Best of 2019

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2019. 263 posts.

Security & Privacy
125

A problem worse than Zoom?

On macOS, an app can register to handle URL schemes. Web browsers such as Safari, Chrome, and Firefox register to handle the schemes for web pages, http or https . Non-browser apps may register to handle other URL schemes; for example, an email client may register to handle the well known mailto scheme. When a URL is…

128

Still Why No HTTPS?

Back in July last year, Scott Helme and I shipped a little pet project that tracked the world's largest websites not implementing HTTPS by default [https://www.troyhunt.com/why-no-https-heres-the-worlds-largest-websites-not-redirecting-insecure-requests/] . We called it Why No HTTPS? [https://whynohttps.

129

The Myth of Consumer-Grade Security

The Department of Justice wants access to encrypted consumer devices but promises not to infiltrate business products or affect critical infrastructure. Yet that’s not possible, because there is no longer any difference between those categories of devices. Consumer devices are critical infrastructure. They affect…

132

Learning from OpenBSD can make computers marginally less horrible

The following document is an attempt to consolidate down a number of threads spanning separate discussions from around the 'net I have been having on the subject of operating system development models and OpenBSD. I will break up this document into several sections each of which will handle separate pillars of my…

137

DNS Wars

NANOG is now quite an institution in the Internet, particularly in the North American Internet community. It was an offshoot of the Regional Techs meetings, which were part of the NSFNET framework of the late 80s and early 90s. NANOG has thrived since then and is certainly one of the major network operational forums…