HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

mbowcutt

64 karma · joined December 8, 2017

submissionscomments
mbowcutt··on Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests
I don't know too much about Telegram but isn't it encrypted?
mbowcutt··on An Implementation of Tempest in GNU Radio
> [The characters'] goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

The Holocaust education tidbit caught my eye, there was a Twitter post just a few days ago about using Filecoin to preserve genocide data https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/1258128262615773187

mbowcutt··on Signal is finally bringing its secure messaging to the masses
The Snowden endorsement sure helped.
mbowcutt··on The first chosen-prefix collision for SHA-1
"good enough" relies on a threat model. Cryptography researchers work in the abstract - without a threat model you must consider cases where your attacker has unlimited resources.

It's good enough for you and me, but research isn't meant to be practical, imo

mbowcutt··on The world needs more search engines
So, what's different about cliqz? You promise not to keep logs, skew results, and sell data?

Also,

> With 93% of the search market, Google’s algorithms decide what becomes truth. Can you think of a TV channel with a 93% audience? Would you find it acceptable if there were only one TV channel?

Seems to me like Google is more analogous to the TV remote.

mbowcutt··on Spam in Your Calendar? Here’s What to Do
Yep, I've been getting Russian events in my google cal that just reappear the day after I report them as spam (which does what?)

Unfortunately, it's pretty inconvenient to just not show calendar events that I haven't accepted. If you have a busy calendar, it can be helpful to prioritize events - some will inevitably be declined or left hanging, but those are useful to see.

It's pretty crazy that calendar invites that are already filtered out to my spam email folder show up in my normal google calendar. Seems like a quick solution for google to go fix.

mbowcutt··on Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech
I don't know about that. Authentication mechanisms seem within scope of any protocol, and if an implementation refuses service based on some extra requirement (such as being signed in to Facebook) then that implementation is simply not up to spec.

> Facebook could start using an open protocol today

Richard Stallman would prefer you to use the term "free protocol", which I think is what we're all trying to say here ;)

mbowcutt··on US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
> But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's.

I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever.

IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.

mbowcutt··on Librem 5 Smartphone Final Specs
I think the Librem5 will have a CC-by-SA 4.0 license, aka copyleft, so it'd have to be open source.
mbowcutt··on Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland
While it's true that there's an abundance of water, the issue is that there's limited drinking water.

You can't survive on drinking ocean water. There's currently no energy-efficient process to remove salt and other impurities from unpotable water. That's a real issue.

Increased rainfall could be good, but could cause flooding and doesn't do much benefit when it's acidic.

mbowcutt··on Apollo 11 50th Anniversary
Devil's advocate: how can we verify these rocks originated from the moon, and not somebody's back yard?
mbowcutt··on What happens when social media manipulation targets religious faith?
Funny, you won't see "Mormon" ads anymore but not too long ago (2011) they ran the "I'm a Mormon" campaign: https://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/series/im-a-mormon
mbowcutt··on RHEL is deprecating KDE
People like options, especially the Linux/FOSS people. You could come to a consensus about something but it'll only go so far until some developer decides to fork it and make their own project :)
mbowcutt··on [dead]
This should go well.
mbowcutt··on Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram messenger
Might be a stupid question, but why is it always Telegram that gets talked about? Are other secure communications services like Signal, Keybase, etc already blocked?
mbowcutt··on Show HN: Proven – An alternative to Twitter's verified accounts, with HN support
I guess it removes an extra step, but is it all that useful to have every icon appear everywhere?

For instance, instead of having the Facebook icon appear by a user's Twitter name, couldn't a single icon show they're Proven for Twitter and link to their Keybase where I can see all their Proven identities, including Facebook?

mbowcutt··on Roboticst at OSU uses performing arts to make robots more social
I think you meant The* Ohio State University
mbowcutt··on Freeing the Web from the Browser
Seems to be something the author would like. Then again, hypothesis is a browser extension..
mbowcutt··on Google Refuses to Remove the Pirate Bay's Homepage
The Bill of Rights was ratified when none of those things existed. I absolutely believe the 2A is outdated, but you must consider the reasoning its creation.

> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

People seem to forget that first half is more important than guns.

mbowcutt··on Google Refuses to Remove the Pirate Bay's Homepage
> Any person can go buy a gun and attack a mall.

Exactly. To protect ourselves from tyranny, the US established the second amendment. It is preferable if we are equally in a position of asking "should I be evil or not?"

It's arguably more dangerous when the power to be evil is centralized.

mbowcutt··on Ask HN: What “dumbphones” are available and viable in the US?
That design looks so sleek.

I'd dream of something like this embracing 5G and open source firmware so users could add native encryption and other utility as they please.

Also, "Hashtag Key"

mbowcutt··on Ask HN: How do you backup your files without depending on a third party service?
So.. a NAS? AFAIK you can't self-host google drive.
mbowcutt··on Ask HN: Researchers: What practical research hasn't been commercialized?
Many universities (if not most) already have technology transfer offices for this purpose. What is the difference between the Innovation Depot and [1] this department at UAB?

[1] https://www.uab.edu/research/innovation/

mbowcutt··on Assembly Language for Beginners [pdf]
Would have been over-the-top cool if RISC-V had been included as well.
mbowcutt··on A browser extension to make Medium more readable
I haven't used the Medium app on my Android device for some weeks now. Today I got a notification about some article and swiped it away. Then later I got another and realized: Wait, I don't normally get Medium notifications!

Not sure what changed but it was a nice reminder to delete the app.

Also, I was unaware that people found Medium to be a suboptimal reading experience.

mbowcutt··on High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
This aspect is what scares me the most. Nowadays evidence can be easily fabricated and everybody has reason to be a skeptic.

The whole Cambridge Analytica debacle started blowing up after deepfakes gained notoriety and started getting banned on most sites. The whole time I was watching the undercover documentary Channel 4 released I kept thinking, "this 'found footage' could easily be a hoax"

mbowcutt··on Linux distro hacked on GitHub, “all code considered compromised”
How come people don't understand what quotations are for?
mbowcutt··on Internet is losing its memory: Cerf
Glad someone else mentioned it. I haven't seen much news from them recently other than a picture-sync application.

Looking forward to the next few years and their (anticipated) growth

mbowcutt··on Internet is losing its memory: Cerf
Shit happens. That's human nature.
mbowcutt··on DeepMind: First major AI patent filings revealed
What makes you so sure they'll be granted?

(From a US perspective) The disclosures I've flipped through reek of non-patentable subject matter (software/algorithms with no defined field of use), lack a strong inventive step (ok I'm not so sure but it seems like a lot of these are already being researched/used), and have a claims list that is LONG.

It only takes one claim to not be met for a product to not fall under that patent. So if the exact processes described in the claims are not followed or even altered, the offending party could see DeepMind in court (where they would, unfortunately, likely lose).

Page 1 of 2Next →