Hacker News Reader

weejon FOIA request for NROL-39 surveillance satellite logo

"The enemy has nowhere to hide"

Love the logo, but damn if that isn't ominous and intimidating.

weejon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2019)

Netflix | Backend Software Developer (multiple roles) | Los Gatos or Los Angeles, CA | Onsite | Full-Time

We are currently ramping up our engineering efforts in the content creation space with a heavy investment and focus on efficiency and automation for studio productions. The Studio Productions Engineering team is responsible for building a portfolio of services to automate and optimize the production processes for movies and television shows. Key parts of the workflow are: production planning, location scouting, scheduling and tracking etc. This is a new area of investment for Netflix and this team is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. The services built by this team will drive a suite of applications provisioned across a number of devices, including mobile and desktop, used globally by Netflix Studios and its production partners.

Multiple Roles (not all posted online) - feel free to reach out to me directly. I lead our Studio Productions Engineering group: cbarker@netflix.com

* https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/869644

* https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/868897

weejon California declared drought free for first time in seven years

I didn't realize that temperate rainforest go all the way down to the NW of California. Coming from Seattle, WA that's pretty cool. (the more you know). :-)

weejon Amazon makes 14 cents from every Lyft ride

Since at least 2015. Folks sometimes use FANG and overload the 'A' for Apple and Amazon.

weejon DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

That said, at least it's progress in the right direction (I Hope). We'll see how it turns out.

weejon DARPA Is Building a $10M, Open-Source, Secure Voting System

Title is misleading. This is 3rd party contractor that won an RFP bid yo push out hard copy verification of ballot and voter's choice with some "DARPA techniques". Not quite the secure confidential system with data integrity I was hoping for.

> We will show a methodology that could be used by others to build a voting system that is completely secure.

This really feels like a Proof-of-concept or reference architecture, at best.

weejon Austin Is Building a Mini Silicon Valley

Lived in Austin 17 years. It's traffic surpassed NYC back in 2014 as 4th worse in the USA; however, it looks like its dropped back down to #8 based on INRIX Global Traffic score card.

http://inrix.com/scorecard/

Humidity does not equal heat. I grew up in SE Louisiana and agree with you. I'll take a drier heat of 113F in ATX over 95 and 100% humidity any day. It's oppressive.

That said, ATX is the only place I lived where I had to walk my dogs very early or late at night b/c the heat on the roads would melt their paw pads.

weejon Ask HN: How do you keep your files organized on macOS?

Rather than worrying about the perfect file structure layout, I focused more on optimizing indexing and search via fzf. IMO it's a fantastic fuzzy finder for locating content on device via your terminal.

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

weejon Weekend ‘catch-up sleep’ is a lie

Could very well be that you're just leveraging your circadian rhythm coupled with the appropriate sleep stages cycled.

You're likely waking at the optimal time of completion of a complete sleep cycle. That doesn't necessarily mean you're getting enough sleep overall.

weejon Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

"Bad people" feels a little trite. What about individuals who feel they are truly joining to try to make a difference for the better in improving the culture, security, data privacy, or overall business? Too altruistic or is that part of the story?

weejon Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

Also know as debug mode.

weejon “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

>But by that point, police had already developed suspects without Google's help, based on vehicle descriptions and a confidential informant, they said in court filings.

Even with a lack of probable cause and massive data surveillance, good old fashion police work is what mattered.

weejon Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms

Really? I don't have that problem with LastPass. It simply inspects the domain in the URL and DOM element name for the given web page. If it's a password field in the form (even if on separate page that's stand alone) maps back to the domain the creds are stored in LastPass it will give me the option to inject the password into the form field.

weejon Count the people around you by monitoring wifi signals

Fair point. I was solely thinking from a technical solution not the practicality around deployment. My employer has biased my bubble on thought process. "Oh, yes, this is easy to solve, and I see it on campus (Disney - imagineering office).

weejon Ask HN: IT Directors and VP's – how do you manage your time and projects?

Agreed. A leader needs to be capable of indirectly & positively influencing the team's architecture and overall technical outcome while not doing so explicitly (manage down, up and out). The team needs to drive and come to their own conclusions, but a true leader can positively impact the vision and strategic execution.

weejon Count the people around you by monitoring wifi signals

Isn't Soli more for natural user interface (NUI) detection via radar wave disruptions? I'm not sure it would provide very granular detection and he'd have a lot of false positives.

I was thinking more in terms of lidar tracking of people. It's been around for nearly a decade and works quite well.

weejon Colin O’Brady Completes Crossing of Antarctica with Final 32-Hour Push

They do - their amygdala.

"fMRI testing at the Medical University of South Carolina tilted the scales toward precisely that explanation — an underactive amygdala, not a negligent mother — by confirming that Honnold’s fear circuitry really does fire with less vigor than most."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/el-capitan-my-el-...

weejon The Marvel API

A colleague of mine created graph visualization of the entire Marvel ecosystem (content creators) several years back when the marvel API launched: Blog Post: http://allthingsgraphed.com/2015/04/09/a-matter-of-degrees/

Direct Link to generated SVG: http://allthingsgraphed.com/public/images/marvel/avengers.sv...

weejon How to fail as a new engineering manager

I never said Steve was a good leader or manager. What I agree with is that the best managers of engineers are DOERS/ENGINEERS themselves. Steve was not an engineer.

weejon How to fail as a new engineering manager

I completely agree (assuming not blocking task). No one is in a better position to represent, empathize, direct, and assist in employees' careers than a manager that "gets it". Additionally, studies show that employee satisfaction, trust, and respect for their manager is higher when they feel their boss is capable and can do their job.

Steve Jobs said it well: "The best managers, he says, are 'the great individual contributors' who don’t actually want to be managers but step up because they don’t see anyone else who can do the job better."

https://qz.com/work/1152331/watch-a-young-steve-jobs-give-ad...

weejon Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

I'd like to think so. A grainy, CCTV at a gas station with ZERO FACIAL RECOGNITION is not correlated and crossed check with my passport photo or physical movements.

weejon I survived the Warsaw ghetto. Here are the lessons I’d like to pass on

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" -George Santayana

weejon Hackers sell data of 130M Chinese hotel guests on dark web for 8 Bitcoin

Folks, please remember to PURGE GIT COMMIT HISTORY of the file. It does no good to simply remove a password if it's there in plain (historical) sight.

https://help.github.com/articles/removing-sensitive-data-fro...

weejon T-Mobile Database Breach Exposes 2M Customers' Data

Additionally to changing password, if you don't already start leveraging a password manager: lastpass, 1password, etc.

weejon T-Mobile Database Breach Exposes 2M Customers' Data

Agreed. If one wants to change the business's behavior there has to be financial penalty to incentive them to get their act together. Currently, there's zero regulatory compliance required with little to no impact to the company other than momentary bad PR that is not withstanding.

weejon T-Mobile Database Breach Exposes 2M Customers' Data

I had same reaction over weekend when I reset my password. I tried to use 20 char length with some special characters and their "validation" blocks it. Poor password management irritates me to no end.

weejon T-Mobile Database Breach Exposes 2M Customers' Data

Agreed. Although poor security with easy hijacking, it's still a form of 2FA. Even NIST doesn't recommend it as a factor to use for authentication.

weejon The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

Completely anecdotal evidence, but every morning I walk by this building and without failure I run into wireless interference of some sort on different frequency bands (GSM, bluetooth, etc.).

Not saying correlation is causation here, but the interfernce is definitely a little unnerving.

weejon Comcast, in 2nd Try, Offers $65B Cash for 21st Century Fox

The Verge article called the fee out. It's $4.025B, and Comcast offered to pay all of it (Disney & Fox's portions) in addition to the premium cash offer.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/13/17457244/comcast-21st-cen...

weejon US government to use facial recognition technology at Mexico border crossing

I'm not sure those detained due to false positive scans feel the same way regarding 'utility' of the tool.