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noahmasur

126 karma · joined June 4, 2020

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noahmasur··on Bucketsquatting is finally dead
I don't really understand that problem, exactly. I'm not aware of any restrictions for using AWS Identity Center (SSO) with an email address that happens to be a root email for another AWS account.

I checked the documentation but I couldn't find anything to show this to be a problem other than that the practice is discouraged.

noahmasur··on Bucketsquatting is finally dead
You can always use plus-addressing if your email provider supports that. AWS considers plus-addressed root emails to be unique.
noahmasur··on Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable
Some tax forms like NY State fill-in forms have some scripted functionality that requires Adobe Acrobat to work, and they block rendering from other PDF programs. Even worse, once you've filled in the form, their PDF then blocks Acrobat from exporting to a normal PDF (the way you can save a print preview to a PDF for later) and so the only way you can get a real PDF of it is to print it directly and then scan it back to your computer.
noahmasur··on 4-7-8 Breathing
Basically the last third of the book is a bibliography. It's filled with tons of scientific references.
noahmasur··on Aerc: A well-crafted TUI for email
Aerc lets you do this, although it doesn't automatically fill it in based on the recipient in a reply. So you have to remember to adjust the sender for each email that you send.
noahmasur··on CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops
I think the parent was correct in the use of the word "Risk"; it's different than your definition, which appears to be closer to "likelihood".

Risk is a combination of likelihood and impact. If "risk" were just equivalent to "likelihood" then leaving without an umbrella on a cloudy day would be a "high-risk situation".

A rational person needs to weigh both the likelihood and impact of a threat in order to properly evaluate its risk. In many cases, the impact is high enough that even a low likelihood needs to be addressed.

noahmasur··on Show HN: We relaunched the Official MTA App for NYC public transit
You might like Here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/here-nyc-subway-arrivals/id644...

I use it because it opens instantly and just shows me nearby train arrival times. The other apps have always taken too long to bother checking.

noahmasur··on "3 Body Problem" Is a Rare Species of Sci-Fi Epic
The third book is incredible. I actually started with that one accidentally but don't regret it at all; it gets more interesting much more quickly than the first book.

It's definitely the case that the characters are just a vehicle for exploring these science fiction concepts, but the ideas are so clever and imaginative that I can forgive it most of the time.

noahmasur··on Show HN: Open-source obsidian.md sync server
> What is it that people love about Obsidian?

When Obsidian launched, there was already a lot of hype building in the note-taking community around Zettelkasten and Roam Research. With Roam, basically any word in your note could immediately link to another note, and you could see backlinks in your notes prominently.

However, Roam was both expensive and online-only, so when Obsidian came out and it was: a) polished, b) provided most of the functionality of Roam, and c) was offline and plain-text (also unlike Notion), it was an immediate hit.

The other special feature Obsidian offered was easy and powerful customization. The major settings are actually core plugins that can be enabled or disabled (like daily journal, tagging, or slideshows). Plugins and themes are easily discovered and installed from inside the app, which has led to a vibrant and popular plugin community. All you need is one plugin to be indispensable for users to never leave.

noahmasur··on My frugal indie dev startup stack (2022)
Usually it’s caching build artifacts between runs, or uploading packages or container images for private deployment.
noahmasur··on Nixhub: Search Historical Versions of Nix Packages
Roughly equivalent tool that I've used in the past: https://lazamar.co.uk/nix-versions/
noahmasur··on Now on the menu at Toast: A new 99 cent fee
That’s why it’s only on transactions over $10.
noahmasur··on Passage by 1Password: Add passkey support to your app or website
They also have 1Password Connect, which allows you to bridge an API into your data for automation workflows, Terraform, syncing with Kubernetes, HashiCorp Vault, etc.
noahmasur··on The Mullvad Browser
Your browser can still be fingerprinted without cookies. The site just needs enough unique information (user agent, timezone, screen size, IP, operating system, country, etc.) to form a trackable identity.
noahmasur··on Have lots of AWS accounts
> My current solution is to share my ~/aws/config with everyone so we all have the same profile names and scripts can work for everyone.

If you're on Mac/Linux you could have everyone use direnv. Add a .envrc file in each git repo (or your script's subdirectory) with `export AWS_PROFILE=profilename`. Now everyone is working with the same profile names without having to pass around config files.

noahmasur··on Super apps are proliferating across emerging markets
I've mostly seen this for game platforms on iOS:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/valve-apple-wont-let-...

I think it's waffled back and forth on game streaming:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gamin...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826297/microsoft-xbox-x...

Netflix also has to offer their games as separate packages:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/netflix-games-will-reportedly-...

noahmasur··on Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
What happens when you have two projects that use two different versions of the same dependency?

With Nix, you can "install" many different versions of the same program side by side in the store, and then "activate" the one you need at runtime (or with direnv).

noahmasur··on Unity is laying off hundreds of employees
They may not qualify as AAA, but Hearthstone, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Kerbal Space Program, Cuphead, Gwent, Genshin Impact, ReCore, Ori 1 and 2, Hollow Knight, Fall Guys, Pillars of Eternity, Call of Duty Mobile, Subnautica, Firewatch, and Valheim are pretty big games; some indie hits but many are produced by major studios.

For one thing, I think the "powered by Unity" branding is a problem, because you only see it on games that couldn't afford to actually pay for Unity and therefore have a larger chance of being poorly polished.

noahmasur··on Why America can’t build
The problem is that "inducing demand" for people who would otherwise take public transit doesn't actually increase efficiency. Putting more cars on the road is not necessarily a net benefit.

See this video from CityNerd for more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za56H2BGamQ

noahmasur··on PyPI: Python packets steal AWS keys from users
In the article they claim the package is literally stealing the IAM role credentials from the EC2’s metadata URL. So it’s presumed that the code is already running on your EC2.

Of course, just because it takes the credentials doesn’t mean it does anything else with them, but it could have done anything.

noahmasur··on A decade of dotfiles
To add to what rgoulter said, you can use your default system configuration plus whatever the project says you need (and the project's shell will override any conflicts with your default).

However, if you really want to make sure that you're not including anything from your system, you can have direnv pass the `--pure` flag, which will then include only the dependencies from the project and nothing else. This is helpful to make sure that you're not accidentally relying on something already on your system when you declare the project dependencies.

noahmasur··on A decade of dotfiles
Yes, that’s exactly the kind of thing it’s great at.

Nix stores all builds of its packages in a separate “store” on the machine, each identified by the hash of the build (“derivation”). When you activate your config, it basically symlinks the version you want into your PATH.

If your project needs a specific version, when you activate a Nix shell or script it will check your store for that version and activate it. If it doesn’t exist, it will fetch it (or even compile it from scratch if you need to).

noahmasur··on A decade of dotfiles
Mostly it provides guarantees about your system. It guarantees that anything not in your config is not on your system (for the most part). It guarantees that everything builds successfully before it applies any changes. Most of the filesystem is immutable so it forces you to use the configuration.

There are some other advantages: rollback to a previous state at any time, enable complex system services with one line in your config file, install multiple versions of tools on your system without conflicts, install programs without root (using home manager), build VMs and Docker images, pin the versions and dependencies of all packages for reproducibility, patch software with your own tweaks natively. You can also put a Nix file in a code repo and easily share your build dependencies with other developers.

noahmasur··on My students cheated... a lot
It’s a 16 billion dollar market cap currently.
noahmasur··on Intel acquires Linutronix
A quick search shows INTC market cap is 184B and AMD is 135B. AMD is worth 73% of Intel.
noahmasur··on Update on Omicron
We may not be able to achieve full herd immunity, but better herd resistance may be the only way to help those who can't benefit from the vaccine.

If the Delta and other contagious variants are spreading more in communities with lower vaccine adoption, then I think it would stand to reason that immunocompromised people would be safer in communities with higher vaccine adoption.

noahmasur··on Update on Omicron
I think their point was that you need to have EVERYONE vaccinated in order to reduce spread and protect people for whom vaccines are ineffective.
noahmasur··on How to Learn Nix
Would love to see some documentation on dealing with SSL decryption for those who are in MITM corporate environments.

I've struggled with this as I recently got a new Mac for work and I tried to set it up from scratch with Nix but I couldn't even get it to connect to the nixpkgs channel. I tried every solution I could find online for pulling the CAs and specifying the NIX_SSL_CERT_FILE, but it borked even after I left the office and connected through another network (and wiping and reinstalling Nix didn't seem to fix it, but I probably didn't do that correctly either...).

Eventually I gave up and went back to homebrew and setup scripts.

noahmasur··on OAuth with Cloudflare workers on a statically generated site
Why not just use Cloudflare Access for this? It’s the same thing for even less work (and it’s free for personal use).
noahmasur··on Ask HN: Do you self-host your database?
> I mean, you don’t “self-drive” your car, nor “self-work” your job.

You could just take these metaphors up a step and you get the opposite effect.

For example, building/fixing your own car or running your own business. Those are considered unusual compared to using a third party.

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