacker Leverages SolarWinds Supply Chain

Holy this is one hell of a sophisticated attack.

Most of the SolarWinds tools run on Windows only. Some of the obfuscation they use reminds me of how complicated PSD is to parse.

Finding that you've been infected with this malware should trigger a critical response. I wouldn't even feel safe until I've nuked all the servers and rolled as many credentials as I could. And even then who knows how much data the attacker could have already exfiltrated. Frankly this level of sophistication is terrifying because you really never know for sure how deep they managed to get in.

jtchangon Ask HN: How to Abandon Stock of Startup?

Can you sell them back to the company? For example if you sold them for 1 cent the company has the right of first refusal and if they refuse I believe the sale can still go through.