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748 karma · joined April 17, 2007

I am Zaatar
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zaatar··on Refused U.S. visa eight times, Zoom CEO is now a billionaire
Yes, probably, however, an O Visa requires the recipient to be working in the USA upon receipt, it's not meant for tourism for business or pleasure (including tech conferences).
zaatar··on U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves Are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service
This is incorrect; you can indeed get Informed Delivery for [at least some] P O Boxes, postal employees don't know how to do it, but if you change the address on your Credit Card to be the P O Box, and then try authenticating using that card, it passes fine. That's what I did for my own P O Box, for example (it failed the first time when my card was using my street address).
zaatar··on Pocket Casts acquired by NPR
How does Pocket Casts compare with Breaker?
zaatar··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2017)
Sensify Security | SDET / QA Engineer | Palo Alto, CA | Full-Time, ONSITE | https://www.sensify-security.com/

Sensify Security is a seed-stage Industrial IoT Security company working on Trust & RBAC solutions at the Edge of Industrial Operations. We've got cutting-edge technology, customer traction, and are growing organically. We're based in the heart of Silicon Valley, California and continue to grow our Engineering team.

I'm hiring a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) / Quality Assurance Engineer (QAE) to help with Product Quality, Build & Infrastructure / DevOps. This is still an early stage opportunity with plenty of room to grow.

Submit resumes to jobs@sensify-security.com and if you have questions about this role, please ask me: ravi@

https://www.sensify-security.com/careers.html

zaatar··on I’m Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Same Q as last time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14707266
zaatar··on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Thank in advance! How easy is it for a French Citizen holding a DVM (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine - 5 year degree) to secure a H1B? Are there any other work visa classes they would qualify for?
zaatar··on Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France
SD is "South Dakota" as abbreviated in US-English. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota
zaatar··on Twilio Sued by Authy (YC W12) Founder Over Merger Compensation
Actual complaint (PDF): https://www.bloomberglaw.com/iframe/document/X1Q6NR78D282/do...
zaatar··on Bilingual speakers experience time differently, study finds
At first glance, his is too naive a conclusion. This isn't simply language-specific, it is further locale-specific in addition to simply the language, here's why:

Ahorita in Spanish (USA) means something else from Spanish (Nicaragua) for example. If a Greyhound bus driver were to use that word to indicate the bus is departing "Ahorita", I would assume that to mean the next 10-15 minutes whereas in Nicaragua, I would have no idea if it means 10 minutes, 30 minutes or even 60 minutes, so my follow-up question would be, "Do you mean 15 minutes or less?" To me, this is more a cultural thing, not a linguistic thing since in fact the language in use is the same, i.e. Spanish. As another example, "later" (EN-US) is not the same as in EN-IN.

Or maybe I'm missing the point of the research entirely ...

zaatar··on My shitty AirBnB experience
The first bait-and-switch apartment listed "Entire home/apt" with 4.5 stars rating is here: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14489610

1 or 2 of my very nice people will be in the office upstairs to help with any questions during daytime. (the bathroom is shared on Mo, Wed, Fri during daytime)

How is this even legal?

zaatar··on Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
A simple tweet from your verified twitter account @jankoum to indicate that your "HN username = jankoum" should suffice.
zaatar··on Startup School 8: Jan Koum of WhatsApp
Not to take any credit away from Jan, it is however worth noting that his background (and that of many of the early employees) is in Infrastructure / Backend at Yahoo! The side-effect of that is that reliability/uptime is already in his DNA, as also, just "getting things done without enjoying any of the limelight", and he's done a great job carrying over lessons/behaviors learnt in that previous life over to WhatsApp.
zaatar··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2017)
Sensify Security Inc. | Senior Staff Software Engineer | Palo Alto, CA | Onsite Fulltime

Sensify is an early stage IoT Security Startup working on bringing decentralized security services to the Edge, i.e. to bridge the IT vs OT gap in the Industrial IoT space.

We have a diverse (technologies, cultural backgrounds, work experience between large and small companies) team in place currently in the heart of Silicon Valley.

We are looking for multiple Senior Staff Software Engineers who can work with various technologies and software stacks including focus on authentication, blockchain, cryptography, databases and networking protocols.

More info: https://sensify-security.com/jobs/

Please feel free to email jobs@sensify-security.com and refer "Hacker News" in the subject line if you want to chat more. Thank you!

zaatar··on DoorDash to pay $5m to settle class-action lawsuit over independent contractors
DoorDash customer support is atrocious and their own CS representatives know & acknowledge this. This is also what lead me to deleting DoorDash and sticking with UberEATS.

If I were upper management at DoorDash, I would be talking to the person that runs Customer Support to see if they (a) even recognize their CS setup is terrible (b) are doing something to fix the problem.

Context: https://twitter.com/zaatar/status/849968887491776513

zaatar··on LeEco will not acquire TV maker Vizio as planned
Related FTC Fine on Vizio for $2.2 Million in Feb 2017: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/02/vizio...
zaatar··on LastPass release fix for DOM manipulation vulnerability
Related bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=12...
zaatar··on Uber Driver Tip-Hustling Schemes
Here's a brief clip from the 90s movie, Reservoir Dogs, that could shed some light: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ>
zaatar··on Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India
What a great idea, congrats on executing! Some quick Qs;

1) What kind of security exists on the wireless network?

2) Your privacy policy keeps talking about credit cards and Razorpay (a payment processor) yet in this thread you are saying one can hop onto the network using a cash-purchased token. Where exactly do Credit Cards fit in the workflow?

3) Please consider switching your website over to SSL, Lets Encrypt certs are free, other certs are cheap (GoDaddy charges only like $30/year or so) :)

zaatar··on The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans
It's not simply the financial implications; the visa-process for B1/B2 entails handing over a ton of paperwork (e.g. student records, health records, employment records, etc.) which go into your file, and further, all your 10 fingerprints. The VWP doesn't entail all of that extra stuff. One could argue that the $160-$14 saving is but the simple part, the bigger issue is the loss of privacy that comes with the application of a visa.
zaatar··on Federal agents make domestic flight passengers show ID to disembark plane
That you're a natural-born citizen is completely irrelevant; naturalized citizens are no less entitled to the exact same rights less serving as POTUS. See the supreme court ruling from Luria v. United States, 231 U.S. 9 (1913). Link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/231/9/case.html
zaatar··on Cloudflare Reverse Proxies Are Dumping Uninitialized Memory
1Password has said via their blog that nothing was compromised whatsoever: https://blog.agilebits.com/2017/02/23/three-layers-of-encryp...

More details are promised in the coming days.

zaatar··on Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
What was the outcome of this lawsuit?
zaatar··on Cloudflare Reverse Proxies Are Dumping Uninitialized Memory
Where is a reliable list of CF-protected websites so I may identify which ones I have interacted with?
zaatar··on Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?
Got it, thanks, in hindsight, I should have googled it myself. I've never seen a refugee travel document / refugee passport be called an "immigrant passport" before, but that's cool, and more importantly, it's great to see Norway hasn't created a "second class citizen" category, and that all citizens are truly equal, at least from a Passport/Documentation perspective.
zaatar··on Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?
What is the difference between an "immigrant passport" and a "standard passport" ? Are naturalized citizens of Norway not equal to natural citizens of Norway?
zaatar··on Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
I just signed up for myself in the US, thank you for posting it here :) Quick note, how does this work for someone that changes countries every 6 months -- e.g. In Vietnam today, in Thailand in 6 months, etc.?
zaatar··on India rupee ban: Snapdeal to deliver cash
Do cashback charge cards exist in India and are they popular?

The fees are 1 rupee for every 2000 rupees (i.e. 0.05%), so with a 1% cashback card, each time I were to charge 2000 rupees, I would get back 20 rupees, but pay out 1 rupee in fees to Snapdeal, making a profit of 19 rupees. Repeat 1000x per day, I'm now earning 19000 rupees a day, sitting at home.

I guess Snapdeal won't deliver 1000x per day to the same address, and perhaps 1% cashback cards don't exist to begin with ...?

zaatar··on Show HN: Finally contributing back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry, I'm confused; what exactly does this service provide? (serious)
zaatar··on Bed Bath and Beyond Paid Just $12M for One Kings Lane
Crunchbase says $225M [1], where are you getting the $800M number from?

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/one-kings-lane

zaatar··on Have you ever smoked weed? Answer this question and you could be banned from US
Lying on DS-160 was the reason the Feds managed to initially arrest 9/11 attacker Zacarias Moussaoui [1]. It is significantly easier for cops to prove you lied to the US Government and detain/deport/ban you from entry if you're an alien than to try to prove criminal intent, etc. and that's why DS-160 has all those seemingly weird questions.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui#Capture>

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