Top all-time · #159
Bert Hubert
Personal blog · berthub.eu · on HN as ahubertsecuritypolitics
Bert Hubert's personal blog at berthub.eu covers security and politics. Since 2019, 254 different Hacker News readers have linked it 465 times, most often “Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 14 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bert Hubert's posts to explain how mRNA vaccines and their sequences work, especially for programmers, and his essays on outsourcing in telecoms and tech, such as How Tech Loses Out.
- Recommended for · 14 comments
- Called a very useful primer, very cool, excellent, great, a good writeup and a fine write-up; greatly enjoyed; listed as a favourite.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine43 people · 50 mentions · first linked 2020-12-25
- How Tech Loses Out16 people · 36 mentions · first linked 2021-01-17
- 5G: The outsourced elephant in the room16 people · 29 mentions · first linked 2020-01-20
- DNA seen through the eyes of a coder10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-01-09
- Who controls the Internet? And should they? (2021)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-11-02
- Dear anonymous internet user asking for help7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-12-02
- Galileo's Proposed Authentication Algorithm: Part 16 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-08-18
- The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-08-19
- DNA seen through the eyes of a coder6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-10-31
- Russian gas flows to Europe6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-03-13
What Hacker News says?
You're spot-on, the bootstrapping is exactly why the outage took so long to recover: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileo-accident/
Comment linking /articles/posts/galileo-accident/
on “GPS”Submitted It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds as a story · 1403 points
HN discussionYes, and there are moves in the next generation to add cryptographic signatures to the satellite streams. Someone could still jam it, but they couldn't spoof it. Tons of info starting here: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-al... Continued here: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-al... And finally here: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-al...
Comment linking /articles/posts/galileos-authentication-algorithm-part-3/
on “GPS”Submitted Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check as a story · 593 points
HN discussionNote that independently of the notation used the mRNA of those vaccines use even more "weird" bases, such as 1-methyl-3’-pseudouridylyl, to make the vaccine mRNA not be detected by the immune system [1]. [1] https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted 5G: The outsourced elephant in the room as a story · 590 points
HN discussionNot Moderna, but this [1] was a very useful primer on grokking how the Pfizer vaccine works, especially for computer programmers. [1] https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted On my resignation as regulator of the Dutch intelligence and security services as a story · 566 points
HN discussionThis very cool article explains the mRNA sequence chunk-by-chunk which might give you a flavour of why differences exist: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine as a story · 549 points
HN discussion> delivery mechanism: you need to take a very unstable molecule, protect it from the environment - both external, and when inside the patient - and insert it into a human cell. (This is called the "platform", and is usually developed independently from the specific payload.) Of note, the immune system is pretty good at destroying foreign mRNA so you also need to evade it. This article is pretty good: https://berthub…
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted How Tech Loses Out as a story · 458 points
HN discussionAs denoted in the linked article [1]: "Many people have asked, could viruses also use the Ψ technique to beat our immune systems? In short, this is extremely unlikely. Life simply does not have the machinery to build 1-methyl-3’-pseudouridylyl nucleotides. Viruses rely on the machinery of life to reproduce themselves, and this facility is simply not there. The mRNA vaccines quickly degrade in the human body, and the…
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud as a story · 456 points
HN discussionHere is a breakdown https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... discussed previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25538820
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted Dear EU: Please Don't Ruin the Root as a story · 407 points
HN discussionRelated: Here's a article from late last year describing and explaining the source code of Pfizer vaccine: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... It's a very interesting read and I hope the author makes another post explaining the differences of the two mrna vaccines.
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]”Submitted Tracker Beeper (2022) as a story · 394 points
HN discussionOne single employee at Pfizer created 10 vaccine candidates in one day. > Now, the thing is that you can’t just sequence a virus, do bioinformatics, synthesize mRNA and package it into a nano particle. You can, and that's exactly what was done. However, out of the 10 or so candidates, they selected a few of the more promising ones to continue research. They are fast to develop. However, there are other steps in the…
Comment linking /articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/
on “Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials”Submitted Europe's Software Problem as a story · 364 points
HN discussionhttps://berthub.eu/articles/spice.jpg
Comment linking /articles/spice.jpg
on “Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest”Submitted Long Term Software Development as a story · 312 points
HN discussion> You need to maintain at least a minimum amount of internal competency in almost all areas This is exactly what Dr. L. J. Hart-Smith wrote in "Out-Sourced Profits – The Cornerstone of Successful Subcontracting", a paper from 2001 https://techrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2014130646... See also How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out…
Comment linking /articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
on “How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?”Submitted DNA seen through the eyes of a coder as a story · 301 points
HN discussionBert Hubert, “Our amazing immune system”: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/immune-system/
Comment linking /articles/posts/immune-system/
on “AlphaFold reveals the structure of the protein universe”Submitted Practical Reed-Solomon for Programmers as a story · 229 points
HN discussionit resonates so closely with this[0] excellent article by berthubert. [0] https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
Comment linking /articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
on “Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale”Submitted Leap seconds: Causing bugs even when they don’t happen as a story · 228 points
HN discussionI really love Jesse Frazelle's[1] blog. She posts things about low-level (firmware/open-hardware/system) security. Her work is already well known here on HN[2]. A few more of my fav: The grugq (NatSec, Tradecraft, OpSec): https://gru.gq/ Pinboard (aka Maciej Cegłowski): https://idlewords.com/ Adam Aelkus: https://aelkus.github.io/ Bert Hubert: https://berthub.eu/ ____ [1] https://blog.jessfraz.com/ [2] https://news.…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are good solo developer blogs that you enjoy reading?”Submitted Useful Spy Books as a story · 217 points
HN discussion
