Hacker News Reader

roastedpeacockon Dream.In.Code Shutting Down

> Shut down the site, or if someone wants to take over the server, it would be possible to upgrade the software with some help of an Invision Board expert

Legacy PHP forum software is a piece of work but I sure hope he could donate the site into caring hands or at least archive it for posterity.

roastedpeacockon Tesla remotely unlocks Model 3 car, uses smart summon to help repo agent

Can't comment on certifications but aftermarket performance upgrades that are not from Tesla already exist through hardware modification with some attempt at the "cat and mouse" game of detection and evasion one might expect from such activities. Haven't hard of any lawyers getting involved though.

I would assume if you do something dumb with the electronics or software you wold probably be found liable in terms of insurance.

roastedpeacockon Ubiquiti developer charged with extortion, causing 2020 “breach”

Kill-switches are a misnomer. What you really want is a firewall external from your "target" system that blackholes all traffic not to the VPN gateways IP address. Than make sure packets traveling the parent interface are ONLY VPN traffic or nothing in case of the tunnel dropping (wireshark is good here.)

roastedpeacockon Tell HN: GitHub is down again

It was an unfortunate situation. I don't entirely know how GitHub handled things before the Microsoft acquisition but it also wouldn't surprise me if Microsofts legal department is more risk adverse compared to GitHub internal.

> I would blame the law (DMCA), not those forced to abide by the law (Github)

It seems even in the context of US-based companies that some companies are a little more "trigger-happy" with DMCA and other claims compared to others.

roastedpeacockon Tell HN: GitHub is down again

> GitHub can't, until at least the the public support is in their favour

Public support on which grounds?

roastedpeacockon Ask HN: How to find if a product is "really" on sale?

> I don’t understand why people care about this. The only relevant price is the one you have to pay now

If Product A cost $500 at manufacture suggested retail price, was currently on sale for $450 but was sold at $360 a week before that, wouldn't you want that information to make a better informed decision?

roastedpeacockon Einstein award going to Paul Ginsparg for creating arXiv.org

IN a world of leeches like Elsevier, his work is much appreciated

roastedpeacockon Hacking CD/DVD/Blu-ray for Biosensing (2018)

From memory the most applicable prior art is the "region free" firmwares for various DVD drives and, the drive hacks used to play "backup" (and some homebrew) games on the Xbox 360 while bypassing some of the attestation protections for online.

> It would be great if you could have more control over the existing hardware in these drives

You can blame the DRM lobby basically forcing manufactures into a veil of "security by obscurity"