News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

ash

Re:Cloudflare Meerkat - Globally distributed consensus on Wednesday July 08, 2026 @12:00PM (#48833641)
2 out of 3 meerkats look in the same direction. Enough for consensus.
Re:Google Hits 50% IPv6 on Sunday June 21, 2026 @06:01AM (#48617358)
It is harder to maintain two networks instead of one. Potential problems double. Hacks like RFC8305 "Happy Eyeballs" become a must.
Re:Google Hits 50% IPv6 on Sunday June 21, 2026 @05:58AM (#48617344)
Unfortunately, individual actions would never be enough to solve the IPv6 chicken and egg problem. See djb's "IPv6 mess" article:

https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html

Yes, it is old, many examples are outdated, but the main points still hold. Decades later his suggestions for making IPv6 succeed are still not implemented.

Re:Tailscale Is Pretty Useful on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @03:59PM (#43272317)
Have you tried "Smaller binaries" instruction? https://tailscale.com/kb/1207/small-tailscale
Re:OpenAUTH: Universal, standards-based auth provider on Thursday December 19, 2024 @05:34AM (#42460193)
The article by Ory's Aeneas Rekkas perfectly describes OAuth / OIDC problems. The only thing it misses is the suggestion for the alternative protocol for first-party auth. It does suggest that it's preferable to use simpler systems like Ory Kratos. But OAuth / OIDC is a set of protocols, not an implementation. Is there an a effort to specify simple auth protocol, when third-party auth is not needed?
Re:OpenAUTH: Universal, standards-based auth provider on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @07:55PM (#42447130)
Less secure that HttpOnly cookies, which are not accessible by third-party JavaScript. LocalStorage also doesn't have automatic expiration.
Re:OpenAUTH: Universal, standards-based auth provider on Tuesday December 17, 2024 @07:48PM (#42447089)
Cool project!

OAuth-based auth providers are nice, but they can have a weakness. When you have just one app, OAuth can be overkill: protocol is complex, and users suffer jarring redirects¹.

This is not surprising, because OAuth / OIDC is fundamentally designed for (at least) three parties that don't fully trust each other: user, account provider and an app². But in a single app there are only two parties: user and app itself. Auth and app can fully trust each other, protocol can be simpler, and redirects can be avoided.

I'm curious what OpenAUTH authors think about it.

¹ Except for Resource Owner Password Credentials (ROPC) grant type, but it's no longer recommended: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-oauth-secur...

² In addition, OAuth is mostly designed for and by account providers, and follows their interests more than interests of app developers.

Re:Is String Theory dead? [video] on Sunday December 15, 2024 @05:50PM (#42426528)
Thank you! The video is a criticism of that article.
Re:The Case Against Quantum Computing (2018) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @10:00AM (#42204917)
As someone outside of the field I don't follow your argument. The author stated that the problem is not just in the analog nature of quantum computer, but in the impossibly large amount of analog parameters to process and also to correct errors in.
Re:The Case Against Quantum Computing (2018) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @09:22AM (#42204551)
Interesting observation about the maximum lifetime of a bubble:

> I believe that, appearances to the contrary, the quantum computing fervor is nearing its end. That's because a few decades is the maximum lifetime of any big bubble in technology or science. After a certain period, too many unfulfilled promises have been made, and anyone who has been following the topic starts to get annoyed by further announcements of impending breakthroughs. What's more, by that time all the tenured faculty positions in the field are already occupied. The proponents have grown older and less zealous, while the younger generation seeks something completely new and more likely to succeed.

Re:The Case Against Quantum Computing (2018) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @09:19AM (#42204535)
> That IEEE published this surprises me

I find your reaction to be a positive sign. The sign that IEEE is willing to push envelope of knowledge (as of 2018). One can't push it without taking a risk of publishing something wrong, possibly very wrong.

I don't have any opinion on this topic, it's not my field of expertise. However, it's the first semi-technical article about quantum computing that I can follow along and understand.

> f-strings are great, except for the `=` debugging operator

What's wrong with `=` debugging operator in f-strings?

Re:The New Internet on Tuesday July 30, 2024 @05:02PM (#41114113)
> there are hundreds of users hundreds kilometers away, all working via Tailscale

Do you require your users to install Tailscale?

Re:Let's stop counting centuries on Saturday July 06, 2024 @06:06AM (#40889382)
I don't find it persuasive. First of all, people are not going to start writing and saying wildcards. Second, there is an established convention to say "2000s" and mean 2000-2009.
Re:Let's stop counting centuries on Saturday July 06, 2024 @05:24AM (#40889233)
The article does not really resolve the ambiguity with 2000s which usually means 2000-2009, not 2000-2099.

That said, in Finnish language people never count centuries. It's always "2000-luku" and "1900-luku", not 21th and 20th.

In the article Dyson retells the story from Pupin's autobiography. This 1923 Pulitzer-winning book is now out of copyright and freely available: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66886
It’s too much. I want my stuff to always work, without weird “Fix me” buttons.
Re:How to Design an ISA on Monday January 22, 2024 @10:00AM (#39090155)
Very good article! One of the gems from it:

> If you buy an NVIDIA GPU, you do not get a document explaining the instruction set. It, and many other parts of the architecture, are secret. If you want to write code for it and don't want to use NVIDIA's toolchain, you are expected to generate PTX, which is a somewhat portable intermediate language that the NVIDIA drivers can consume. This means that NVIDIA can completely change the instruction set between GPU revisions without breaking your code. In contrast, an x86 CPU is expected to run the original PC DOS (assuming it has BIOS emulation in the firmware) and every OS and every piece of user-space software released for PC platforms since 1978.

Re:Mourning Google on Friday January 19, 2024 @11:42AM (#39057473)
What's TC?
Re:Hn.js on Wednesday December 20, 2023 @09:25AM (#38709007)
This line is only triggered for /hide action.

Older »