Top all-time · #3435
Insane Coding
Personal blog · insanecoding.blogspot.comsecurityprogramming
Insane Coding is a personal blog at insanecoding.blogspot.com about security and programming. Since 2009, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “OAuth – A great way to cripple your API”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its security and systems programming posts, such as /dev/urandom usage, the case against OAuth, and portable Linux binaries. Commenters also suggest it as a programming blog to read.
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.
'coz good thinking requires going outside the box
Most-linked posts?
- OAuth – A great way to cripple your API4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-03-22
- A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-05-05
What Hacker News says?
A few links gathered from a quick google search as a primer: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=97 https://www.evanjones.ca/portable-linux-binaries.html https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2012/07/creating-portable-... https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/Portable_GNU-Linux_... https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header In other words: there are a lot of steps and a lot of gotchyas to doing this that you're gloss…
Comment linking /2012/07/creating-portable-linux-binaries.html
on “Thank You, Valve”Submitted HTTP 308 Incompetence Expected as a story · 234 points
HN discussionSome extra suggestions: - Null Program: http://nullprogram.com/index/ - Insane Coding: http://insanecoding.blogspot.com - Agner Fog's Blog: http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog
Comment linking /
on “Programming blogs”Submitted Common LibreSSL porting mistakes as a story · 185 points
HN discussionHere's all the ways this can possibly go wrong: https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-good-idea-with-b...
Comment linking /2014/05/a-good-idea-with-bad-usage-devurandom.html
on “Show HN: URL Canary – Get an alert when someone finds your secrets”Submitted A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom as a story · 30 points
HN discussionLet's review the many reasons to use something simpler than OAuth: http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2013/03/oauth-great-way-to-...
Comment linking /2013/03/oauth-great-way-to-cripple-your-api.html
on “Holy War on Sites That Demand Pinboard Passwords”Submitted A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom as a story · 10 points
HN discussionIll give you one example. Just yesterday I stumbled on https://insanecoding.blogspot.com . Interesting blog, so I opened all of the individual blog posts (~20 going back to 2007) and will spend the next ~week reading them in my spare time. If I just bookmarked instead I would quickly forgot about it. Tabs are a live TODO list.
Comment linking /
on “I have 218 browser tabs open”Submitted PATH_MAX simply isn't (2007) as a story · 8 points
HN discussion"/dev/urandom and CryptGenRandom which are known to be good" Check out "A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom" : http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-good-idea-with-ba... Just stumbled onto it in the new submissions queue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11485876
Comment linking /2014/05/a-good-idea-with-bad-usage-devurandom.html
on “An Analysis of OpenSSL's Random Number Generator”Submitted We got excellent documentation as a story · 6 points
HN discussionWhen ALSA was imported into the mainline kernel, software mixing became possible without servers and they largely died out. My experience was completely different. A few years ago, ALSA software mixing was not enabled by default and didn't work well when enabled. When not enabled, apps couldn't share the audio device at all. KDE created aRts to allow sharing at the app level, but aRts sucked, plus it hogged the audi…
Comment linking /2009/06/state-of-sound-in-linux-not-so-sorry.html
on “Switching to Linux: A Windows developer’s view”Submitted OAuth – Why it doesn't work, and how to Zero-day attack existing services as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI just read https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/11/they-actually-want... and didnt believe it. Turns out its true :o You are very lucky nobody at your company caught on yet. My suggestion is hire me as a subcontractor - I will do your job for half your wage, you will have plenty of spare time to do whatever.
Comment linking /2009/11/they-actually-want-bad-code.html
on “Ask HN: Help, I'm Drowning in JavaScript”Submitted OAuth – A great way to cripple your API as a story · 4 points
HN discussionUnfortunately, there are many ways[1] that using block devices for random numbers can go wrong. [1] https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-good-idea-with-b...
Comment linking /2014/05/a-good-idea-with-bad-usage-devurandom.html
on “Entropy Loss and Output Predictability in the Libgcrypt PRNG [pdf]”Submitted Is SHA-3 (Keccak) Already Broken? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted OAuth - A great way to cripple your API as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Suggestions not to make when starting a new programming job (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted LibreSSL porting update as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dealing with Randomness as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted OAuth - A great way to cripple your API as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Insane Coding: A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Memory management in C and auto allocating sprintf() – asprintf() as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Avoid incorrect ChaCha20 implementations as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Read a File in C++ as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
