Top all-time · #3038
Dmitry Frank
Personal blog · dmitryfrank.com/articles · on HN as dimonomidprogrammingsystems
Dmitry Frank's personal blog at dmitryfrank.com covers programming and systems. Since 2015, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 110 times, most often “Reliable, Secure and Universal Backup for U2F Token”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dmitry Frank's posts on security keys, especially backing up U2F tokens and passwordless login, and his project pages for Nerdlog and Geekmarks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Reliable, Secure and Universal Backup for U2F Token5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-08-15
- Mocking time and testing event loops in Go4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-05-18
- How I ended up writing a new real-time kernel (2015)3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-12-27
- Nerdlog: Fast, multi-host TUI log viewer with timeline histogram3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-04-21
- Indent with Tabs, Align with Spaces3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-06-15
- I'm tired of makefiles3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-12
- Show HN: Geekmarks: An Open-Source, API-Driven, Geeky Bookmarking Service2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-02-14
- Why not improve error handling in our Go projects?2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-26
- Treating Email More Like a Password Manager2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-19
- Let’s Run Lisp on a Microcontroller2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-07-18
What Hacker News says?
"Indent with tabs, align with spaces" (e.g. [1]) would be my strong preference in a perfect world. In addition to its "ethereal" benefits, some languages which support HEREDOCs have nice "tab ignoring" versions (e.g. <<-). That said, in the imperfect world we live in, I always use spaces. "Indent with tabs, align with spaces" is obviously not rocket science, but its just too opaque unless you have a strong code revi…
Comment linking /articles/indent_with_tabs_align_with_spaces
on “Developers who use spaces make more money than those who use tabs”Submitted Why I love Go as a story · 241 points
HN discussionWith a sufficiently programmable hardware key, yes, you can back up the secrets. See an enumeration of methods in [0]. Be careful if you plan on doing this; make sure the tradeoffs make sense to you. You probably want to do the programming from an airgapped, trustworthy Linux machine. Beware that if you do this and lose your primary key, or if it is stolen, then an attacker can impersonate you. Setting up multiple u…
Comment linking /articles/backup_u2f_token
on “Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support for FIDO Standard”Submitted How I ended up writing a new real-time kernel (2015) as a story · 194 points
HN discussion> We're still getting users that want hierarchy though. I'm not sure what I want to do here. Have you considered hierarchical tags? As an example: https://dmitryfrank.com/projects/geekmarks/article I use it for my bookmarks, and I find it is a suitable balance between having some kind of hierarchy, while allowing for resources to be classified under several categories.
Comment linking /projects/geekmarks/article
on “Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)”Submitted How I ended up writing new real-time kernel as a story · 157 points
HN discussionOne of the main drivers for spaces is alignment, which you should never attempt to do with tabs (except in contexts which normalize tabstops, which generally excludes programming). Aligning within a line can and should be done with spaces. There's good reasons against alignment in such cases -- for example, it creates git blame/git diff noise when reformatting due to having to update alignment on a bunch of other li…
Comment linking /articles/indent_with_tabs_align_with_spaces
on “Tabs slower than spaces in Firefox”Submitted Let’s Run Lisp on a Microcontroller as a story · 135 points
HN discussionWe played with RIOT for a couple of months. For our current product, (and I would think a lot of IoT apps), power is king. We run on batteries, and getting back to idle/low power states as often as possible is crucial. I've found that a lot of the embedded RTOS often have tickless modes as an "add on." We had problems getting RIOT to a happy point with that for our chip (samd21). Like some of the other commenters, I…
Comment linking /articles/how_i_ended_up_writing_my_own_kernel
on “RIOT: Operating System for the Internet of Things”Submitted Object-oriented techniques in C as a story · 113 points
HN discussionUSB/NFC tokens and phones/computers are all "loseable". There are cool ideas about backup tokens https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/backup_u2f_token but IMO they can't be the only way to sign in, there should be some way to restore access from nothing (I guess my specific paranoia is about being locked out :D) There are many specific auth "factors": - valid signature from an extrernal hardware token (U2F/WebAuthn via…
Comment linking /articles/backup_u2f_token
on “Let’s talk about PAKE”Submitted Mocking time and testing event loops in Go as a story · 103 points
HN discussionI definitely intend on playing around with this later! I see that [gzipped log archives aren't supported]( https://dmitryfrank.com/projects/nerdlog/article#depends_on_... ), minimizing the use case for me personally. You've at least thought enough about that to bring it up as a limitation you think people will call attention to -- any plans to eventually support it?
Comment linking /projects/nerdlog/article
on “Show HN: Nerdlog – Fast, multi-host TUI log viewer with timeline histogram”Submitted Show HN: Geekmarks: An Open-Source, API-Driven, Geeky Bookmarking Service as a story · 96 points
HN discussionre: your thread. Today the backup practice is to enable 2 keys in all accounts: one that you keep with yourself, the other that you leave in a safe. There's been some experiments of creating copies of the master secret, e.g. [1]. Today you can do so either w/ u2f zero or with its upgrade solo hacker (note the hacker version), but we currently don't support it officially. My personal advice as of now is to always hav…
Comment linking /articles/backup_u2f_token
on “Firefox enables deprecated Fido U2F Support for Google Accounts”Submitted Bulgaria Freelance Taxes: Detailed Breakdown as a story · 88 points
HN discussionLocation: Europe Remote: Yes, as a contractor Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Go, C, C++, Assembler, Low-level, Embedded, RTOS, JavaScript, SQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Linux, Git, Bash, Docker, Ansible Résumé/CV: https://dmitryfrank.com/dmitry_frank_resume.pdf Email: mail@dmitryfrank.com Hi, my name is Dmitry. I'm a passionate software engineer with strong background in low-level (MCU real-time kernels, C, Assemble…
Comment linking /articles/oop_in_c
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2017)”Submitted How JavaScript closures work under the hood as a story · 83 points
HN discussionIn principle, there is a way for you to have U2F backup keys. Here's a great write-up https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/backup_u2f_token The basic idea is to have two U2F devices with with the same device_secret but one of the devices (the backup) is pre-programmed to add a large offset to the so called counter value. Upon login the service must check the counter value and ensure that the received value is greater th…
Comment linking /articles/backup_u2f_token
on “A future without passwords”Submitted Reliable, Secure and Universal Backup for U2F Token as a story · 46 points
HN discussionLocation: Europe Remote: Yes, as a contractor Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Go, C, C++, Assembler, Low-level, Embedded, RTOS, JavaScript, SQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Linux, Git, Bash, Docker, Ansible Résumé/CV: https://dmitryfrank.com/dmitry_frank_resume.pdf Email: mail@dmitryfrank.com Hi, my name is Dmitry. I'm a passionate software engineer with strong background in low-level things (MCU real-time kernels, C, A…
Comment linking /articles/oop_in_c
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2017)”Submitted I'm tired of makefiles as a story · 35 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK, Remote Hi, my name is Dmitry. I'm a passionate software engineer with strong background in low-level (MCU real-time kernels, C, Assembler), and experienced in higher-level technologies as well: Go, C++, JavaScript, and many others. Author of the well-formed and carefully tested real-time kernel for 16- and 32-bit MCUs: TNeo: https://github.com/dimonomid/tneo , which is now used by several companies. Ap…
Comment linking /dmitry_frank_resume.pdf
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2018)”Submitted How I ended up writing a new real-time kernel as a story · 30 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK, Remote Hi, my name is Dmitry. I'm a passionate software engineer with strong background in low-level (MCU real-time kernels, C, Assembler), and experienced in higher-level technologies as well: Go, C++, JavaScript, and many others. Author of the well-formed and carefully tested real-time kernel for 16- and 32-bit MCUs: TNeo: https://github.com/dimonomid/tneo , which is now used by several companies. Ap…
Comment linking /dmitry_frank_resume.pdf
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (June 2017)”Submitted Unit-testing embedded C applications with Ceedling as a story · 22 points
HN discussion> An attacker in possession of the primary device can increment the counter, making the primary still working In the article I explain how to make it impossible to just "increment the counter" of the primary token, see this section: https://dmitryfrank.com/articles/backup_u2f_token#caveat_wit... > In crypto, keys are secrets, the rest can’t be relied on for security. First, there's no 100% security in the world: it'…
Comment linking /articles/backup_u2f_token
on “Reliable, Secure and Universal Backup for U2F Token”Submitted Show HN: Vim: Convenient Code Navigation for Your Projects as a story · 12 points
HN discussionLocation: Europe Remote: Yes, as a contractor Willing to relocate: No Technologies: Go, C, C++, Assembler, Low-level, Embedded, RTOS, JavaScript, SQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Linux, Git, Bash, Docker, Ansible Résumé/CV: https://dmitryfrank.com/dmitry_frank_resume.pdf Email: mail@dmitryfrank.com Hi, my name is Dmitry. I'm a passionate software engineer with strong background in low-level (MCU real-time kernels, C, Assemble…
Comment linking /articles/oop_in_c
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2017)”Submitted The story of writing reliable real-time kernel as a story · 11 points
HN discussion
