Hacker News Reader

remxon The Sodium crypto library

Site is up on my end. Anyways, here's the GH page for anyone interested: https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium

remxon Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2017?

There's no way of proving a VPN provider is not logging[0]

Also worth reading this guide which is much more comprehensive than that TorrentFreak article:

https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/

[0] https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29

[#] http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/

remxon How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide

I like this. Some call it hustle, others call it evading LE because cashflow is king, and nothing shall stop the flow.

I commend this but also frown at it for being so brazen. If such a tool was used for the opposite reasons (spotting crime and reporting it to police), then perhaps the tool might stand a chance, but showcasing it in full view of LEOs is outright brazen and guaranteed to embarrass.

People are campaigning on Twitter to #DeleteUber[0] but fail to recognize the naive nature of the story. I consider Uber nothing more than an ongoing experiment, and any tool they release to increase their revenue should be both commended and also be treated with suspicion.

[0] https://twitter.com/hashtag/deleteuber

remxon Ask HN: Who powers the web?

It's worth mulling through Builtwith's site for information like this: https://trends.builtwith.com

For example, here's a breakdown of CDNs:

https://trends.builtwith.com/cdns

remxon Ask HN: Is G+ profitable for Google?

Data is the new oil, albeit unstructured data that is not machine readable and can only live inside a Google data center.

remxon Ask HN: Do you use default top color for HN?

Hotpink: ff6990

remxon 94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid State Battery

Will they be making these in Elon Musk's so called 'Gigafactory'. I hope so

https://www.fastcompany.com/3052889/elon-musk-powers-up-insi...

remxon Containers Come to Firefox Test Pilot

From the post:

> How will users know what context they are operating in?

I find that themes are great for knowing what context I'm in, like the Totem mechanism in Inception. I'm not sure if we can have a different theme for each container though.

remxon Ask HN: Does the NSA profile HN readers?

I was thinking of some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare monster with any arbitrary amount of tentacles

remxon Ask HN: Is S3 down?

Post about S3 not being a CDN hosted on an S3-powered blog:

https://jdorfman.posthaven.com/medium-bitcoin-660x493-dot-jp...

The irony

remxon Ask HN: Is S3 down?

Migrate all your stuff to Cloudfront.

S3 is not a CDN!

remxon Ask HN: Is S3 down?

Time to move your stuff away from Crimeflare folks

remxon SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dragon Spacecraft Beyond the Moon Next Year

There's even the reverse - People who claim they can pinpoint the U.S moon flag with a telescope, trying their hardest to convince others the landings were real.

https://www.quora.com/Can-you-see-the-American-flag-on-the-m...

remxon Ask HN: Does the NSA profile HN readers?

Well according to this Wikipedia piece[0] about the NSA and Palantir:

    A document leaked to TechCrunch revealed that
    Palantir's clients as of 2013 included at least
    twelve groups within the U.S. government,
    including the CIA, DHS, NSA, FBI, CDC

From: http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#cite_not...

remxon Ask HN: Does the NSA profile HN readers?

> I know for a fact many NSA employees read and enjoy participating on HN

There's a few Palantir[0] employees here too, Palantir being one of the many tentacles of the NSA. Infact any contractor who does work for the NSA can be found lurking moar on HackerNews. If you do enough digging around you will find them. Palantir being the more obvious example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies

remxon “I was just asked to balance a Binary Search Tree by JFK's airport immigration”

Some of the replies in the Twitter thread are hilarious

    whiteboarding, it's the new waterboarding? ️Furious /@AnnieTheObscure

remxon I just deleted 36K tweets

That you've said something wrong is not always grounds for deletion

> Little pieces of you are everywhere all over the internet

This is why it's important to choose random nyms not attached to your main identity in any way, and to strive for anonymity. On HN, create a throwaway account and run your posts through something like anonymouth[0] if you're concerned with correlation attacks, or having your stylometric patterns uncovered...

[0] https://github.com/psal/anonymouth

remxon I just deleted 36K tweets

I use dhIMG Twitter by Dale Hay

https://dalehay.me/dhimg/

There's also tools for ripping Instagram and Tumblr photos :)

remxon Cloudflare data still in Bing caches

If anyone wants to, they can access (cached/archived) pages from any number of services listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Web_archiving_initiati...

My personal favorites are:

- https://archive.fo

- https://archive.org/web/web.php

- https://historio.us

- https://timetravel.mementoweb.org

remxon I just deleted 36K tweets

Be careful of the Streisand Effect[0]. If you're scrubbing, we are looking!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

remxon I just deleted 36K tweets

+1 for this tool. Also it deletes DMs which is handy incase your a/c is hacked and a hacker can't read through your DMs

remxon Ask HN: What steps can one take to increase security and privacy online?

> I'm getting pretty nervous

Don't let leaks make you nervous. It's worth presuming your account info will be leaked at some later date, and there are precautions you can take to dampen the blow it has on you. For example, use prepaid credit cards instead of bank-issued ones. That way if your CC ends up on some underground carder forum, it has $0.00 in the balance (and the card can't have a negative balance). Services like privacy.com offer these.

Use burner phones, disposable email addresses. Always poison the well with fake names. Never give out your real name to any service, even if the service demands it. Religiously use Tor for any sensitive topics (Like politics, health). Religiously use DuckDuckGo.

remxon Ask HN: What are the implications of CloudFlare leak?

+1 for mentioning offloading CC stuff to payment providers

remxon Ask HN: What are the implications of CloudFlare leak?

I never trusted Cloudflare's TLS/HTTPS infrastructure. Consider any CC information that could have been in their servers as already compromised. Stuff like that should be on a dedicated payment provider, and insulated away as much as possible. Stripe and other providers are perfect for handling CC, because it's what they do as a service.

remxon Google Is Recording Everything You Say. How to Hear and Delete the Recordings

Caveat emptor

remxon Interview with John O'Nolan of Ghost

I cant recall it being cheaper than $10.00/mo. If you're looking for something cheaper than ghost there is Posthaven[1]. I'm not affiliated with Posthaven in any way, I just wanted to offer an alternative if anyone is looking.

[1] https://posthaven.com

remxon Interview with John O'Nolan of Ghost

According to their pricing[1] their lowest price is $19.00/mo. Assuming the bulk of their customers are on this price band it's roughly 3000 paying customers, paying each month.

[1] https://ghost.org/pricing/

remxon Thunk

> In computer programming, a thunk is a subroutine that is created, often automatically, to assist a call to another subroutine. Thunks are primarily used to represent an additional calculation that a subroutine needs to execute, or to call a routine that does not support the usual calling mechanism. They have a variety of other applications to compiler code generation and in modular programming.

The term originated as a jocular derivative of "think"