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Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by guessmyname on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:56PM (#20423900)
I posted about another macOS app called “Dropshare.app” a few days ago [1].

I didn’t bother to write a blog post about it because my English is not good enough.

Basically, anyone who uses this app is vulnerable to cross-infection and data leaks. Assume that user John installed this app, then hacker Alice tricked John to visit their malicious website. In this website, they added code that sends requests to “http://localhost:34344/upload” to upload malicious files to any of the services that John’s computer is connected to via Dropshare, this includes private servers via SSH, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files, Google Drive, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, Dropbox, WeTransfer, and custom Mac network connections. The port number is also static, saving the hacker the need to run a port scanner.

I already contacted Dropshare’s developers to fix the issue, but got not response.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20399551

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by icelancer on Friday July 12, 2019 @05:15PM (#20424581)
>> I didn’t bother to write a blog post about it because my English is not good enough.

Basically everyone who says this has better English than most American technical developers. We appreciate your modesty, but please, write it up :)

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by asavadatti on Friday July 12, 2019 @05:56PM (#20424882)
Communicating in a non-native language is difficult even if you know it well. It doesn't come naturally and is taxing on the brain
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by abdusco on Saturday July 13, 2019 @06:03AM (#20427349)
Certainly. I'm a non-native speaker myself and although the end result looks somewhat convincing, it takes me an inordinate amount of time to write, look up words and proofread the text. I'd guess a native would come up with a comprehensible text at the first try, and it'd take a few tweaks until it looks immaculate. The reason non-natives seem to write better is that we simply spend more time working on it, and fix a lot of mistakes.

Just now, writing this, I had to look up if the saying went "inordinate amount" or "unordinate amount". The difference between "pristine" and "immaculate". It really adds up when writing longer texts.

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by edraferi on Saturday July 13, 2019 @09:23AM (#20427923)
Regularly consulting reference materials and editing your work are hallmarks of a good writer. It enables continuous improvement.

For what it’s worth, I think your examples are nuanced questions about fairly sophisticated terms. I look up similar things all the time, and I am a native English speaker, have a first-class education, and write regularly for my day job.

Don’t sell yourself short!

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by wool_gather on Saturday July 13, 2019 @01:33PM (#20429128)
Agree with the existing reply, and I appreciate that the effort is significant for you. But it's also worth noting that everybody would have still gotten your meaning if you'd swapped that 'i' for a 'u'. In a technical document a subtlety like that is important; in a forum post, things can slide around a bit. I'm a native speaker and I'm sure I make mistakes like that. Certainly I do in speech.
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by icelancer on Friday July 12, 2019 @07:58PM (#20425592)
Fair enough. I definitely understand that. Don't go out of your way if it's too much work, but everyone thinks your English is quite clear.
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by tehlike on Saturday July 13, 2019 @12:12AM (#20426456)
That is one hell of a way to improve it though.

I wrote lame articles years ago, to explain technical work i did on castle and nhibernate. Made me better over time.

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by segmondy on Friday July 12, 2019 @09:58PM (#20426049)
Then write it up in your native language first then translate or ask for help in translating.
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by sergiotapia on Friday July 12, 2019 @06:42PM (#20425187)
Just google "sorry for my bad english" - literally hundreds of thousands of examples verbatim!
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by wolf4earth on Friday July 12, 2019 @06:09PM (#20424967)
I actually know the people behind Dropshare. They are former colleagues of mine.

Maybe I can get you in touch?

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by pavel_lishin on Friday July 12, 2019 @04:22PM (#20424137)
Your English seems fine.
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by jonshariat on Friday July 12, 2019 @04:39PM (#20424289)
Agreed and honestly blog posts these days need to use more basic english and not go on and on in a long post.

Think of it as long form tweeting!

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by edraferi on Saturday July 13, 2019 @09:31AM (#20427958)
Technical writing should be clear and concise. Always try to convey your core idea as directly as possible.

Here are some resources I find useful for this:

http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/

I’m intrigued by https://www.grammarly.com/ but it sends everything you write to their cloud service, which is completely unacceptable to me. If I can’t use the tool for proprietary and private writing, it’s useless.

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by henvic on Friday July 12, 2019 @06:29PM (#20425096)
This comes up way more often than we imagine.

I found a malware on a JavaScript errors notifications for Chrome in 2015 that affected 86k users and the developer was mad because apparently he made some money out of it (I was called a paranoyd).

The malware basically logged your accessed URLs and solt it to a statistics service called Fairshare.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309432

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by sdoering on Friday July 12, 2019 @05:16PM (#20424599)
Please write something. Even something short. This way I could share it into our #security channel and warn others, if they use this.
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by KingFelix on Friday July 12, 2019 @05:05PM (#20424502)
is your name Robert Paulson?

Agreed with the other comments, this comment = blog, looks like you know what you're talking about, short, to the point.

Good find, and thanks for sharing

off topic comment:

For all, what are people blogging on these days? I am not too fond of Medium, but I just got into Ghost and really liking it. It seems like a great short post / resource to write something. I have it installed on a cheap DO server, plain text like lapcat?

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by jsilence on Sunday July 14, 2019 @05:07AM (#20432497)
Also https://write.as seems to be a nice and federated alternative to Medium. Host your own if you don't like the pricing?
Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by anderspitman on Friday July 12, 2019 @07:31PM (#20425459)
I host my own. I think basically any of the popular static site generators[0] on a droplet or netlify are a great option.

[0] https://www.staticgen.com/

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by amingilani on Friday July 12, 2019 @06:55PM (#20425259)
Please write it in your native language. HN trending articles can be translated articles too.[0]

Edit: I guess not, see Dang's reply below.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070

Re:A problem worse than Zoom? by dang on Friday July 12, 2019 @07:17PM (#20425375)
Just on the HN point: we usually penalize those submissions and ask people not to do it. I'm sure guessmyname can write a fine post in English.