Hacker News Reader

rabeeneron Google workspace threatening to block Firefox access

I don’t think anyone is saying Firefox is inherently bad. What I’m reading, and what I believe, is Google just has a better product for secure enterprise browsing because of the controls they offer

The browser is where basically all your work happens, especially as a Workspace customer—think about how much of your work is done in the browser. That makes it a huge, attractive attack surface. And attackers don't even need a browser vulnerability; they can just convince an employee to install a malicious browser extension, and suddenly they can steal passwords, watch everything you do, and hijack your sessions on other sites.

So security teams need visibility into what's happening in the browser. Google does a decent—not great—job of providing this through Managed Chrome: centralized logs, control over which extensions can be installed, even alerts when someone reuses their Workspace password elsewhere.

Firefox, Safari, and most others don't offer these business controls, which means a security team allowing them is flying blind. And a blind security team is gonna have a bad time… mmmkay.

On support: someone mentioned using Firefox to verify their app works across browsers—god's work, truly. But not every vendor does that, so IT ends up fielding "this site just isn't working" tickets that turn out to be browser compatibility issues. Fewer supported browsers means a smaller surface to support and a better experience all around.

This can't be enforced where you're not using your corporate identity. A Dropbox account on your personal email is still accessible from any browser.

rabeeneron Eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece (2023)

+1 to Carrot. I’m a huge fan. The annual subscription is pricey but I travel a lot and it’s consistently one of the most accurate apps I’ve used and I tried a bunch! They even have an “I miss Dark Sky” setting that makes the UI a clone of Dark Sky

rabeeneron The Collapse of the FDA

https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

rabeeneron Two new security incidents involving CLEAR ratchet up concern from lawmakers

Notably missing from the article is a comparison of CLEAR’s failure rates and severity against the TSA’s. Admittedly, CLEAR doesn’t handle as many travelers as TSA so the data would need to be extrapolated but based on what I’ve read over the past decade, I suspect the TSA’s performance would be much worse.

For example: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/11/13/us/tsa-failures-box-cutte...

The truth is our entire system for airline security is theater and doesn’t actually make us safer. A number of other countries have solved this problem successfully, the US chooses not to. I wish more time was spent on fixing that mess instead of pursuing CLEAR.

rabeeneron California passes bill to make it easier to delete data from data brokers

The first sentence of your comment is unnecessary to make your point and I’m curious why you chose to post it.

rabeeneron Why haven't password complexity rules gone away yet?

One reason not covered here is a lot of companies still contractually require their software services vendors to follow old, outdated password rules that reflect Burr’s old password requirements. This includes password complexity rules and forcing regular password changes on employees. The companies wrote a bunch of security requirements a few years ago but no one is really responsible for making sure those requirements stay modern, for example removing password requirements and instead requiring webauthn instead. So what was supposed to be something that made vendors do the right thing with security has now become something that makes these companies unable to adapt to new security theories and practices.

rabeeneron U.S. judge: Passengers in fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes are 'crime victims'

While they can’t force a Prosecutor to prosecute, the ruling does bolster the lawsuits from those impacted like families and partners. I’m curious what your definition of “anywhere” is

rabeeneron Do you regret deleting FB or IG or any social media?

I deleted my FB and IG accounts about a year ago and have no regrets. I find myself spending less time on my phone and not reaching for it every time I have a free moment. If I need to find the contact info for someone, I use LinkedIn.

What I miss the most is getting birthday reminders and event invites. What I miss the least is the negative feelings social media gave me about my life and the world more broadly.

What I have found is my connections with the people I keep in touch with is much deeper because I don’t let a “like” replace a true interaction. I am intentional about adding birthdays to my calendar now and once my friends realized I wasn’t hearing about events, they made sure to let me know.

I highly recommend it. Both platforms allow you to recover your account within a time frame so it’s kind of a no lose situation if you want to try it out. One recommendation before you do: make sure you download all of your pictures, videos, etc… first.

I sincerely hope you do this and wish you the best of luck if you do.

Edit: lowercased an AND and deleted and incomplete sentence

rabeeneron With no fuel and no cash, Sri Lanka grinds to a halt

Your statement is not accurate and also misleading. There’s a number of factors that landed Sri Lanka where it is today for example over investing in domestic production for internal consumption vs. investing in a healthy export economy, deep tax cuts beginning in 2019 to gain support for the ruling party, and taking on massive amounts of debt to China to fund infrastructure projects. The country is 13 years removed from a civil war (which is not a long time) and has been mostly led by a dynastic family that implemented damaging policies to maintain popular support. All of this was exacerbated by the pandemic, accelerating the downfall of the country’s economy because of these disastrous policies.

And to address your “go green” comment directly, Sri Lanka banned the import of foreign fertilizers not because they were committed to being organic but because they had dire foreign exchange shortages beginning last year. This has commonly been misconstrued as the country trying to be organic because that’s how it was sold to the people of the country by that dynastic leadership to hide the failure of leadership’s economic policies.

I’m disappointed that you posted this comment to HN. We are a community that’s better than this historically but I see the same uniformed voices popping up here now that ruined Reddit years ago. Sri Lanka is a country of 22 million people who are currently in a crisis and actually starving. They deserved better than what you wrote.

rabeeneron My 70 year old mother has been using Linux on the desktop for the past 21 years

This post hit close to home. About 15 years ago, Ubuntu got decent enough to replace Windows on my parents PC. They needed to access websites and receive and send email, something Linux could definitely provide. No more worrying about malware or other Windows demons. Fast forward 15 years and their PC has been fully replaced by iPads with keyboard cases and iPhones. Yes, they are in a walled-garden curated by Apple but for the technical illiterate this is actually a good thing because the experience is seamless across devices. I’ve downloaded apps for all of their financial services and they've learned to never log in to a website when dealing with their banks which minimizes the risk of phishing. They use iOS’s native password manager to create unique passwords for all there sites, minimize password reuse risks. But most importantly, they know how to keep their devices up to date with the latest OS release without me having to do a monthly patch for them. Strongly recommend exploring this setup if you struggle with supporting your parents’ tech the way I did. Life is much better now.

rabeeneron Always use old.reddit

Not sure if this helps with filtering out subreddits but I highly recommend teddit.net. Just switched after the mobile experience became essentially unusable without the app.

rabeeneron The inventor of the black box was told to drop the idea

You’re arguing against monitoring equipment in the cockpit in an article that’s about people arguing against monitoring equipment in the cockpit. Thanks for making me laugh today. I appreciate you.

rabeeneron Ron Paul blocked from posting on Facebook

As a libertarian, he accepts that Facebook has every right to do this. Right?

rabeeneron Parents got more time off, then the backlash started

I’ve said this in a couple of comments but reiterating here, we’re talking about a new event that caused a failure of systems. There are no government systems or subsidies to help working parents who suddenly have no public or private school and who need to balance work with the very sudden needs of providing around the clock childcare. Longer term, yes, it will be great if there is more support similar to medical care leave but an immediate solution was needed and companies did the right thing by offering flexibility to their employees. The medical leave model was put forth because it captures the essence of a required reduction of work (which is what parents are experiencing) compared to a discretionary decision like giving vegans Fridays off. It’s not time yet to take a long view of how equitable this is, we have no idea how long parents will need this flexibility for. If this lasts a year, I don’t think we should look to the government to step in. If this lasts several years, yes, we need to come up with a model that works long term and that will likely require some sort of government action.

rabeeneron Parents got more time off, then the backlash started

I disagree that my thinking falls apart. Maybe my message is not coming across clearly so I’ll try and restart it: We are not talking about a benefit that is systemic and a typical part of our workforce. We are talking about a reaction by companies to help their employees during an unprecedented failure of normal institutions during a moment of global crisis. To extrapolate that into an argument of choices around kids, equity of benefits, or the the role of government vs. private responsibility. We’re taking about something that started 6 months ago and has still not returned to normal, if it ever will. This will require a fundamental rethink of how we work, yes, but in the interim, parents needed help, companies stepped up and complaining about any of that seems selfish and missing the point.

rabeeneron Parents got more time off, then the backlash started

Thanks for creating the thought experiment. Let’s keep using that as an example. This is not a case where companies decided to create a benefit arbitrarily or to make employment at the company more attractive to workers. This was the world responding to an unexpected disruption to almost every area of life. As part of that, parents had an immediate need that could not wait to be met- caring for their children. This, in my mental model, is closer to someone taking leave to deal with a physical or mental health issue vs. someone taking time off voluntarily. If your colleague were to take time off to deal with a severe physical or mental health issue, would you have the same complaints about not getting an immediate increase in compensation for picking up some extra work or also not being able to take time off? I suspect that over time you might have a conversation with your manager about the increased workload but would not look at your colleague as deriving additional benefit. It can still be argued that it’s not equitable that someone who lost a limb gets to take so much paid time away from the office but I think we can all agree that this isn’t the point of the benefit. I have the same view of this time off extended to parents right now.

rabeeneron Parents got more time off, then the backlash started

Yeah sure, all for rewarding employees who end up doing more work as a result but we need to separate the two issues. The parent flexibility was introduced almost overnight as a way to respond to systemic changes to childcare and schooling. There hasn’t been a lot of time to get things right but the need for this flexibility was clear immediately. So yes, let’s keep figuring out how to take care of all employees during this time but let’s stop framing it as a parent vs. non-parent issue. This is just one class of employees, parents, who needed immediate relief and some companies stepping up and providing that relief. Instead of complaining about a new benefit for parents, work with management to find a way to help all employees in a way that feels equitable to all. We’re all still just trying to figure out how to keep moving forward in a world that changed suddenly.

I don’t know how to respond to the opportunity comment, I’m not sure I understand your point.

EDIT: added a comma

rabeeneron Parents got more time off, then the backlash started

One way to solve this is to extend these types of benefits as a way for any employee to help care for children. If you’re an aunt or uncle and want to take time off to help care for your nieces and nephews, you should be able to. That being said, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for employees complaining about these specific policies. The entire world is in uncharted waters here and these companies, as well as individual employees, are doing the best they can with responding. As the article points out, these benefits aren’t meant to be used for vacation, they were introduced as a way to help employees respond to a sudden loss of childcare and the collapse of an education system. And to anyone who thinks this is a vacation, I recommend spending a week in a household with children who are unable to go to school while still trying to get work done.

rabeeneron No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit

Can you clarify your point? I read the article but don’t see any mention of trying this on any of the streets you listed. It looks like the city of SF made a good call here and the first part of your comment supports that.

rabeeneron Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build

Interesting update here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/amp/Former-Lafayette-cit...

>The Oakland City Council voted Tuesday to approve Mayor Libby Schaaf’s appointment for interim city administrator — a man who previously served as the Lafayette city manager for 22 years before resigning because of residents’ refusal to build more housing.

>Steven Falk was confirmed by a unanimous vote.

rabeeneron Honda Refuses to Track Stolen Accord Because Owner Didn't Pay for HondaLink

I disagree. Even if the vehicle has a built in system for tracking, the tracking should always be opt in and with consent of the owner. If not, at some point, all cars will have this capability built in to it and drivers who don’t want it won’t have an option to buy a car without it. Not wanting to be tracked shouldn’t mean you can’t buy a car.

rabeeneron Honda Refuses to Track Stolen Accord Because Owner Didn't Pay for HondaLink

I only have this article to go off of which has the customer service rep saying:

> An employee at a call center operated (or contracted) by Honda reportedly confirmed that they had the vehicle's location, but declined to share it

But even if it’s just pings, the pings have to leverage some sort of network which can be used to establish a general location if not an exact one. That’s still too much for me.

rabeeneron Honda Refuses to Track Stolen Accord Because Owner Didn't Pay for HondaLink

There’s a larger concern (at least for me) not being discussed here. There is conflicting information from Honda: the customer support rep stated (allegedly) that Honda did have the location of the car while the spokesperson later denied that Honda ever had the location of the car. If the customer support agent is correct, the driver was in a vehicle, owned by him, that had surveillance technology in it without his knowledge and that could be activated by Honda, a private company, without his consent. That’s not ok.

rabeeneron WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

We is not a tech company.

rabeeneron Electric scooters aren't as green as you may think

That actual trip somebody’s taking on the scooter — that’s pretty green,” said Juan Matute, the deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies who was not involved with the study. “What’s not green is everything you don’t see.”

This title is misleading and a perfect example of the backlash any new tech that challenges the status quo faces.

A more accurate headline would be “Dockless e-scooters...” but instead the author has lumped together owner driven e-scooters, which have very little carbon impact, with rentable scooters, which by themselves don’t have a large carbon impact but the ecosystem around them does.

rabeeneron Eight Deaths now tied to e-scooters

I really hate articles like this. Eight deaths out of how many rides? How does that compare to driving, biking, walking? There’s a lot of anger and resistance aimed at e-scooters. Maybe it’s valid but this article doesn’t make the case.

rabeeneron Google Gives Free Security Keys to Activists, but Not If You’re in Iran or Syria

I usually like Motherboard but this is sensationalist anti-Google BS.

>>Google may be simply trying to stay in line with export legislation—it’s not totally clear if providing these devices to people in these countries would violate any US or international embargoes or export laws

It’s understandable that Google’s legal team would look at this and say, embargo laws are hard and this is new tech that involved cryptography so let’s not risk violating those laws and make sure we don’t send our keys to embargoed countries.

Or in other words, let’s not risk helping activists around the rest of world by sending what turns out to be embargoed tech to embargoed countries.