18841
Fixing the Unfixable: Story of a Google Cloud SSRF
David Schütz's bug bounty writeups
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 49,223 posts.
18842
Tech CEO pleads to wire fraud in IP address scheme
The CEO of a South Carolina technology firm has pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud in connection with an elaborate network of phony companies set up to obtain more than 735,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from the nonprofit organization that leases the digital real estate to entities in North America.
18843
Why “process substitution” is a late feature in Unix shells
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
18844
My First Impressions of Web3
Despite considering myself a cryptographer, I have not found myself particularly drawn to “crypto.” I don’t think I’ve ever actually said the words “get off my lawn,” but I’m much more likely to click on Pepperidge Farm Remembers flavored memes about how “crypto” used to mean “cryptography” than ...
18845
Unidentified PC DOS 1.1 Boot Sector Junk Identified
Anyone trying to disassemble the PC DOS 1.1 boot sector soon notices that at offsets 1A3h through 1BEh there is a byte sequence that just does not belong. It appears to be a fragment of code, but it has no purpose in the boot sector and is never executed. So why is the sequence of junk bytes there, and where did it…
18846
Look How Big Is My Team
I'm used to getting asked how many employees work at my startup. For most people, it's a quick way to assess a startup's success. Supposedly, the bigger, the better. But does it really reflect success?
18847
Commodore 900: Unix-like workstation/server that was eclipsed by Amiga (2020)
Some time ago I acquired a Commodore 900 computer. It was originally owned by one of the engineers who worked on the project but it needed some attention to get it to work.
18848
A/B test improved your website's conversion rate? Not so fast
Many internet companies use A/B testing to evaluate the performance of website changes they want to make. A typical metric in such scenarios is the conversion rate (CVR) of a user, i.e. the probability that a user converts (e.g. makes a purchase) on the website. A typical A/B test setup in such a situation would…
18849
Computers as I used to love them
File synchronization can be fun and painless if you don’t have to deal with corporate bullshit.
18850
Vim prank: alias vim='vim -y'
Vim easy mode is tough to use for seasoned users!
18851
Fortran is easy to learn
Some may think Fortran is an archaic language, and certainly not one that should be taught, but in any respects modern Fortran is an exceptionally good language to teach programming in. Certainly b…
18852
18853
Paxos
Use two consensus building phases to reach safe consensus even when nodes disconnect
18854
18855
Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer
Norton 360 , one of the most popular antivirus products on the market today, has installed a cryptocurrency mining program on its customers’ computers. Norton’s parent firm says the cloud-based service that activates the program and allows customers to profit from the scheme — in which the company keeps 15 percent of…
18856
Zero-downtime schema migrations in Postgres using Reshape
About six months back, I wrote a post on how to use views in Postgres to encapsulate tables and create a versioned interface to a database. At the end of the…
18857
Washed Up
Even if every technology jockeying for a spot under the 'web3' banner evolves beyond proof-of-work blockchains, these systems will still not be part of the web because they designed not to be. 'web3' ain't the web, and VCs talking their own book don't get the last word, no matter how much dirty money they throw at it.
18858
18859
Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I dig into what's genuinely impressive about crypto (distributed trust, abuse prevention, true cloud computing) and what's deeply problematic: boundary interactions, governance concentration, transaction cost tradeoffs, and unclear incentives. My conclusion: crypto may only be useful for financial engineering, and…
18860
Procrastinatory Doom Loops
I am running for Corvallis City Council again this fall! Campaign site is here .
18861
Minecraft as a Kubernetes admin tool
KubeCraftAdmin : The adventurer’s admin tool
18862
You Don't Need a Mentor–Find a Nemesis Instead
In which the author expostulates on his odd notions about sports, music, and life
18863
18864
I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months
Reflections on working at Amazon, the interview process, the organizational structure, and why it was not an ideal fit for me (but might be for you).
18865
18866
18867
How I took my SaaS from idea to sold in 14 months
I built an MVP in one month and grew the product for a year. But now it’s time to pass the torch. It’s official, I sold Mugshot Bot! Here’s how it all went down.
18868
Problems once solved by a metaclass can be solved by __init_subclass__
David Beazley on Twitter said:
18869
Do Not Log
Almost every week I accidentally get into this logging argument. Here’s the problem: people tend to log different things and call it a best-practice. And I a...
18870
How to design a house to last 1000 years
At last, we’re finally ready to put together the design for our house. A fully specified design, with every detail and system described, is well beyond the scope of this newsletter (not to mention the scope of my knowledge). But we can give a high-level schematic design, laying out the basic building systems and how…