Top all-time · #1572
NeoSmart Technologies
Company blog · neosmart.net/blogsystemsprogramming
NeoSmart Technologies is the company blog at neosmart.net, writing about systems and programming. Since 2008, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 324 times, most often “Namecheap takes down domain hosting video archives of Israeli war crimes”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link NeoSmart pages on HMAC-signed tokens as an alternative to storing reset tokens in a database, plus EasyBCD boot-loader notes and a diskpart wiki how-to.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Namecheap takes down domain hosting video archives of Israeli war crimes4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2026-01-01
- Decoding Base64 attachments in Epstein files4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-02-07
- Life in a post-database world: Using crypto to avoid database writes4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-02-15
- An Overview of the BIOS/MBR Boot Process3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-01-25
- Firefox 3 is Still a Memory Hog3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-06-04
- Let’s stop punishing IoT devices that embrace HTTPS3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-08-28
- Recreating Epstein PDFs from raw encoded attachments3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-04
- Limitations in rust's type system when it comes to supporting commutative mathe3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-23
- Show HN: Windows 10 window switching (macOS style)2 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2017-03-15
- iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)2 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2018-02-12
What Hacker News says?
> you can activate a fresh install with the key that's stored in the laptop (in ACPI tables IIRC). Free tool we developed to quickly grab that key: http://neosmart.net/OemKeyTool/
Comment linking /OemKeyTool/
on “Show HN: Privacy-focused, ad-free, non-tracking torrent search engine”Submitted iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018) as a story · 376 points
HN discussionDisclaimer: @yegg, if you're reading this, I'm posting this rant with love. I am so disappointed with DDG recently, it has adopted Google's strategy of returning searches that have nothing to do with your query if not enough results were found [0], and dialed it up to 11. If "I" "don't" "put" "each" "word" "in" "quotes," the results I get have nothing to do with my search... but if I do that (apart from the inconven…
Comment linking /blog/2016/on-the-growing-intentional-uselessness-of-google-search-results/
on “Google has added DuckDuckGo as a search engine option for Chrome users”Submitted Life in a post-database world: Using crypto to avoid database writes as a story · 256 points
HN discussionI’ve been blogging at https://NeoSmart.net/blog/ for fifteen years. I started off with whatever strikes my fancy and had no problem posting frivolous one or two paragraph posts but as it gained popularity I found myself raising the bar for what qualifies as a good enough post until I can’t post more than once a month or so, and posts have gone up in length and substance exponentially, especially when you take into a…
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results as a story · 150 points
HN discussionBecause LastPass is beyond stupid and uses your master password to log in to their bbulletin or whatever php forum. That’s what got me to write and publish this: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/a-free-lastpass-to-1password-... EDIT: "or whatever" means I couldn't remember the name of the php forum notorious for its insecurity, I thought it was something like 'bbulletin'. It was phpBB.
Comment linking /blog/2017/a-free-lastpass-to-1password-conversion-utility/
on “Ask HN: How did my LastPass master password get leaked?”Submitted The Case for a Git-Powered Project Gutenberg as a story · 117 points
HN discussionYou totally can store sensitive passwords in your source code repo, just so long as they're encrypted. Here's how we do it: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/securestore-a-net-secrets-man... SecureStore is designed to be repo-friendly, it purposely avoids needless IV/payload regeneration, is based in plain text, and preserves element order to avoid driving source code managers crazy.
Comment linking /blog/2017/securestore-a-net-secrets-manager/
on “GitHub commit search: “remove password””Submitted A rant about some of the nice things in the NT kernel as a story · 116 points
HN discussionShamless plug: SecureStore, our .NET secrets manager: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/securestore-a-net-secrets-man... I'm drafting a writeup and will post it to HN when that's ready. Other secrets managers I've seen posted to HN seem far too overcomplicated, at least for our company's needs. This is a step up from reading secrets from a plain text file, but not so complicated that you need a separate docker image ru…
Comment linking /blog/2017/securestore-a-net-secrets-manager/
on “GitHub commit search: “remove password””Submitted Tell HN: Couldn't Sleep Last Night, Wrote a (No-Flash) HTML5 Viewer for YouTube as a story · 110 points
HN discussionSo, really, new touchbar aside, the MBP doesn't really bring much to the table at all, does it? It's a device for pros... who already have the keyboard shortcuts for the same actions the touchbar provides long since memorized. I thought this was supposed to be a MacBookPro event - but it seems like it should be called the Apple touchbar event, really. I personally found the suggestion that taking my fingers away fro…
Comment linking /blog/2016/apples-best-newest-macbook-pro-still-has-only-16gb-of-ram/
on “MacBook Pro”Submitted The ARM, the PPC, the x86, and the iPad as a story · 62 points
HN discussionIf you’re a Verdana fan, you might appreciate this write up I did on it some years back: https://neosmart.net/blog/tahoma-vs-verdana/ It backs what you say!
Comment linking /blog/tahoma-vs-verdana/
on “Atkinson Hyperlegible Font”Submitted Google Goes Renegade, Creates Own OpenID Fork as a story · 46 points
HN discussionHey, what do you know. We just released this last month, but it didn't get any love from HN: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
Comment linking /blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
on “Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence”Submitted Open Letter to CNet (RE Bundleware) as a story · 33 points
HN discussionYou are most welcome. Thank you for taking the time to leave that comment, it actually means a lot. It often seems as if certain content or research that takes months or years is met with nothing more than a 'meh' when published if it isn't applicable to the current fad-of-the-day :) If you found that comment insightful, you really should read this: https://neosmart.net/wiki/mbr-boot-process/ Cheers!
Comment linking /wiki/mbr-boot-process/
on “LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware”Submitted Let’s stop punishing IoT devices that embrace HTTPS as a story · 30 points
HN discussionI (see footnote) started off hating the UEFI because it changed everything for me and others working with bootloaders, but at this point I'm just ambivalent about it. It trades one set of problems for another. The biggest problem is with shoddy implementations and poor development/engineering practices by hardware and software vendors (I have some devices lying around from R&D that brick themselves if the ESP is era…
Comment linking /EasyRE/
on “LinuxBoot: Linux as Firmware”Submitted Is Twitter Actively Censoring and Blocking Searches for #flotilla? as a story · 26 points
HN discussionAgreed on intentional obfuscation. It even has booby traps. https://neosmart.net/blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/
Comment linking /blog/2018/imessage-for-windows/
on “It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage”Submitted Windows 10 Embedded Product Key Tool as a story · 23 points
HN discussionWhen running X on a previous Debian version, it was possible to edit the synaptic settings to prevent accidental touchpad touches when typing (along with a lot of other settings to make the user experience excellent). Now running Wayland on Debian 11/Bullseye (with Gnome), there are only a few possible simple settings (that I can find), and so I have continual issues with window de-focussing due to accidentally touc…
Comment linking /blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/
on “Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gestures Now Shipping”Submitted Gmail Vulnerability Reveals Private Info, Emails, Contacts as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI wrote a (userland) general purpose and driver/hardware-agnostic multitouch daemon w/ gesture support for Linux that works with the existing input stack (i.e. doesn’t require switching to libinputy but also supports it), if anyone is interested: https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux... https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture The biggest benefit is that you can use drivers with actually correct a…
Comment linking /blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux/
on “Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gestures Now Shipping”Submitted If Chrome doesn't look native, why does the toolkit matter? as a story · 19 points
HN discussionPresuming it's OK to share own site: after countless iterations and lots of suggestions and feedback from HN and others, we're pretty happy with ours: https://neosmart.net/EasyRE/ Tells you what it does, tells a story, and then takes you right to the action. And it converts well for the market it serves. Feel free to tell us what you think still sucks about it, constructive criticism > positive feedback.
Comment linking /EasyRE/
on “Ask HN: Examples of great landing pages?”Submitted Modern C++ isn't memory safe, either as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
