Hacker News Reader

ordinaryon SSH certificates: the better SSH experience

> Often you either end up with one "dev ssh key" for all machines (which is bad)

Or, conversely: with one "dev password" for all machines.

ordinaryon Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes

This careful response seems sensible at first blush. After all, maybe in 5 years things will be better for Venezuelans! On the other hand, maybe not. In my heart of hearts I believe the odds are not great, but in lieu of a time machine, I think we can do no better than call it 50:50 odds.

In the meantime, though, this action is already having effects beyond the US and Venezuela. Withholding judgement until this conflict has fully played out carries with it an implicitly permission for similar actions in other places and situations. After all, maybe those will be for the better too!

That's why I oppose this action. Not in support the Maduro regime, which in my view has little to nothing that's worth defending, but because of the precedent that it sets for future events. This is hardly the first time a nation has had its sovereignty violated by a stronger power, and I'm not so naive to believe that it will be the last if only enough people spoke out. But at the same time, I strongly believe that accepting it as something that's inevitable (or even good) will only make it happen more often.

ordinaryon Want to sway an election? Here’s how much fake online accounts cost

If we take GP's post not quite literally, here's a useful list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_Russia-related_deat...

ordinaryon Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules

Journalists have a long and storied history of standing up for free and independent journalism, and they're right to!. However, they have a rather more spotty record (with highs and lows) of standing up for other fundamental requirements for a well-functioning liberal democracy.

So one possible (admittedly uncharitable) take is that they were OK with all those other things because those things didn't hurt them, and might've helped them. They're not OK with this change not because it makes things worse, but because it makes things worse /for them/.

ordinaryon U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

Nukes make individual countries safer, but every additional country with nukes makes the world as a whole less safe.

ordinaryon Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

Over the past half century, a lot of women went from housewife to part-time worker, resulting in more hours worked per adult citizen and household, but fewer per labor participant. The same is true if labor participation in general went up, which between 2012 and 2022 it did, by about 5pp: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166044/employment-rate-...

That's not the kind of progress described by the mchanson.

ordinaryon Cable-cutting tanker seized by Finland 'was loaded with spying equipment'

> Russia violated Turkey’s airspace only once, the jet was shot down immediately, and, save to say, Putin was on the phone with Ankara to prevent an all out escalation with a NATO member that can trigger article 5 at any time for self defense after an apparent aggression. Turned out, no more airspace violations happened again.

I was on the same page as you for a long time, but aggressively defending your airspace also increases risk of collateral damage, leading to, for example, your military shooting down Azeri passenger jets. Or Malaysian ones. Or Iranian ones (to name one not committed by Russia).

ordinaryon Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]

I believe (with zero supporting evidence) that Blizzard implemented level scaling reluctantly, in order to better facilitate ad-hoc group play. Unfortunately, they kind of screwed it up.

When you move around in the overworld, you sometimes run into another player. They're fighting some enemies, you jump in to help (or vice versa) and it's amazing. Those are some of my favourite moments in the game, and the only reason it works is because of the level scaling. Even if my character is only level 10 and theirs is level 40, we can fight the same enemies and have roughly equal impact, because for me those enemies are level 10, and for them those same enemies are level 40! It's really clever, and I think they felt the sense of progression was an necessary sacrifice to enable that kind of improvised cooperative play.

"But ordinary, you said they screwed it up!" Yeah, they did. Because what happens when the enemies are dead? You continue towards your quest, and they continue towards theirs, and poof, you're all alone again. These brief moments are tantalizingly close to true pick-up experience: you start playing, meet a few people, team up, and have a blast together for an hour or so, just like you could in Diablo 2.

Oh, and even if you do happen to have the same quest, unless you took the relatively scary step of formally inviting them to your (1-person) party, the moment you enter a dungeon, you each get your own instance, and you're torn apart.

And finally, there's no global chat, so the only real way you have of communicating with people you meet prior to inviting them to a party is a Hearthstone-style emote wheel. There are at least 3 quests that require you to use the emote wheel, so they really wanted you to know it's there and to learn to use it, but in practice no one does and it's useless.

Taken together, it just barely doesn't work and it's really unfortunate. And counterintuitively those brief moments of comradery make the game feel more lonely than if you never met anyone at all. Because time and again, you're confronted with the fact that people are out there! Having fun, kicking ass, taking names. Just... you know, not with you.

The only thing I can't quite figure out is why they didn't attempt to 'matchmake' players of similar levels together. There are literally millions of people playing Diablo 4 at any one time, surely there's someone who's doing the same quest at about the same level as me? Why don't I meet those people? Or maybe the odds just don't work out, even at that scale.

ordinaryon Thunderbird 102

Only for the first time. Subsequent times work even with cookies disabled.

ordinaryon Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

It is worth pointing out that einpoklum's point is not merely academic: Stallman is old enough that he really did get introduced to computers and programming and software through corporate and university mainframes, and not through personal machines like (I assume) most of us.

The decline of the early open hacker culture in favour of corporate proprietary software during the 70s deeply informed the idea behind Free Software.

ordinaryon Never Pay for Online Dating (2010)

> I miss OKCupid's blog.

For anyone who might want to re-read them, gwern archived the old OKCupid blog here: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/

ordinaryon Webrecorder: Make an interactive copy of any web page that you browse

I've been using SingleFile for a couple of months now, to auto-save every page I visit, and it works well. It's exactly as simple as it needs to be. My only real complaints are that it can be slow on large pages and that it pollutes your download history (every auto-save shows up as a download), both of which I suspect are due to limitations in the extension API.

ordinaryon Archiving Web Sites (2018)

I've been looking for something like this for a while now, to store all pages I visit into a personal archive, but all the options I found either involved setting up a proxy and MITMing all your requests (too much effort to set up) or saved to a format I could not easily access.

So far, SingleFile looks like a perfect fit, thanks!

ordinaryon Ask HN: Your favourite outstandingly creative/informative YouTube channels?

Isaac Arthur: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g/vid...

Exploring science fiction concepts using currently known science.

ordinaryon Images and video showing extent of Oroville dam damage

Are you sure we shouldn't take the idiom 'a picture is worth a thousand words' literally?

ordinaryon Firefox 57 as the first release where only WebExtensions will be supported

Here's a list: https://arewee10syet.com/

ordinaryon Romania is developing its own culture of protests

When, say, 100000 people are out on the street protesting something (anything), and 5 of them throw a chair through a window, then yes, I would prefer the media to focus on the 99995 who engaged in peaceful protest. Those 5 do not just discredit themselves, but in the eyes of the people who weren't there, they discredit the entire protest. By focusing on a handful of black bloc anarchists rather than the overwhelmingly peaceful majority, the media intentionally or unintentionally aids those in power.

ordinaryon Airbnb is providing free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US

Tourists do not commonly suffer from PTSD and a host of other mental problems. There are real, valid reasons why you don't just dump them in a random suburb and let them fend for themselves.

Incidentally, insulting people is not conducive to healthy debate. Please consider whether calling your opponent (or their actions) racist will increase our ability to persuade them to change their position, or just make them entrench their position (even against more persuasive arguments).

ordinaryon How can I protect myself from government snoopers?

It's undoubtable that surveillance is becoming harder now

I disagree, that's very doubtable. Modern law enforcement has access to an amount of information that exceeds that available in any other era in human history, by an order of magnitude, both in breadth and in depth. The surveillance programs revealed by Snowden and the remote sabotage of Iranian nuclear faclities are but two examples. Surveillance in the developed democratic countries we both (I assume) live in is broader and is done with less oversight than at any point in the 20th century, and not just on the Internet, either. In addition, while I don't want to go quite as far as to state that the trend is clearly upward, I'm also not convinced it's clearly downward; the recent law passed in the UK is evidence enough to discard that notion.

Even if we encrypted all our communication today, there are still weak points in our system that governments can and do exploit when a clear need arises. On the technical side, 0-day exploits are not cheap, but well within the budgets of the law enforcement agencies we depend on to protect us from real threats. And on the legal (and not so legal) side, Certificate authoritities can be compelled to hand over the keys required to compromise secure communications.

Finally, even if we're indeed "Going Dark", as the spokespeople of law enforcement agencies would have us believe, then that can only be true relative to the last decade. As far as I'm concerned, that's a return to the right balance, not a decline into an age of death and despair, where evildoers can commit crime at will, without fear of repercussion.

ordinaryon An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter

To add to qb45's reply, that kind of a manipulation does not remain hidden. And when it inevitably comes out, the very people you've been trying to convince will be angered by your dishonesty ("I thought I was talking to a real person!"), and be even less willing to reconsider their position. No one likes being deceived.

So, by all means, consider breaking the rules. And then don't, please.

ordinaryon Team wants to sell lab grown meat in five years (2015)

A couple of days ago, I got a DVD-R in my mailbox. When I looked at was on it, it appeared to be a list of conspiracy theory videos. The file names of several of these alleged that aborted fetuses (human) were used in the meat industry, by McDonalds specifically.

I decided not to watch them.

ordinaryon Dutch prison crisis: A shortage of prisoners

Unlike in most other European countries, Dutch law allows for life imprisonment without parole, from which only a royal pardon can save you. Since 1970, 43 people have been convicted, 2 of whom were eventually pardoned, both because of terminal illness. A quick glance through the recent list of convictions[1] shows that most life sentences were imposed in cases of multiple homicide, homicide for financial gain and homicide related to organized crime.

In addition, convicts may be involuntarily committed when their sentence is over (and often before). This is aimed at rehabilitation, but can be extended indefinitely.

[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_tot_levenslang_veroo... (in Dutch)

ordinaryon Dutch prison crisis: A shortage of prisoners

People organise neighbourhood watch WhatsApp groups to prevent crime instead of relying on the police to fix things. Within ten years these groups will probably grow into armed and organised right-wing groups.

I have seen the signs for these WhatsApp groups in my own neighbourhood, but I think you're mischaracterizing them. These groups (and the signs that come with them) have existed for decades: "Attentie, buurtpreventie". They're just embracing modern technology. If their formation inevitably lead to armed militias roaming the streets, then we would've seen them by now.

Groups like these crossing the line would be a result of other changes in Dutch society.

ordinaryon Dutch prison crisis: A shortage of prisoners

Prison sentences in the Netherlands for aren't imposed as punishment alone, not even mostly. They are primarily tools of prevention (including the prevention of recidivism). If a convicted criminal is no longer considered to be a threat to society what's the point of keeping them locked up? If longer sentences (longer than whatever they are) have not shown to reduce the crime rate through deterrent, why impose them?

Prisons cost money.

ordinaryon Energy Giant Shell Says Oil Demand Could Peak in Just Five Years

I think production peak oil implies prices will rise as the market adjusts, while demand peak oil implies the opposite.

ordinaryon The Coming War in the Middle East (2013)

I enjoy /r/geopolitics.

ordinaryon Today a greater percentage of Dutch people speak English than Canadians

On the other hand, the Netherlands is almost entirely Dutch speaking.

ordinaryon Ask HN: Is Bash for Windows good enough to replace a Linux/Mac terminal?

I have not tried Bash for Windows, but I've been a Cygwin user for almost a decade.

The main problem I have with using any kind of shell on Windows is that process spawning takes much, much longer than on *nix systems. I regularly find myself optimizing my scripts not for readability or elegance, but for total number of calls to executables.

To illustrate, opening a new Cygwin Bash shell on this machine takes 3 seconds, almost all of which is spent executing .bashrc. On Linux, with the same .bashrc (modulo a few platform-specific settings) that's under 0.2 seconds.

So, far from perfect, but is it 'good enough'? I'd say yes. Bash is just so much nicer than CMD, and while I hear good things about PowerShell, I can't be bothered to learn a different shell for every platform I use.

Whether there are additional tradeoffs with Bash for Windows, I cannot judge.

ordinaryon NoScript is harmful and promotes malware

you are performing a micro violation of your own privacy

You cannot violate your own privacy. My privacy is mine to control. And give up, if I so choose.

ordinaryon How to change symlinks atomically (2005)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link