HN user

Spittie

1,232 karma

My email: spittiepie[at]gmail[dot]com

Posts14
Comments328
View on HN

Play Services have a way to install applications in the background (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23695170/how-to-install-a...) that does a signature check, and refuse to work if the request didn't come from a Google App. Maybe they found a way to call that from Chrome's v8?

What makes me think so is that they claim to have installed a "BMX Game" (which I guess is on the Play Store), and I don't see any claim of it being automatically launched after the installation (Android >2.3 should block that).

That would be much better for Android than the alternatives. As far as I can tell, applications can only install stuff in the background if they are system applications (live into some /system subfolder, which Chrome does when preinstalled/installed from a GAPPS package) AND declade the "INSTALL_PACKAGES" permission in their manifest (Chrome doesn't).

That should be the only way, apart from getting root (but I guess they would have just said "we got root" then).

EDIT: Obviously all of this is just a guess. I'm just happy that there is no Chrome on my phone :) (but the WebView on Android 5.1 is based on Chromium - so i wonder if that's exploitable as well?)

Beside this, Firefox is not really welcomed (and a drop is planned eventually) on F-Droid because it's really complex to build, depends on some closed source libraries (Google Play Services, for example) and has lots of tracking in it (everything is at least opt-out as far as I can tell, but the guys behind F-Droid aren't really keen on any kind of tracking it seems).

It's possible to build it without those problems (see Fennec on F-Droid in fact), but it takes a lot of time for someone to create a recipe, and it's prone to break on every upgrade (and that's why the last version of Fennec on F-Droid is based on Firefox 40).

I don't know if/how many of those problems apply on Firefox OS (I guess at least the complex build environment applies), but that's likely why you'll not find it on F-Droid anytime soon. Unless someone decides to pour lots and lots of energy into this.

More info/sources:

https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.firefox

https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid

https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/metadata/or...

Interesting, I've been wondering about this myself lately, as I've started to read on an e-book reader ~30 minutes before going to sleep as a part of my routine. Too bad they only used iPads for this study.

I wonder if it's better for my sleep to read a "normal" book with the lights on, or if it's better to read with an ereader with the minimum amount of brightness on. I think I receive less blue light with the second case, but maybe it's more direct into my eyes? I also wonder if there is a difference between a "normal, backlit screen" and an "e-ink frontlit screen" at the same brightness.

And it's a bummer that no-one sells an ereader with a "flux" mode.

- google scam site checker, phone-home component for every site you visit

I don't really like it either, but that's not how it works. Firefox downloads an updated list of "non-safe" sites from Google every 30 minutes or so, and check sites against the local copy. A site get sent to Google only if there is a match in the local copy, to check that it's still "blacklisted"

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

- google services (the things responsible for ads no less) just so you can stream videos on android (can't even build firefox without including that SDK)

It's for casting videos to a Chromecast, not for streaming videos. It seems to be possible to build Firefox without it, F-Droid does so: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=fennec&fdid=...

- adobe binary blob for DRM on netflix. (who even uses netflix on the browser?)

I don't like it neither, but I think a small blob for DRM is better than a whole closed addon. It's awful that it got pushed to every installation tho, instead of displaying a "download" button on Netflix and similar sites.

As for your question, it seems that tons of people do so.

CSV Challenge 11 years ago

On a whim, I'd probably do something like this

  tr -d '[{"}]' < data.json | awk -F ',' '{ print $1","$6 }' | awk -F '[:,]' '{ print $2";"$4 }' | grep -v ";null" > $(date +%Y%m%d).csv

Your name is right in your profile, so pdx could have easily got your gender from it. Maybe pdx even opened your site, where you have a photo clearly showing your gender.

It's also possible that English is not pdx mother tongue, maybe pdx tongue is one of those where the male pronoun is used to refer to people when the sex is unknown. Also, while it's usage as this has been fading, "he" is defined as "Used to refer to a person or animal of unspecified sex" in many dictionaries, and someone could have been tough that in school (I have been).

You can! You just need to make the F-Droid app a System app, then it can install applications without having to keep the "unknown sources" options on.

You can use this app to do it: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=de.j4velin.syste...

You can also disable the "install" script and have it install stuff without any prompts like the play store, just go into the settings, scroll to the bottom and enable "Expert" and "Install using system-permission".

The usual place to start to start an emulator is the CHIP-8 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8), because it's a very easy platform that don't have a lot of the "complicated" stuff that's in more complex hardware.

The overall logic is very simple (read a program into ram, read an opcode from the starting location, do whatever that opcode is supposed to do, go to the next opcode... rinse and repeat) and you can find tons of tutorial online (I liked this one: http://www.multigesture.net/articles/how-to-write-an-emulato...)

It should set your mind on the fact that writing a simple emulator is just doing a fetch/decode/execute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_cycle) on some code.

For the documentation, I've found that EmuTalk (www.emutalk.net/forums/30-Emulator-Programming) has tons of interesting links.

There is no such thing as "unlimited data", your speed is your cap.

Anyway, it's understandable that your ISP will want to have a talk with you if you push/pull 10+ TB every month (in this case, you're probably violating their "no commercial service on consumer line" rule), but 250GB/month is just ridiculous.

Hey, I feel you. I'm not Asian, but I'm introvert. I'm a tad younger, at 20 years old. I'm also unemployed (yay!).

Anyway, I've never have tons of friends, but after finishing high school, I've cut almost every relations that I've had with others (on one side, I've never had a friendship outside school, on the other side, it's my fault since I'm not good at maintaining relations).

So you could say that I'm currently in a similar situation to you. I don't have much to say but the usual suggestions that everyone will give you, since really isn't much to say.

If you have any hobby, it might be worth searching for local shops or local meetups for it. If you like card games and/or board games, you'll always find some shop in a city. If you like sports, join a local club, it's usually a decent way to make friends. Conventions seems to be rather frequent in america, so you can try and go to those.

Getting friends in a skill that you have to develop over time. Many, many people just take it for granted, since most are born with it, but for some it takes years to master.

When you meed people, try to not be shy. Talk, look at them and not elsewhere/the floor, don't cross your arm. In short, watch your body language.

If you have nothing to say, ask them about themself. Most people just love to talk about themself. Don't be shy to ask, at worst they'll just shrug it off and switch the arguments to something else.

Try to remember their names, it's a nice thing that most people will appreciate. Also, after you've made a bit of conversation and you like them, try to maintain that relations. Ask them a contact, and contact them from time to time (just don't be overwhelming, otherwise you'll look like a creep). If they're interested, you get someone to talk, otherwise it's not hard for them to not reply.

Someone is suggesting you to get a dog, and I can say that it's a wonderful way to have random small talks (especially if you have some kind of rare dog). But remember that getting a dog is not something you can do lighthearted, it will take tons of efforts.

As for your English, just try to speak with other people, most will not mind your bad english as long as it's not painful to understand (and given how you write, I don't think it is). And you'll get better over time.

That's mostly what it comes to my mind. It might work or not, but it's the usual suggestions you'll read over the internet. I can say that I'm a better listener after following those, but my introversion is still blocking me from joining a club (but I've started running, maybe I'll get to know someone with it?).

If you want to talk, my email is in my profile page. I can't do much (especially since there is an ocean between us), but I find that just writing something helps a lot to get your ideas clear.

didn't Adobe say they'd abandon 64bit support on Linux?

No, Adobe abandoned NPAPI Flash, the one used by Firefox. Flash on Chrome uses PPAPI, which is still officially supported (my guess is that it's maintained/developed mostly by the Chrome guys, but it's just a guess).

Tor Challenge 12 years ago

Sorry, I can't :( This isn't a box dedicated to tor, and also my vps provider requires to limit the bandwidth in their ToS.

Tor Challenge 12 years ago

Your distro should ship with a sample config file, otherwise you can find one here: https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/blob/HEAD:/src/config/...

Tor has some sane defaults, so you don't need to edit much. I've started running a relay (no exit) node for the challenge, and this is what I'm using:

    ORPort 9001
    Nickname RelayName
    RelayBandwidthRate 6000 KB
    RelayBandwidthBurst 10000 KB
    AccountingMax 500 GB
    AccountingStart month 1 00:00
    ExitPolicy reject *:*
RelayBandWidthRate and Burst control how much bandwidth the tor daemon is allowed to use (average and burst obviously), AccountingMax is how much bandwidth the daemon is allowed to use over a given period, and AccountingStart definite that period (in my config a period is a month, and it start at midnight of the first day).

Also, once you start it, give it an hour or so to appear in the tor swarm. As long as you have "Self-testing indicates your ORPort is reachable from the outside. Excellent. Publishing server descriptor." in your logs, you should be fine and only have to wait.

I'd love to see something like SSH, you trust the self-signed certificate the first time, and then it's considered valid until it changes (but it should get treated differently from CA-signed certificates, your yellow padlock idea is great).

Then warn the user if the certificate ever changes.

They use browser certificates (I'm not sure if this is the right name), which is actually pretty cool. When you create an account, a certificate is generated in your browser, and then you can login with it.

The big problem is that since it's almost not used, browsers implement it but haven't done any job in making it user friendly (for example, you can see the certificates currently stored in your browser in Firefox by going in preferences > Advanced > Certificates > View Certificates > "Your certificates" tab, not exactly user friendly). Also (if I remember correctly) StartSSL implementation is not the nicest one as well, as you have to keep your tab open while they validate your account.

Well, then if all the DNS traffic is proxyed through a VPN your ISP can't know who made that query, making it pretty much useless.

And if you're worrying about DNS leaks, your ISP is still able to read that traffic even when using a different DNS provider (assuming no DNSCrypt or similar).

3rd party DNS servers can be useful, I just don't see any additional value to your privacy when not coupled with DNSCrypt/DNSCurve.

Your ISP can already easily track what you browse/requests, it's not like the DNS logs give them more information (and unless you use DNSCrypt or similar, they can just see the DNS traffic anyway).

On the contrary, by using a different DNS server you're giving your data both to your ISP (you have to) and a 3rd party.