Reverse Engineering MacOS High Sierra Supplemental Update - <AUTHOR> https://cocoaengineering.com/2017/10/08/reverse-engineering-macos-high-sierra-supplemental-update/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty insane this sort of bug either passed or didn't even go through code review and testing at Apple, a company which has approximately infinite resources and whose marketing pitch is making high-quality products.

I loved Apple products and still do, but as both a user of and a developer for their systems, I feel the quality has been steadily going downhill the last few years.

<comment><USER3> I think you might be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Apple's _always_ had horrible show-stopping bugs, in every single OS X / macOS release[1], from when simple operations like updating iTunes or enabling the OS's Guest Mode might delete your home directories, to this latest failure.

I suspect one reason is that they like one-person teams so much. I like one- person projects too! But there is always pain when you have to hand such a project to a new person, because the old one quit, or died, or whatever.

Overzealous secrecy even when not warranted for any actual business-relevant reason also probably inhibits software quality. As does change for change's sake.

[1] EDIT: except _maybe_ Mac OS X 10.6? Does anybody remember any critical bugs in that one? I think that might be the unicorn.

<comment><USER4> _except maybe Mac OS X 10.6_

Snow Leopard. What a wonderful high-point in Desktop OSes that was. Seriously considering rolling back one or two of my old computers, even just to have a living breathing reference-point.

<comment><USER5> It too had issues, this is the rose colored windows 7/xp/2000 glasses release for mac fans.

<comment><USER4> All software has issues. Snow Leopard, and Mountain Lion were high points absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Apparently, Disk Utility and command line diskutil use different code paths. > StorageKit does not appear as a direct dependency of diskutil. [snip] This > duplication in what's more or less the same functionality, while sometimes > justified, certainly increases the opportunity for bugs.

To me this is the more problematic part - good design would use same code paths as much as possible for the GUI app and the command line one - the UI code in this case will differ but there should really be no need for diskutil and Disk Utility to use duplicate code for storage functions.

<comment><USER7> Yeah it seems bonkers to me that an OS would ship with two sets of disk management libraries. At worst, at least try to make one depend on the other.

<comment><USER8> I can't believe I'm actually arguing this but devils advocate I guess: in this instance if they both used the same library then the command line would also have this problem. In this case at least there was a work around in that you could use the cli.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't like the old style NSDictionary way of packing information that so many API's use. First of all they're lacking an enforcement for the type of the value they're expecting (sometimes leading to crashes if you get them wrong) and the discoverability of possibilities is less easy than with a struct or object.

Still, passing in password twice would still be a possible mistake. The only thing that would help in my opinion would be types that can be applied to primitives, a bit like F# does. So you can declare certain Doubles to be Miles, Kilometers, Meters and so on. Or a certain type of string can be of type DatabaseID or a Password.

<comment><USER8> Yea I was thinking about this too! We can talk all day about static typing vs productivity but if they had a basic string type called PasswordHint and Password then maybe (maybe!) this wouldn't happen.

<comment><USER10> I'd leave passwordHint as a string; but password... That might be an interesting type. Particularly if it zeroed out memory as a freebie in the destructor. Actually that was my take-away from this article, the "maybe in MY projects I should wrap passwords in a special type to stop me typo-ing the raw password to output."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > did the QA engineer test setting a password _and_ a password hint?, easily > forgettable on a tight deadline

Or they used 'asd' as both the password and the password hint and therefore it looked ok.

<comment><USER12> What kind of amateur uses the same entry for two different fields? In the early days of coding your entries going into the wrong place is something that will happen to you.

<comment><USER13> what kind of amateur does manual testing of basic functionality?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Installing a new Mac OS on a machine you care for has become an absolute no-go area. I wait for at least half a year and then only install in a place that I can trash in case I still see problems.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure why you say "has become".

In the circles I've been it has been common practice to wait for the .2(but minimum .1) release before it goes onto real work machines. The early Mac OS X releases were even worse.

Even if for some reason the OS itself was fine by itself, they almost always broke compat with a bunch of 3rd party applications.

EDIT: typo

<comment><USER16> Exactly. "Never buy the first version of any new Apple product", whether hardware or OS, has been well-known for at least 10 years: [https://www.engadget.com/2006/06/03/why-first-generation- app...](https://www.engadget.com/2006/06/03/why-first-generation-apple- products-suck/)

(That said, I've found my first-gen Apple Watch to be a great product. First- gen iPad is a paperweight though...)

<comment><USER17> Never buy the first version of _any_ new product

<comment><USER18> Mostly, that's true. Or at least understand you're on the edge. Cutting or bleeding, it's hard to say ahead of time but usually pretty obvious after a week of real-world use.

I respect Apple, they take chances. Sometimes it pays off. Off the top of my head:

Products where 1st generation was amazing: Apple ][

      iPod

      Lisa

      iPhone

Products where 1st gen was almost unusable, but v2+ was amazing:

      Macintosh (Amazing, but frequent disk swapping was an issue.)

      Messagepad (first gen soured the press and the public due to connectivity issues. Modem vs cellular.)

DOA: Apple 3 (anyone else remember the service bulletin that asked users to slam it on the desk to reseat the chips?)

      Pippin

<comment><USER19> Original iPhone didn't have 3G, which many definitely considered to be a huge flaw. It also didn't have native applications.

<comment><USER20> It's not a huge flaw, as the mobile 3G (esp. AT&T's) networks weren't that good in 2007.

The fact that you could get (edge speed) unlimited internet for $20/iPhone was pretty amazing. Same for Palm/Verizon was $45 and more for 3G.

Native apps showed up in jailbreaks which I installed literally months after the release. The app install process was unparalleled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "This research has shone a light on some of the ways in which security patch support provided by Apple for 'firmware' is quite different than the security patch support they provide for 'software'."

"You can be software 'secure' but firmware vulnerable."

"The release QA on the FirmwareUpdate bundles is concerning."

[https://duo.com/assets/ebooks/Duo-Labs-The-Apple-of-Your- EFI...](https://duo.com/assets/ebooks/Duo-Labs-The-Apple-of-Your-EFI.pdf)

"The advent of UEFI brought with it a far more 'modern' pre-boot environment and 'finally' put an end to the many years of legacy workarounds that had to be applied to the aging IBM BIOS 'standard', providing a common, uniform and higher-level platform to 'innovate' on."

" _However_ , that uniformity and accessibility also _opened the door_ to far more generic and useful pre-boot environment attack opportunities."

</comment><comment><USER22> Why they are duplicating StorageKit code? If diskutil was using StorageKit, it's more likely that someone would find this bug (because apparently everyone in Apple uses diskutil instead of GUI).

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry if this is off topic, but I ran into another serious bug in High Sierra that I think is a result of their de-duplicating of files feature: I had about 30 GB of family videos and pictures on OneDrive and wanted a second copy on Dropbox. As I copied them I noticed that the disk space did not decrease, a good thing to have file de-duplication. All was well for a long while until I decided to have OneDrive and DropBox not keep my family videos and pictures on my laptop.

After DropBox and OneDrive deleted these files, I never got the 30 GB of free space back.

Apple should provide an option in the Disk Utility to check for files that don't have references and free the space.

</comment><comment><USER24> the good thing is, you know that when they break something, it'll probably stay broken for a couple more releases and a few years. Like how my mouse Y axis is reversed when I restart... for about 2 years now

<comment><USER25> I had a mouse that did just that. Nothing I tried could fix it.

I gave up and took the batteries out, and forgot about it for a few weeks.

When I tried it again it worked, and works fine ever since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Supplemental Update took _ages_ to install on my SSD-equipped 5k iMac (it's only about a year old). In fact, I'm quite sure it took longer to install than High Sierra itself, which is quite an achievement because the High Sierra install involved upgrading my filesystem to APFS!

Maybe I just found myself more annoyed than usual because I clicked "try later tonight" for the supplemental update prompt when using the computer the day before, and then when I tried to use the computer in the morning, it went about its installing business which featured 2 backwards-moving progress bars and took at least 20 minutes, while I sat around twiddling my thumbs waiting to use my computer for what should have been a simple task.

I'm not sure if this is normal behavior when you postpone an update and then wake from sleep later, but I've never seen what effectively turned into an un- prompted forced install before.

</comment><comment><USER27> does this mean that all passwords for osx-encrypted-drives have been 'recoverable'? e.g. if I created an encrypted drive using El Capitan, someone else can crack my drive's password without even cracking a password-hash?

Or is there a bug also in high-sierra's 'create-encrypted-disk' functionality? (but not in lower-versions)

<comment><USER28> Only in the passwords created using GUI version of the new Disk Utility (command line is safe).

<comment><USER27> thank you! thought I was screwed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So the lesson here is, it's a good idea to try to have your GUI and command line use the same code paths. Looks like they created a separate API in StorageKit just for Disk Utility and got sloppy with unit test.

</comment><comment><USER30> Off topic but related, anyone know of any active OS X hacking/tweaking forums or communities? I have an I/O issue with a peripheral I'm trying to isolate, could use some expert help.

<comment><USER31> www.tonymacx86.com is where a lot of the hackintosh community gathers. Plenty of folks in the forums there who understand the kernel / IO / driver stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What's interesting to me is that the version of Disk Utility in the High Sierra installer doesn't have this issue.

</comment><comment><USER33> So, is it safe to install High Seirra since it was a low sierra couple of days ago?

</comment><comment><USER34> Seems like Unit testing really is NOT popular at all at Apple. I mean, they release a framework for storage, and they don't even unit test security related functions ?

Tdd introduced the wrong idea that unit tests should be all or nothing. I think it's not. I unit test only the most critical parts of my programs (and only if there are), and i see value in it.

<comment><USER35> Serious question: How would you suggest to write a test that prevents this? You wouldn't make an assertion on clearTextPassword !== passwordHint. While developing I would think "Who will ever do that? That would be insane".

But yes, even if there is no test, this should have been caught in code review or latest when testing the OS.

<comment><USER36> Yes, with 'example based testing' this is hard to come up with. With property based testing, it's not so hard to test this kind of UI things:

You test a UI by basically throwing sequences of interactions at it. Some of the properties you'd want to assert:

* Given two interaction sequences that only differ in what they do to the password hint field in the UI, the result should only differ differ in the returned password hint. (Or alternatively neither should finish the UI dialogue.)

* As a dual: two interaction sequences that share the same interaction with the password hint field should yield the same password hint field. (In this case it is acceptable for them to differ in whether they actually finish the dialogue.)

Those two are fairly generic, so you can imagine setting that up as a general framework for all your data input fields in your UIs. It should work backwards as well, eg to assert that eg the UI should look the same no matter what password (/ password hash) is stored, to make sure you are not leaking any information.

See eg [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/property-based- testi...](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/property-based-testing/) for more background, and [http://hypothesis.works/articles/incremental-property- based-...](http://hypothesis.works/articles/incremental-property-based- testing/) for a real world example.

As for 'should have been caught in code review': yes, but humans are fallible and they should get all the help we can give them. To see for yourself, have a look at the example (a simple runlength encoding) at the top of [http://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quickstart.html](http://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quickstart.html) and see whether you can spot the obvious error just by reviewing the code.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for the detailed answer and coming up with a property-based test that is not a "1+1=2" example :)

<comment><USER36> I think I might have stumbled upon a new category of common properties here. (At least new to me.) Basically, test that some subset of your output variables is a function of a specific subset of your input variables. And conversely, test that some subset of your output variables is independent (under some conditions) of some subset of your input variables.

My go-to example for property based testing isn't addition, but idempotence. Idempotence is a concept well known from REST apis to the general programming public, and also in sorting or clean up data. And it's easy to state in code, eg: sorted(sorted(x)) == sorted(x).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37>
      if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.update(&hashCtx, &signedParams)) != 0)
          goto fail;
          goto fail;  /* MISTAKE! THIS LINE SHOULD NOT BE HERE */
      if ((err = SSLHashSHA1.final(&hashCtx, &hashOut)) != 0)
          goto fail;

History repeats itself in ever stranger ways. While the effects are different, the original mistake can be quite similar.

<comment><USER38> You don't even need static analysis (which they should use too) but just a strict coding style check that enforces curly braces. Should've happened after the first incident!

<comment><USER36> A coding style check _is_ static analysis.

(But that's beating a straw man, of course: with that expanded definition your comment just because "you don't even need anything more than the most primitive forms of static analysis".)

<comment><USER38> I think the point I was trying to make was: If they don't even check for rudimentary things like coding style, can we expect them to check for more sophisticated sources of issues (e.g. memory corruption).

<comment><USER36> Amen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Scary to think that the reveal of all passwords on MacOS shoulders on one person's accidental copy + paste of one line.

<comment><USER40> It's not a reveal of _all_ the passwords, certainly. It's only disclosing the disk's password, and only in the situation provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> 1\. to me the most important question is: why on earth can the disk password be retrieved in clear text in the first place ?!

2\. also: the buggy version will be able to show disk passwords forever, until the encryption scheme is changed. macOS native encryption is useless until then (but given 1., it might already have been for some time).

<comment><USER42> If I understand the blog post correctly, the bug was in the software that creates (or maybe mounts? Not too clear about that) the encrypted volume. It needs to have the clear-text password in order to function.

Then it proceeded to set the clear-text password as a password hint due to the bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Simple technique for preventing bugs like this: don't copy-paste code. If you find yourself copy-pasting code think twice why you even have to do it (DRY principle) and be aware of the potential consequences. Even if some code has to be duplicate, I am forcing myself to just write it from scratch, exactly for this reason: do you really know that you have updated all your data? And yeah, unit tests would help in spotting this and other things. But aren't unit tests a duplication of your code, already?

UPDATE:

Maybe I should have stated my last question differently. I meant that in the context of checking that the data is correct, it would be the same as writing the duplicate code from scratch.

<comment><USER44> Just to play devil's advocate: sometimes DRY code is harder to understand, which makes it harder to see bugs. Whenever you introduce an abstraction to make your code DRYer, you have to remember the law of leaky abstractions. DRY code is a good principle to follow, but not an absolute law.

<comment><USER43> Yes, and that's why you have to be extra-careful with copy-pasting :-)</comment></comment></comment>


A Better Telnet [Shameless Plug] - <AUTHOR> http://www.peterdowns.com/projects/tut.c.zip

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure about the guidelines here, but you can check out an overview of the code at peterdowns.com/projects/. And yeah, I wrote this, but after searching around for the past year for a telnet equivalent with a few simple features like custom tab completion and up/down arrow history (like in bash) only to come up dry I figured I should release it to see if anyone else wants to mess with it.</comment>


Why Climate Change Won't Be Stopped (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/18748.html <comment><USER2> People are missing the point of the article. It's not about hipocrisy, or the ability of ground-up change to solve climate change, but instead about _the credibility_ of people demanding sweeping government intervention to address climate change. When someone who advocates for banning abortion turns out to have paid to have his girlfriend have an abortion, it obviously doesn't have any bearing on the moral question of abortion. Nor does it have any significant aggregate effect on the number of abortions. But it eliminates that person's credibility, for the simple reason that it highlights the negative implications of the person's proposed policy. It underscores that having an unplanned child can drastically change the course of a person's life in ways they may be desperate to avoid. And it suggests that the person may not even believe their moral premise, and wants to ban abortion as a pretext for something else. By contrast, people who lead by example signal that they're willing to live with the consequences of the policies they wish to impose on everyone--and in the process demonstrate to people that those consequences can be lived with.

The same thing is true for climate change. When people who demand a war-time mobilization of the economy to combat climate change still emit gigatons going on foreign vacations, that signals to people one of two things. One, the reduction in standard of living required to address climate change must be enormous, because even those who believe catastrophe is at our doorstep won't suffer that reduction unless the government forces them to. Or two, those people don't really believe climate change will be that bad, and their demand for government intervention is a pretext for something else.

<comment><USER3> Individual choice has a very small role in climate change. The author has done nothing, zero, to contextualize the issue in numbers and data, which clearly demonstrate that individual choice is maybe 5-10% of what we need to decarbonize.

Foreign vacations (which aren't even occurring in 2020) are a pittance here...we're talking about billions of fossil-fuel powered engines, hundreds of millions of livestock, heating and cooling homes for upwards of 10 billion humans, the production of steel, fertilizer, plastics, concrete, electronics, mining operations, shipping, trucking...it's just so much more vast than the hypocrisy of rich leftist environmentalists going on vacations.

<comment><USER4> Well that is exactly the point. Of course, climate activists reducing their individual leisure demand would decrease global carbon emissions only insignificantly, if at all.

That's not the point here. The point is that climate activists ask their government for big changes because they fear civilization could end otherwise. And those big changes would have significant impact on the lifestyle of almost all people affected by these laws. So, why should one be willing to (and thus, vote for the changes) change ones lifestyle, if the advocates just say "well, I stop travelling abroad, when everyone else stops as well (and other carbon emission is reduced, too)"? The OP is about credibility, or, even lower level: sympathy.

Maybe it becomes more obvious if we look at one specific example. In the Netherlands they lowered maximum speed on highways to 100 km/h (from 120 km/h). Correct me if I'm wrong but the carbon saving from that law is close to non-existent compared to the whole economy's carbon emissions.

Or, the whole EU banned light bulbs. Also, the energy saving compared to the whole EU's energy consumption is probably sub 1%. And with the advent of white LEDs, people just use more light and the overall effect is even less.

Both measurments combined have an impact less than your claimed 5%-10%. Does that mean that government should stop taking small steps, and only the "big shot" counts?

Or can small steps (by governments OR individuals) be a tool to increase awareness?

<comment><USER3> Those changes, mandating LEDs and lower speed limits, are vastly more important and easy to make than trying to get a ton of individuals to choose a different lifestyle. Psychology tells us about hedonistic adaptation, it'll be much easier for a government to make a big play than for tens of thousands of rich people to all individually give up their lifestyle. It'd be more influential for them to boycott gas planes and use their wealth to stimulate electric plane use, but again: psychology. That's why we need governments...

But think broader, about concrete and steel and shipping, the really hard areas. There is no "choice" about steel, it's a technological and policy issue...Even if we cleaned up our individual consumer choices, that won't change the need for steel or change how it's produced in a dirty way.

Look at a wind turbine, for instance. It's a giant tower of steel. Even though we need wind turbines as fast as possible, we still need dirty steel to ramp those up, and we need new tech to then make future steel cleaner.

This is why focusing on individual choice is so small. Even if all us rich Westerners went vegan and rode bikes to work, that wouldn't address all the tricky technological and chemical issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who cares deeply about these issues and is not a climate change denier, I think this is absolute nonsense.

For example a person could sit around and light barrels of oil on fire and create legislation that changed the incentives regarding energy production (which we already do a lot of and is one of the only effective things we do at scale to affect climate outcomes) or that bans or changes costs for plastic production and still come out leagues ahead in terms of having changed things for the better.

Sure if you are publicly announcing that you are lighting the oil on fire, no one is going to take your legislation seriously but the reality is there is no good source of record keeping on people's day to day behavior unless the consciously expose it so you could simultaneously live a horrificly environmentally unfriendly lifestyle and improve things.

My point is not that you should do this, but that the idea this change is going to swell from the ground up is nonsense. It needs to come from well organized legislation. That piece of legislation is probably not going to be much affected by the individual track record in the hundreds of people who end up being involved in its production.

<comment><USER6> I'd go further and say it's actual harmful advise. If you don't drive a car, you just made space for another car and you just started paying for someone elses parking.

Appealing to virtuousness and living by example, is not going to replace regulation and realigned incentives.

<comment><USER7> How would any party get voted in unless most people agreed with the regulation? If a party wanted to double tax cars or get rid of them they wouldn't be voted in unless that's what people wanted first. Change comes from the bottom up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm skeptical climate change will be stopped because of what we're seeing with the pandemic: many countries and individuals won't take preemptive action against a threat we scientifically know is going to happen until the impact can literally be seen on their own doorsteps.

With the pandemic:

1) deaths/impact directly from the pandemic can be relatively easily identified

2) deaths/impact happen in the space of weeks

3) the positive results of mitigations can be seen in weeks

4) countries can largely isolate the impact other countries have on them regarding the pandemic.

None of these 4 points are true with climate change so it's going to be even worse in terms of getting people to take it seriously and act in time. We can't even get countries to agree that masks are a good idea.

<comment><USER9> I'm absolutely certain the only way we stop climate change is via innovation in the form of carbon capture technologies.

There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat, demand a removal of single-use plastics, crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance), and fight to pass laws which force companies to get cleaner (thus increasing the cost of those products).

I've met a handful of people in my _life_ who care enough to live a greener lifestyle beyond making one or two relatively convenient changes in their life, let alone overhaul their entire lifestyle.

It's absolutely down to the wizards working on green tech to solve the issue.

<comment><USER8> > There's no way humans are just gonna cut back on eating meat,

You don't think taxing meat by its environmental cost will work?

> crack down on resource-intensive industries (almond milk is INCREDIBLY > inefficient and only getting more popular, for instance)

Almond uses an order of magnitude less land, emissions and water than dairy so why not crack down on dairy if you feel this way?

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-46654042](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042)

We already grow then feed soy to cows to get milk, why not just drink soy directly?

<comment><USER9> As the other user said, I don't believe we could get the political muster necessary to pass a law taxing meat heavily any time soon. Meat is popular! Nobody wants to give that up.

Also, you're absolutely correct that dairy milk is less efficient by a long- shot, I was just pointing to it because I know a lot of people I personally know are moving to it and away from dairy as though it's a quality alternative. It's better, but still not great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe very strongly that most well-off Americans should pay higher taxes, including me. I vote accordingly. If my preferred candidate wins, I expect to have less money.

I still have an accountant do my taxes, in order to pay as little as possible. I do not think this is hypocritical.

It doesn't make sense for me to completely upend my life unless society is collectively doing the same. The way to make that happen is sweeping government action, and nothing less.

<comment><USER11> I mean there is a hypocrisy to this, you are effectively voting that folks who cannot afford or are uneducated about taxes should pay more.

<comment><USER12> I don't see the problem there, and the hypothecated problem is consistent with many others in America. It would help if taxation was simpler and more transparent, but currently it sounds like states aren't allowed to help their citizens file because of lobbying from the software companies providing this service.

Another solution is to take some of the extra money gathered and spend it on better educating children and adults about tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What the author misses is that government can play a huge role in combating climate change. There are simple policies the government can enact that would greatly improve the situation. Things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies, enacting carbon taxes, and incentivizing clean energy. There was a recent Ezra Klein podcast with Saul Griffith about this very topic. For instance , it is literally impossible in some places to put up rooftop solar due to archaic building codes. In a lot of cases the government is getting in the way. This is why protests can be effective, even if individuals may not always reduce their lifestyles.

<comment><USER14> The problem with measures like that is that they would still not be enough. With everything that hass been pledged so far in terms of policy, we are still well on our way to >= 3°C in warming, which would have catastrophic consequences. But even getting those concessions was extremely difficult, and there is still no guarantee everything will even be implemented as promised.

But the changes we actually need run much deeper, and they would directly impact our lifestyle, because our current one is not sustainable. The problem with that is that if governments were to attempt to implement those changes, they will be voted out. For instance, the French government tried to do a carbon tax, but was met with weeks of violent protests.

It's also a game theory issue for governments: putting a carbon tax on your country's production will make your economy less competitive compared to those that won't. You can mitigate the consequences for that by carbon taxing imports, but that will not help you with your exports.

The bottom line is that we need to do much more, but it's politically not feasible at this point. It will only be when people's lives are being much more severely impacted, but by that time, it will be too late to avoid a catastrophic outcome. IMO the only realistic hope we have is the development of active carbon capture technologies that can be deployed on a global scale. Whether that is feasible in time remains to be seen.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure 90% of the changes won't impact anyone's lifestyle. Moving to renewable energy and phasing out ICE cars allow for the exact same lifestyle. The only things that might have to change are things that require carbon emissions, like plane trips or meat production (although this one also might not require carbon emissions in 20 years). I guess you could argue that slightly more expensive manufactured goods impact a person's lifestyle, but that's a pretty minor change, and if you do a carbon tax and dividend, that's going to be moot for all but maybe 10% of the population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A huge part of the problem is people like the author that demand _cuts_ in living standards. I enjoy my high standard of living and as someone with friends and family in less developed places, I understand very well they would really like the same high standard of living. Not only that, but I think they _deserve_ that high standard of living.

The way to achieve that is by developing a set of substitutions, and having rich people migrate to these substitutions and having poor people work towards them. Many claim that this is impossible, but the fact is that we have barely even begun trying to do this.

For example, all ground transportation can be electrified - cars, trucks, semis, trains, etc. There is now a very clear path towards this that did not exist 10 years ago. All electricity generation can be decarbonized in tandem. Homes can be heated with carbon-free electric heat pumps by automating geothermal installations. Short-haul flights be be electrified within a few years. None of this is a missed opportunity, nothing is too late. We are just starting to realize this path and there is a lot of work to do.

<comment><USER17> Don't know where you're from but as a an average Swede I consume about three to four earths worth of resources per year.

It's unsustainable on a fundamental level, driven by a consumerism that triggers primal behavior.

You might not have to cut down, but someone eventually have to. There's no way around that.

[https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot- days...](https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article gets the problem right, but misses some other reasons for making personal changes to combat climate change.

For one, the more people that buy products that are more environmentally- friendly, the more the market will shift towards offering environmentally- friendly options. If consumers were beating down car dealership doors to buy every EV they could, car manufacturers would shift heavily towards EVs. If everyone buying a house were looping in a solar panel installation into their loan, we'd probably see more competition and faster price drops in solar panels. The more people that buy meat alternatives, the more money gets invested in developing meat alternatives.

Secondly, each individual action has the potential to influence someone else. If you see your neighborhood switching to EV's, you may be more likely to buy one. Or if a friend had a great experience with reducing their energy costs by upgrading their windows, you might be more likely to get it done yourself.

Put the first two factors together, and then it is much, much easier to build political support for the legislation needed to enact big climate change initiatives. If more people take personal ownership of climate change, that helps those people drive political will towards addressing climate change. Politicians absolutely will respond to public pressure, but if the public is largely indifferent on the issue, it makes it less likely politicians will spend political capital on climate change initiatives.

<comment><USER19> "If consumers were beating down car dealership doors to buy every EV they could, car manufacturers would shift heavily towards EVs. If everyone buying a house were looping in a solar panel installation into their loan, we'd probably see more competition and faster price drops in solar panels."

this logic is part of the problem. you live in a privileged bubble where people buy electric cars and install solar panels on their houses. Median American household has only $10K saved up, many below that and live paycheck to paycheck. What EV/What homes/ solar panels? First we have to solve socio- economic wealth gap issue THEN address climate change.

<comment><USER18> Why can't we do both? For people who don't own homes, we need to invest in clean energy sources for the power grid. For people that can't afford EV's now, if there were actually better demand for EV's auto manufacturers could make the investments to reach the economies of scale so that more people could afford an EV, PHEV, FCEV, whatever it may be. And if there is a big shift towards clean energy that will create new jobs as well as reduce pollution that causes health problems, particularly in low income neighborhoods.

On an individual level, if someone has the means to reduce their carbon footprint, why shouldn't they? On a national level, developed nations have more capital they can spend on shifting to clean energy. Poorer countries won't be able to afford to make some of those shifts. If the nations with the means make the shifts first, they can help bring down the costs of some of those green technologies to where it's more feasible for poorer nations in the world.

We're already at the point that wind and solar power is starting to be cheaper than coal power. Continuing along that path means the developing world can continue developing and expanding their economies with clean energy instead of fossil fuels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are good reasons to not be a hypocrite. This isn't one of them.

So, the theory here is that if we only purify ourselves enough, we'll finally get climate skeptics to listen? If we only take on all the systemic problems with personal sacrifices?

Like, don't show up to important policy meetings on principle because we'd have to fly there? It should be the other way around. Full-time climate activists should get to fly where-ever they want, whenever they want, and the rest of us should avoid flying.

I don't think the article's theory of change is how any other kind of policy change happens. The strength of belief demonstrated by a minority doesn't, by itself, convince anyone or move policymakers.

If you base your credibility on being a perfect example of how you want others to act, it's exactly what the climate skeptics want. You'll fail and they'll laugh at you. Because in this society we're all complicit until there are systemic solutions.

I think there's more evidence for a small minority moving public opinion and public policy when they act in a coordinated, continuous campaign. Self- perfection doesn't come into it. [https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why- nonviolen...](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent- resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/)

</comment><comment><USER21> His rape analogy is terrible on many levels, but I'll go with it for a second. It's more like the electric company uses its proceeds to fund rape squads. He argues we shouldn't take any anti-rape activists seriously unless they first disconnect their houses from the power grid.

Me reducing my personal carbon footprint is a drop in the bucket compared to cutting CPU time at work, and that's a drop in the bucket compared to voting in a Green New Deal politician.

Reducing my personal carbon foot print is harder than reducing work's carbon footprint. So, I'll start there, and vote and donate to political campaigns accordingly (because that's easier and has higher impact)

Ordering actions by cost benefit doesn't make me a hypocrite, it makes me an effective pragmatist.

</comment><comment><USER22> If the hypothesis is: "Normal people aren't convinced by climate intellectuals because the latter are visible hypocrites."

Then it is wrong for two reasons: 1a. Normal Americans on the left, and many on the right, are convinced by climate intellectuals. [https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public- vi...](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on- climate-and-energy/) 1b. Normal Europeans of all stripes are likewise convinced. 2\. (This is anecdata, but I'm pretty confident it'd appear in experimentation if anyone cared to debunk this dumb hypothesis.) Climate intellectuals that make significant efforts to avoid hypocrisy (like Greta, or her less-famous counterparts, or me to a lesser degree) do not experience a different reception from skeptics.

Indeed, personal action is rarely a point of interest for anyone in the discussion. Probably because the focus of the climate intellectuals -- renewable electricity, decarbonizing heavy industry, land use practices -- is so obviously outside the scope of direct personal action.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's not that simple. If it were, we would have many more vegans/vegetarians, who obviously practice what they preach.

<comment><USER24> We have an awful lot, though. And people like me, who are eating far less meat (and in particular beef) than they did years ago specifically because of energy concerns.

In fact the whole premise of the article is just wrong on its face. In fact people who care about climate issues _do_ tend to have lower energy footprints than climate change deniers! We drive smaller cars. We commute shorter distances. We live in denser communities. We eat less meat. We eat local food. We use less water. This can all be measured.

Is it enough? Of course not. But in fact to the extent individual action can be used in service to this goal, _we 're doing it_. Get on board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's great to see something from John Michael Greer come up on HN. I've read a number of his books, many critical of modern society and its ills, and while one might not always agree with everything in full including his predictions about the future, it is difficult to argue that he hasn't done a fantastic job backing up his claims and ideas, including providing many references to past societies, drawing though-provoking parallels between what's happened many times in history and what we're observing and living through today. As a bonus, his writing style is often lively and fun to read, while still maintaining the intellectual seriousness that such topics deserve.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think there should be some eponymous law somewhere that says if you use rape as an analogy, then your argument is almost inevitably flawed. Rape is such a deeply emotional topic that invoked drives out logical reasoning. If you can't find a less loaded analogy that still works, then it likely implies that your argument is in fact false. A rape analogy is a flashbang grenade thrown to obscure the lack of truth in your argument.

A better analogy might be forest fires. What the author is saying is that you can't be against forest fires unless you also never light a candle in your home. Or perhaps that you can't be against pollution if you ever throw something in the trash.

I disagree with his implicit presumption that "solving" climate change necessarily involves willfully lowering one's quality of life. Austerity is not a _goal_ , it is _possibly_ a necessary step to fixing the problem. But just martyring yourself will not magically fix climate change. In fact, ideal solutions to climate change do _not_ involve lowering quality of life because that makes them much easier to adopt.

When asbestos was discovered to cause cancer, we didn't fix that problem by having every individual tear the insulation out of their homes and make a personal commitment to freeze their ass off every winter. We _outlawed it_ and used our existing large-scale systems like the law to solve what was a large- scale systemic problem. That in turn drove innovation to find better alternatives and here we are all now mostly safe from that problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well... the difficult part with this argument is that on an individual level we don't contribute nearly as much carbon as say, the transportation industry as a whole which represents some 18% of emissions?

I do as much as I can as an individual because I believe, morally, that it's true: I'd feel like a fraud if I was seriously concerned about climate and didn't become a vegetarian, refused to own a car, and stopped international travel.

I try to buy only what I need, second hand if I can, to avoid putting more technology in the waste system. I avoid buying plastic. I do everything I can on an individual level.

But you know what?

Global politics don't seem to be moving nearly as fast or with any urgency to the matter. In the US the EPA has been practically gutted. In my own country the local government is using the pandemic as a cover to move on gutting our own environmental protections.

We still need collective policy action on a global scale like we've seen with the pandemic.

Unfortunately we're already decades too late to stop it. Even if we could turn off the carbon switch right now, we'll still have to suffer through some of the worst IPCC predictions.

</comment><comment><USER28> All the worry about saving the environment is really a worry about preserving the viability of urban/suburban lifestyles.

<comment><USER29> Rural lifestyles are significantly impacted by increased fires, drought, heat, flooding - in particular farming is directly impacted by reduced yields and increased disasters.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for stating the obvious, Sherlock. My point is: the WORRY about climate change is mostly focused on urbanism. The loudest voices come from the city. These people have a weak connection to nature aside from the occasional hike and holiday. The mostly worry about their cities going underwater. Country folks are used to dealing with the unpredictability of nature and are more likely to find a way to adapt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Impose a carbon tax and watch how fast renewables, nuclear etc. become financially viable and self-sufficient. The role people have to play here is to get on to the same page so loudly that politicians can't ignore our voices anymore. Switching off my air conditioner isn't really going to accomplish anything.

</comment><comment><USER31> Climate change won't be stopped because the population of the world who care, and the population who might care, is massively dwarfed by the number of people who will never care. And the incentives are aligned such that benefit for humans means detriment for the planet. Thus, it is in no nation's individual interest to actually push for climate change legislation. Because first they would fall behind industrially, then economically, then finally get squeezed into irrelevance. And even if they did hypothetically care enough to make this sacrifice "for the betterment of the earth, humanity, and future generations", it would all be for naught once they fell into irrelevance. Like a child going on a hunger strike, nobody cares and they don't have a say anyway.

</comment><comment><USER32> The problem with this analogy is that personally reducing demand is ineffective at stopping production.

If I stop eating beef (which I have) there isn't an equivalent reduction in beef production. Instead the price goes down fractionally and someone else eats it. If a whole bunch of people stop eating beef (which I hope I'm part of) then we'll start to see some reduction in production.

The answer to global warming like any externality is market regulation. Exactly _how_ you regulate that is less important: Maybe revenue neutral tax on producers? Maybe a ration book for consumers?

Personal change is certainly helpful to demonstrate you're serious, but structural change will be necessary to actually tackle the problem.

<comment><USER33> > If a whole bunch of people stop eating beef (which I hope I'm part of) then > we'll start to see some reduction in production.

It doesn't seem to work this way either. First there will be a long period of beef sources trying to create demand, through marketing, lobbying, etc tactics. Only after they have spent through substantial subsidies, loans, bailouts, etc will they be forced to downsize.

As an example: we recently saw a huge decrease in air travel demand. Response from the airlines? Keep flying the same number of routes in order to maintain status at airports. Run promotions to increase sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have no idea why people would upvote a junk article like this.

It has two cheap rhetorical ploys.

First, a crude and disgusting analogy with rape, of all things. (There's a much better analogy to the governmental action that stopped CFCs, and actually worked.)

Second, an accusation of hypocrisy that is completely without actual facts.

And more important: so what if some elites who profess to care about climate change fly too much? It's deeply un-serious to demand pure motives on the part of everyone who professes a certain policy, before taking action.

Counterpoint, organized by a climate researcher: [https://noflyclimatesci.org](https://noflyclimatesci.org)

</comment><comment><USER35> The US was incapable of responding to the imminent danger of the pandemic threat that was one month out. It's impossible that they will respond to a much more abstract threat decades into the future. It's beyond absurd to even propose this as a realistic idea. I don't think most other countries are much different in this regard. Climate change won't be stopped because most people don't want to stop it and almost all people in charge most certainly do not want to stop it. And like the article says, changing on a personal level is completely useless. On a personal level, why even try?

</comment><comment><USER36> This article doesn't quite live up to its title - swerving at the end to say unless we change, instead of concluding we won't change.

This article was pilloried at the time for its negativity, but I think Franzen's article, "What If We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped," ultimately has it right.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultu...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural- comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending/amp)

</comment><comment><USER37> The most depressing statistic is the Corona one: the pandemic is projected to lower the 2020 co2E emission by about 7.5 percent (based on 2019 numbers). To have any chance of reaching ipcc's 1.5 degree goal we need to continue this development for the rest of the decade.

I never believed 1.5 degrees would ever be reached, but the message from so many politicians was that "we need to try our best to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees". Everybody must have known that it was bullshit all along.

And that is why climate change won't be stopped.

</comment><comment><USER38> Didn't coronavirus prove that individual action wouldn't do much to curb climate change and that corporations and governments needed to do a lot more in order to truly have an effect? With maybe the exception of meat consumption basically all the individual actions that could have been taken were.

I agree there is a lot of hypocrisy in the modern environmental movement but status quo bias and corruption play a larger role in our situation than a lack of credibility from environmentalists

</comment><comment><USER39> Of course it won't be stopped as long as people continue to think this is a personal responsibility issue, and ignore that the military is the #1 greenhouse gas producer on the planet. After that we have extremely high producers of carbon operating at global scale in transportation, manufacturing and agriculture. This is not a personal responsibility issue, it is a cause for legal regulation to force the military and corporate operations to go green.

</comment><comment><USER40> Climate change will not be stopped because asking people anywhere to take a significant decrease in their standard of living will be a political diaster and there is no silver bullet solution that allows people to maintain their lifestyles and curb climate change.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is the same virtue signaling bullshit that's gotten us no where on this issue for 40 years. You're neighbours don't care that you compost. This is a global crisis, not a chance for you to tell us all how great you are.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is there any data as to how much climate change can be affected by personal lifestyle choices?

The biggest CO2 emitters are electricity generation and transport and these can be affected by government policy that encourages renewable sources.

</comment><comment><USER43> During COVID, we've seen drastic changes to the economy and individual behavior. I recall reading articles saying it all amounted to only a 5% change in emissions or something like that. I can't help but thing the real problem is simply that we have too many humans. Or at least, too many humans at a quality of life standard that is too high. We can institute population control standards (cap and trade permits?) or we can decide that it doesn't make sense to base our lives around consumerism and shipping things from long distances. But the latter notion - which might look like forming localized circular economies - feels as impractical an idea as those pushing for extreme restructuring of societal structures. And everything else, like technological innovation, seems either like a gamble or like noise.

</comment><comment><USER44> Works for me.

Every time I hear some Hollywood talking head going on about the urgency of climage change, I just ask myself: Why should I lower my family's standard of living, when this actor is basking in adulation while burning 25 times the carbon we do?

Incredibly selfish, I know. On both our parts.

Honestly, I do make an effort to limit my impact on the planet. But I do what my conscience tells me to do. Celebrity endorsements don't move the needle at all for me, at least not in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Climate change activism these days is almost entirely a concern of middle- and upper middle-class people in the industrial world: people, that is, whose lifestyles are disproportionately responsible for the dumping of greenhouse gases; people who use much more fossil fuel energy, and many more of the products of fossil fuel energy, than the average human being."

100% Agreed.

</comment><comment><USER45> Really though the biggest problem is that our economic and political systems require growth as a policy. This means individuals incur invisible climate costs regardless of their personal habits, simply by participating in a currency scheme that is driven by deficit spending. This is true whether that deficit is used to fund bombing people halfway around the world, or social programmes at home alike. The idea that the government can borrow money to fund a green revolution (that will mostly soak the already rich/politically connected) is laughable, because it misses the very hidden flaw in its premise (that the act of sovereign borrowing is the cause of the problem in the first place).

In principle capitalism itself is not the primary ecological problem; capitalism could extract profits in a closed non exponential system by exploiting gradients in efficiency incumbent with technological improvements. That could even incentivise climate improvement. It's when there is a secular incentive to mindlessly grow that capitalism becomes a menace.

</comment><comment><USER46> Because climate always change either mankind does it or not?

</comment><comment><USER11> Nothing is written.

<comment><USER47> Physics is fundamental.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> You can't stop change, period.

</comment><comment><USER49> All true. The comments so far are quite entertaining in explaining how it's not in fact the case; one even says that people should be able to avoid taxes while hoping to pay more taxes in a distant future.

But climate change advocates are not the only ones to blame. Absolutely nobody wants to change their behavior: no individual, no company, no country.

And so climate change is simply unavoidable. Trying to mitigate it is a waste of time IMHO; finding ways to live with it may be more fruitful.

<comment><AUTHOR> The comments are revealing. People are having an emotional reaction that's preventing them from realizing any real way of addressing climate change will substantially change/reduce their living standards. I've had this conversation with people in real life and almost no one gets it at first.

<comment><USER25> There really does seem to be this pervasive idea that there's a non-stop linear march of progress from the beginning of time, that despite some bumps here and there "things always improve over time", and that for any of the big problems humanity is facing that "they'll think of something", without much thought as to who "they" are or what that "something" is, or even about the additional side-effects of what that "something" might entail, which could go on to cause ever greater problems later on (where the same argument is again applied ad infinitum). This seems like a common argument made to avoid the emotionally difficult thoughts about what an individual could do right now to help prevent or even just to mitigate existing problems from becoming worse.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a web developer - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm looking for a professional web developer freelancer to create a site for an idea I had.  They would need to be in San Francisco or South Bay.  Shoot me an email if you are interested with work sample and all the necessaries and we can have a consultation about prices and such.
Drop me a line at email@example.com. <comment><USER2> If you're interested in working remotely, and outside of the US. Feel free to ping me

\- <http://sidmitra.com> \- <http://cloudshuffle.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Hashrocket.com -- the best guys around and they can work via video conference. They're in Jacksonville not San Fran, but it's worth the logistical accommodation.</comment>


Internet Archive: Donate Ethereum and Democratize Open Library's Bookshelves - <AUTHOR> http://blog.openlibrary.org/2018/10/27/raising-crypto-for-the-greater-good/ <comment><USER2> Love what they're doing, great nonprofit to donate to and stock up some more books!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you be interested in a startup guide? - <AUTHOR>

I'm thinking about building out a site to brain-dump my experiences as a co-founder of a venture-backed software startup. Kind of like an AMA, but more structured and (hopefully) with contributions from other entrepreneurs. Think guides.rubyonrails.org but for startups.<p>What would you want to see on there? It doesn't necessarily have to be content... <comment><USER2> The best articles on each topic from across the Web, organized by category. A list of blogs to watch. An RSS feed of the latest news.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any particular topics you'd like to see?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. What to look for in a partner. 2\. How to deal with VCs and if you really need them. 3\. How to come up with and examine your business model. 4\. How to get started and come up with realistic plans and projections 5\. How to evaluate your progress

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice to have a database of stories, successses or failures from entrepreneurs. It would be great motivation and educational.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also let me know if you'd be interested in contributing.</comment>


Securing an Ubuntu Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewault.net/2010/05/17/securing-an-ubuntu-server/

<comment><USER2> I tend to find that minimalist OS's, such as plain Debian installed with no frills or OpenBSD tend to be better candidates for security sensitive machines.

Some of the utilities mentioned like Tiger haven't been updated in years.

No mention of chroot/jails/zones/etc, which can go a long way to nullifying intrusions when they happen, or integrity tools built into the system (using package managers to check for changed binaries, or checksum tools like like tripwire/AIDE/radmind)

While it does have some good points, it also strikes me as "cargo cult system administration", specifically "Following a security recipe": [http://blog.lastinfirstout.net/2009/11/cargo-cult-system- adm...](http://blog.lastinfirstout.net/2009/11/cargo-cult-system- administration.html)

<comment><USER3> Getting a minimal distro also gives you the possibility to install only the things which are needed, instead of uninstalling a lot of stuff which came in by default.

Additionally - if you are serious about monitoring, you should ship the logs to some external host in realtime, so they can't be deleted / changed.

Running services in jails is definitely a good idea. Additionally configuring Apparmor and Selinux could be a good idea too. Or even switching to a grsec kernel. For the consistency checking, I prefer Samhain.

<comment><USER4> I thought Ubuntu had AppArmor on and configured by default for many/most of the popular services (Apache etc). I often see 'updating AppArmor profile' log messages in system updates, in any case.

<comment><USER3> Only as long as you use the default paths and enforce the profiles... which should be the default for most people. But I think it's worth mentioning in case you have a specific application which you reverse-proxy, or install nginx, or ....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Securing a server is relatively easy - what people need to look past is securing the system as a whole.

Some day something in the servers or network you are responsible for will probably be breached in some fashion. You won't expect it. You'll find out. You'll panic.

Think past securing the perimeter and think about what happens when that fails... because it may. Are you using SSH keys internally to walk around systems? Are they secure? What happens if someone accidentally leaves a test account open somewhere and somehow, through dumb luck, ends up with root access to your kickstart server or whatever config management stuff you have?

Now - what will you do when you have to start from scratch? Everyone likes to say once a system is compromised you have to format - but that becomes a daunting task if you're talking about hundreds of systems including the systems used to manage those systems. Do you nuke everything from orbit? Can your business afford the downtime?

You need recovery procedures as much as you need security... and you need auditing procedures to ensure that your security and recovery procedures remain valid.... and you need auditing procedures to ensure those auditing procedures are followed.

Complexity also breeds problems... keeping systems simple also makes them easier to manage.

</comment><comment><USER6> Articles like this are amusing but also somewhat disturbing.

Ubuntu is based on debian unstable. It was created to escape the slow debian upgrade cycles and get more recent packages on the desktop.

So far, so good. But why are we now baking a server distro out of a desktop distro that is based on the _unstable_ branch of a server distro? And who would put that on a server and try to "secure" it?

<comment><USER7> _stable_ means "doesn't change very often". It does not mean "less buggy".

In my experience, Debian "stable" packages tend to be literally covered in bugs and security holes due to being years old. Only a few of the most popular packages get fixes backported.

<comment><USER6> _Debian "stable" packages tend to be literally covered in bugs and security holes_

Would you mind backing this up?

 _Only a few of the most popular packages get fixes backported._

Debian must have many popular packages then, considering lenny has accumulated security backports for 1529 packages in amd64 alone.

They take security pretty[1] seriously[2] and considering it's all done by volunteers it doesn't seem nice to spread FUD about their work without any data to verify your claims.

      [1] http://www.debian.org/security/
      [2] http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker

<comment><USER6> It's interesting to see this particular comment voted down without any replies...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I go by the trifecta:

* Disable root login. * Change SSH port. * Install fail2ban or denyhosts.

<comment><USER9> What if you can't disable root login (i.e. it's a cloud server)?

<comment><USER10> Restrict root login from a particular IP address

AllowUsers email@example.com

I use AllowUsers to ensure only users I want can login from SSH.

<comment><USER11> But what if your IP address changes?

<comment><USER12> Root login shouldn't be your normal entrance. For maintenance stuff use sudo- capable regular user account with public key authentication. If there's some software that requires root login and you cannot do anything about it, enable root login and allow it only from the specific IPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For a firewall (frontend for iptables) I recommend csf: <http://www.configserver.com/cp/csf.html>

Features: stateful inspection, protection from different types of attack, ability to ban port scanning attempts, ban brute force logins for various services (ssh, ftp, ...), numerous configuration options but very easy to configure with excellent inline documentation. For more info see the link above.

<comment><USER14> iptables already has all those features. I find "frontend" scripts like CSF confusing and distracting, because they throw in everything under the sun, including stuff that might make no sense in my particularly use case.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, if you know the TCP/IP networking stack and iptables well enough. For most people, they do not. That's why sysadmins exist ;-)

Otherwise, can iptables ban those who failed more than 10 SSH logins?

<comment><USER14> "Otherwise, can iptables ban those who failed more than 10 SSH logins?"

Yes, sort of, though it's not "more than 10", it's "drop packets that look suspiciously like an automated attack", which I think is actually cooler because it never outright bans anyone but it makes it impossible to run an effective brute force attack. You'd use the "--state NEW" option to determine whether the connection is a new one or an established one. If someone connects over and over again to ssh (or any login-able service, really) within a short time you can drop them. Rules would look something like this:

      iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 -m state --state NEW --dport 22 -m recent --update --seconds 15 -j DROP

      iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 -m state --state NEW --dport 22 -m recent --set -j ACCEPT

Assuming, of course, that you're already accepting ESTABLISHED connections above those rules.

iptables is astonishingly powerful and flexible, and it's usually pretty easy to google up the right recipes, if you aren't quite sure of the incantations. It can be a little intimidating, but it more than repays you for the effort. When I did network consulting I was always surprised when I came upon a network where they had a Linux router, web server, mail server, etc., and then a Cisco PIX firewall sitting in front of it. Once again, it's just needless complexity, when the Linux box could do everything the PIX does (and possibly more, in the case of the low end PIX that I usually see).

Since you have professed iptables ignorance...are you sure CSF is doing anything sensible in your deployment? By that, I mean, do you have any idea what your firewall rules are actually doing and if they are effective for what you think they are effective for? I'm always a bit wary when I come upon a network where the people maintaining it have no idea what their systems are doing or how they work. While CSF may be a net positive, if the trend is toward avoiding knowledge, it's a dangerous direction to go in. I'm all for simplifying, and sometimes tools make things simpler. But, as I said, in my experience the "pile of shell" firewall scripts complexify things rather than simplify them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You should also look at the grsecurity kernel patch:

<http://grsecurity.net>

It can really help to harden a system by making it much, much harder to exploit buffer overflows, making it impossible for users to see any processes other than their own etc. It's a great kernel patch and I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't get why people recommend chkrootkit + failban/denyhost.

I would recommend OSSEC to anyone looking for a serious host-based IDS (it does all those tools do + a lot more and very light weight).

*link: <http://www.ossec.net>

<comment><USER5> I found that, while it looked great, for some reason on every install I tried (granted this was a couple of years ago, but I tried on various distributions and hardware) - the mailing engine tended to silently fail - which was fairly critical.

Denyhost, while not as sophisticated by a longshot, is dead easy to install and take care of the SSH brute force issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> nmapping localhost doesn't sound very effective.

<comment><USER18> netstat -tap | grep LISTEN

<comment><USER19> Or you could just use the 'listen' flag ;)

sudo netstat -tpl

<comment><USER18> Today I learned. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The first step on securing an Ubuntu server is switching to Debian (this sounds a bit trollish but oh well)</comment>


iOS Icons Made Purely Using CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.graphicpeel.com/post/740928981/ios-icons-made-in-pure-css

<comment><USER2> Impressive!</comment>


It's time for administration to swallow their pride with the new Cal Poly logo - <AUTHOR> https://mustangnews.net/its-time-for-administration-to-swallow-their-pride-with-the-new-cal-poly-logo/ <comment><AUTHOR> Went to Cal Poly. I think the old logo is great. I think the writer here hit the nail on the head as to how I feel about the new one:

> In fact, the only thing worse than paying $340,000 for a logo that looks > like it was downloaded from freelogodesign.org would be deciding to use it</comment>


Steve Wozniak Believes Ethereum Has the Potential to Be the Next Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptoground.com/a/steve-wozniak-ethereum-next-apple <comment><USER2> There's a reason why Woz was the tech guy and not the business guy.</comment>


More than 100 scientists and thinkers discuss what they've changed their minds about - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone want to join me in trying to pick some common themes in there?

A couple I've got in the first few pages:

\- Reductionism seems to be failing a quite a lot and things we thought we could separate we are now starting to intertwine again.

\- The weakness of expertise and hypothesis testing. Kinda goes nicely with Nassim Nicholas Talebs books which I just finished.</comment>


Why the Swedish Vasa Ship Sank – An Engineer's Explanation - <AUTHOR> https://www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/vasa-ship-sank/ <comment><USER2> I recently read Wikipedia[0] article about Vasa which in my opinion is a worthy read that covers many aspects not covered by the linked article.

Fun fact: statue of 20th-century Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, was placed (by SCUBA) on the ship as a prank by students of Helsinki University of Technology the night before the final lift and remains till today as part of cataloged artifacts.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_\(ship\))

<comment><USER3> There's a little bit of extra context there.

A Swedish led committee prevented Paavo Nurmi from entering the 1932 olympics, on what people, then and now, regard as trumped up charges. (Nurmi had won nine gold medals in the previous three olympics) The affair was dragged out over many months, with the committee constantly ignoring the usual way these things were handled, and the final appeal denial happening at the olympics with Nurmi there to compete.

Finland was mad! They cut off all sporting cooperation with Sweden. And as this prank shows, they have never really forgotten it.

[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kONFAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EL4M...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kONFAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EL4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=3666,6782915&dq=nurmi&hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In slightly fewer words - Vasa sunk because it was built tall and thin, and because of its high centre of gravity, tipped over on its maiden voyage in 1628.

Like the Mary Rose in England, the ship turned out to be an archeological treasure trove, and the museums make an excellent visit.

I had to work in Stockholm a few years ago with some colleagues from various nations at a standards meeting. We visited the Vasa museum and had a great time soaking up the history. But to our modern eyes, the height of the ship looked crazy compared with its width, and we were all amazed that anyone could have ever thought it would ever stay afloat, even back in the 17th century.

By the way, the redundant diagram of nautical terms lacks the one term relevant here: beam, the width of a vessel

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they said on the tour that only some centimeters were missing in width, and everything would have been fine.

<comment><USER5> On tour, we've been told that a sister ship made at the same time was one meter wider and served 10+ years without problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting story, and is going to lead to a bunch more research on my part, but this feels very much like someone just trying to fill space on a page...

For instance, the bit about defining the "terminologies related to shipbuilding" with a diagram with all sorts of very specific labels, of which exactly one gets used later...

</comment><comment><USER7> I've actually gotten to visit the Vasa museum, and although it sounds a bit strange, it was totally worth it. Totally recommend it if you're ever in Stockholm.

<comment><USER8> I visited the museum as well and it's a fantastic experience. Well recommended, the best thing to do in Stockholm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of a quote from Scott Myers:

The Vasa was a 17th-century Swedish warship which suffered such feature creep during construction that it sank shortly after leaving the harbour on its maiden voyage. In the early 1990s, the C++ standardisation committee adopted the Vasa as a cautionary tale, discouraging prospective language extensions with "Remember the Vasa!" Yet C++ continued to grow, and by the time C++ was standardised, its complexity made the Vasa look like a rowboat.[0]

[0] [https://youtube.com/watch?v=ltCgzYcpFUI](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ltCgzYcpFUI)

</comment><comment><USER10> > the heart of the mystery

It was top heavy.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Vasa and the Mary Rose ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose)) appear to be rather similar on the face of it. They suffered similar fates - sinking unexpectedly, however the Mary Rose was over 30 years old (I had no idea until reading the WP article - I thought the MR was much younger on sinking) whereas the Vasa keeled over in a eight knot wind on her maiden voyage. Both were cutting edge and designed to do the "shock and awe" of the time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ad for engineering software. But well written.

<comment><USER13> "Well written"? I take it English isn't your first language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's an advertorial not an explanation...

<comment><USER15> I was also somewhat annoyed reading it. At the fist look, it looks like it will contain some real technical details of some very specific issue. But in fact it just reproduces some seriously-looking diagrams which are very loosely related to the topic, and then the explanation is just:

"Henrik Hybertsson just "scaled-up" the dimensions of the original 108-ft ship to meet the length and breadth of the new 135-ft Vasa." "At this point, the Vasa was becoming much wider at the top than the bottom. The ship's center of gravity was much higher than designed."

Duh.

And then not a single detail about why would "scaling-up" from 108 to 135ft really disastrously move the center of gravity or anything comparable follows, and there's no any specific analysis of the relevant dimensions of the very ship. So all the diagrams are more the "decoration."

At least is is nicely written that the "political wishes" dominated the construction and that it's not known that the proper calculations were performed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And the ultimate reason of this catastrophe was: Ignoring the System test result and prematurely releasing into production.

'test was stopped at the ship rocked so violently that it was feared that it would heel'... yet nobody did anything about it.

Nothing new for IT - shipping too early :)

<comment><USER16> "In the months that followed, King Gustav changed his orders several times, leading to total chaos and confusion for the builders."

This also sounds typical...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The diagram at the top has a 13th item labeled, yet the 13th term's definition is skipped! It seems like there was a difference of opinion as to whether 13 is unlucky, perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER17> 'From Acorn to Arabella', ongoing shipbuilding series on youtube, recently taught me how insane lead ballasts even a small ship can/must have.

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUaI2fnK9io](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUaI2fnK9io)

</comment><comment><USER19> On the tour, they claimed that feature creep wasn't so much of a factor, rather it was an experimental build. No theories existed.</comment>


Show HN: Pokemon in Javascript [WIP] - <AUTHOR> http://pkrusset.com/?wip1

<comment><AUTHOR> I've wanted to build such a game for ages and have done (not very well) in the past (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpM-wKLTKSI>), this version is designed to run in single player, but also to be able to connect to a Node server to enable multiplayer (currently only map/chat works, but PvP is the idea). The multiplayer is half-implemented currently, if you select 'connect to server' on the bottom right menu and use host pkrusset.com with port 9030 it should connect up (return to chat).

Github: <https://github.com/Fizzadar/PK-Russet></comment>