mod (u/mod) - Readit News

mod commented on CPSC approves new magnet safety standard for certain non-toy products toyassociation.org//Press... · Posted by u/beefman

ceejayoz · 3 years ago

> Can we talk about how you managed this?

I have an odd memory for username/comment pairings (and other oddities like ten year old URLs, but don't ask me what I had for dinner last night), and find the "government sucks, cops rock" scenario frequently puzzling.

mod · 3 years ago

I personally find it quite easy to like parts of the government while disliking other parts of it.

My position on police is complicated. I don't speak to police. I don't like interacting with police. I've met some officers that were real dicks. I don't like our justice system.

I still can donate to the police retirement fund and the shop with a sheriff program, the latter of which is really about the kids, and the former of which falls in line with my some of my other beliefs.

I don't believe in the hate-motivated politics going around right now.

I don't personally feel very confused or conflicted by this situation, although I could see how others might view it as cognitive dissonance--largely because they're working with like 0.01% of the relevant information about me used to form my decision.

Edit: also, thanks for revealing your method. I confess I know a few usernames by heart, and recognize yours as familiar, but there's only maybe 2 commentors here I could nail down to an specific comment. I figured it was probably just some search-box wizardry.

2nd edit: Time to change usernames again, haha. I cycle them sometimes to avoid all the metadata.

mod commented on CPSC approves new magnet safety standard for certain non-toy products toyassociation.org//Press... · Posted by u/beefman

ceejayoz · 3 years ago

If you really like sticking it to government, have you considered not donating money to them? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33020479

mod · 3 years ago

What a weird flex. Can we talk about how you managed this? I really hope you didn't go back and read pages and pages of my comments to find a gotcha.

This is HN, so I assume you've built a tool to do it. I'm really curious to hear about the method.

I don't "really enjoy sticking it to the government." First of all, I just chimed in on the other guy's comment. I made a joke about FPV drones.

Second of all, the guy who is supposedly sticking it to the government didn't make that claim himself. He was accused of that by the next comment. I think he probably just wants to check stuff out before it becomes illegal, and that doesn't make him a crank.

mod commented on “Invalid Username or Password”: a useless security measure (2014) kevin.burke.dev/kevin/inv... · Posted by u/prmph

Sohcahtoa82 · 3 years ago

> I run my own Wireguard on a DigitalOcean box, and I'm the only user

May I ask why you bother doing this? At best, unless Wireguard is also filtering your traffic, the only privacy you're getting is hiding your home IP address. Trackers will still track you by IP and build a profile based on it.

> You would think Cloudfare could at least give me a "session" that persisted across the web, if they're going gatekeep the whole fucking thing.

Yeah, that would make sense.

mod · 3 years ago

I'm just tunneling, really. I prefer the logs on my WG box vs the local ISP and whoever else in-between. I don't think my webhost is really in the business of tracking down VPN users and selling out their browsing history, although it's possible. I do think my ISP probably is cashing in on people's browsing history, though, in some form or fashion.

I use a pi-hole as well to block the trackers etc as much as possible, and so I don't leak DNS requests to the ISP either.

mod commented on CPSC approves new magnet safety standard for certain non-toy products toyassociation.org//Press... · Posted by u/beefman

kahrl · 3 years ago

Oh yeah. He showed them. Buying pounds of powdered alcohol is really sticking it to 'em. Definitely not an irrational response at all.

mod · 3 years ago

You made up the "pounds" part, he didn't say that. Also, buying things before they disappear is hardly "sticking it to the government."

mod commented on “Invalid Username or Password”: a useless security measure (2014) kevin.burke.dev/kevin/inv... · Posted by u/prmph

Sohcahtoa82 · 3 years ago

The only site that has ever asked me to solve a CAPTCHA before browsing content was pcpartpicker.com, and even that one stopped making me solve a CAPTCHA.

Do you browse the web behind a VPN, Tor, or something else to hide your IP? That's been known to trigger CF's CAPTCHAs.

mod · 3 years ago

Yes, it's my VPN triggering it. I run my own Wireguard on a DigitalOcean box, and I'm the only user--so not exactly a lot of bad traffic coming off of my IP (may have in the past, though).

With the prevalence of Cloudfare now, it's pretty onerous to captcha every visit to a new site just because VPN. You would think Cloudfare could at least give me a "session" that persisted across the web, if they're going gatekeep the whole fucking thing.

mod commented on CPSC approves new magnet safety standard for certain non-toy products toyassociation.org//Press... · Posted by u/beefman

malfist · 3 years ago

Have you considered how much time, money and emotional energy you spend sticking it to the government?

mod · 3 years ago

It occasionally crosses my mind while I'm having the time of my life flying my FPV drone.

mod commented on “Invalid Username or Password”: a useless security measure (2014) kevin.burke.dev/kevin/inv... · Posted by u/prmph

t43562 · 3 years ago

Does it matter given that browsers can remember the username/password anyhow?

On the other hand it's probably more important for user experience to encourage secure (long) memorable passwords rather than the fashion of impossible-to-remember short random ones. i.e I understand that something like "Iamafunnysailorwithalittlereddog" is better than "4kbjk5rv!" simply because length makes any password much harder to crack than the variety of each character.

mod · 3 years ago

Length doesn't make it harder to crack, entropy does.

Length is a good way to add entropy if the characters are not predictable.

"Ava234ncqli3h23rn2f" is a lot stronger than "Ava234ncqli3"

"DonaldTrump" is barely stronger than "Donald"

Hopefully that makes sense.

mod commented on “Invalid Username or Password”: a useless security measure (2014) kevin.burke.dev/kevin/inv... · Posted by u/prmph

bluenotebo0k · 3 years ago

"99.9% of websites on the Internet will only let you create one account for each email address. So if you want to see if an email address has an account, try signing up for a new account with the same email address."

Yes, but signing up is a more cumbersome process and usually has a CAPTCHA attached to it, unlike logging in.

mod · 3 years ago

Half the web has a CAPTCHA just to view content. Thanks, Cloudfare.

mod commented on “Invalid Username or Password”: a useless security measure (2014) kevin.burke.dev/kevin/inv... · Posted by u/prmph

nerf3000 · 3 years ago

Or just allow multiple accounts to use the same email (with an upper limit)

Already people can chuck a + in the user part and register with the same email like joe+2@gmail.com so really there's not much point trying to maintain a 1:1 user to email ratio.

mod · 3 years ago

That's what I've always done, with an upper limit of 1.

More seriously, this just kicks the can a little bit.

"Already people can chuck a + in the user part...so really there's not much point trying to maintain a 25:1 user to email ratio"

mod commented on Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech theregister.com/2022/11/2... · Posted by u/rntn

moffkalast · 3 years ago

I still don't see the point of tablets. It's just a smartphone with a larger screen, and practically all people already carry phones.

Might as well go for the laptop at that point given that it can actually do far more imo, unless you ditch the phone and go for one of those half phone half tablets I guess.

mod · 3 years ago

I bought a surface for that reason. I like the portability, and it is just a normal PC with a pretty bad keyboard.