Top all-time · #1070
Simson Garfinkel
Personal blog · simson.netsecurityhardware
Simson Garfinkel's personal blog at simson.net covers security and hardware. Since 2008, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 73 times, most often “The Unix-HATERS Handbook [pdf]”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- The Unix-HATERS Handbook [pdf]11 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2010-08-20
- Burning a Magnesium NextCube (1993)9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-08-09
- Burning a NeXT Magnesium Cube9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2009-11-06
- The Unix Hater's Handbook4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-07-12
- The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-03-29
- /ref/1994/coppersmith94.pdf2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-09-27
- SBook Is Simson Garfinkel's Address Book2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-08-25
- /hacks/cubefire.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-27
- A study of disk sanitization practices2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-02-06
- /ref/NeXT/nextworld/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-09
What Hacker News says?
It just won’t torch the same (1). (1) https://simson.net/ref/1993/cubefire.html
Comment linking /ref/1993/cubefire.html
on “Steam Machine”Submitted The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf] as a story · 214 points
HN discussionSee chapter 7 of the Unix haters handbook from 1994, which was linked here the other day: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf The amazing thing about Wayland is that it's taken over 25 years to happen. Over those 25 years, X has become less of a problem as CPU speed and RAM have grown exponentially, and we now have GPUs to help it too.
Comment linking /ref/ugh.pdf
on “OBS Studio: Open-source software for video recording and live streaming”Submitted Burning a Magnesium NextCube (1993) as a story · 122 points
HN discussionhttps://simson.net/clips/1990/1990.Computerworld.GNU-Softwar... This 1990 Computerworld article mentions that Lotus compiled all their Unix applications with gcc. Given the timeframe involved, this likely means early gcc 1.x and supporting tools
Comment linking /clips/1990/1990.Computerworld.GNU-Software.Aug-6..pdf
on “Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux”Submitted Burning a Magnesium NeXT Cube (1993) as a story · 98 points
HN discussionHave you ever looked at previous apps in that space? Esp. Simson Garfinkel's sbook? https://simson.net/ref/sbook5/ which was _way_ ahead of the whole "AI" thing... Still regretting not keeping a copy of the Windows binary...
Comment linking /ref/sbook5/
on “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell”Submitted Burning a NeXT Magnesium Cube as a story · 96 points
HN discussionThey also (poorly) implemented address recognition in their app --- c.f., an application which had this at its core: https://simson.net/ref/sbook5/ (and the source of which is available)
Comment linking /ref/sbook5/
on “Apple squandered the Holy Grail”Submitted The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf] as a story · 81 points
HN discussionYeah, that's what I meant (and couldn't properly articulate). So the difference is the reporting mechanism, that allows a powerful organisation to make meaningful threats to protect others? Because in [Garfinkel 2003] it's similar: returning users get a big, fat warning, but they can't meaningfully do anything about it on their own, except not trust the other side. ( http://simson.net/clips/academic/2003.DGO.Garfink…
Comment linking /clips/academic/2003.DGO.GarfinkelCrypto.pdf
on “Heartbleed should bleed X.509 to death”Submitted "Steve Jobs' New Machine for the '90s: the NeXT Computer" (BYTE magazine) as a story · 45 points
HN discussionActually the NeXT cube pioneered the prior art of computer hardware exploding into a inextinguishable conflagration of flames. Apple just refined and popularized the technology by making it much easier to ignite, without requiring additional peripherals like a MAP gas torch. https://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html
Comment linking /hacks/cubefire.html
on “My 2015 MacBook Pro Retina Exploded”Submitted NeXTSTEP Programming (1993) [pdf] as a story · 41 points
HN discussionA while ? You must have never read the UNIX-HATERS Handbook ( http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf ), which should be required reading for any unix fan, along with the Plan9 design documents (cat-v.org). In this case, "the X Windows disaster" chapter seems most appropriate. Feel free to ignore the VMS fanboys, though. And yes, I am a dedicated unix (OpenBSD) user.
Comment linking /ref/ugh.pdf
on “Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland”Submitted Burning a NeXT Cube as a story · 33 points
HN discussionTo learn the basics about NFS, read chapter 14 of the Unix haters handbook” ( http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf ) ”By design, NFS is connectionless and stateless. In practice, it is neither. This conflict between design and implementation is at the root of most NFS problems. File systems, by their very nature, have state. You can only delete a file once, and then it’s gone. That’s why, if you look inside the NFS code, y…
Comment linking /ref/ugh.pdf
on “Killing processes that don't want to die”Submitted Burning the Magnesium NeXT Cube as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis story is kind of true, but is missing some detail. The first differential attack on DES broke up to 15 rounds, that is correct [1]. 2 years later, however, the same team broke the full 16 rounds, albeit with a hefty amount of chosen plaintexts [2]. Coppersmith disclosed the DES design choices a year after that, showing that the S-boxes had been changed to increase resistance to differential attacks, in 1994 [3]…
Comment linking /ref/1994/coppersmith94.pdf
on “Million Dollar Curve”Submitted Story of Lotus Improv as a story · 3 points
HN discussionyeah, needs a strong heat source if it's a block. E.g. it's tricky to ignite a NeXTCube even with a blowtorch: https://simson.net/ref/1993/cubefire.html
Comment linking /ref/1993/cubefire.html
on “My Tungsten Cube (2019)”Submitted SBook Is Simson Garfinkel's Address Book as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor nostalgia's sake, I just went and found Gardner's RSA article. It was from 1977 - I was 10 (by which stage I was almost certainly grabbing the magazine from Dad as soon as he'd finished reading it). Notable quote: "For example, to test a 130 digit odd number for primality requires at the most (that is when the number is actually prime) about 7 minutes on a PDP-10 computer." http://simson.net/ref/1977/Gardner_RSA…
Comment linking /ref/1977/Gardner_RSA.pdf
on “How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers (2019)”Submitted Burning a magnesium NeXTCube as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLink for anyone looking for the Unix haters handbook: http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
Comment linking /ref/ugh.pdf
on “Anti-foreword to the Unix haters handbook by dmr”Submitted Remembrance of Data Passed: A Study of Disk Sanitization Practices (2003) [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> But NSA doesn't want arbitrary weaknesses; it wants NOBUS backdoors The NSA's handling[1] of differential cryptanalysis suggests they could consider an entire analysis technique to be (pseudo-)NOBUS. If they believed they were the only people that knew of a new cryptanalysis technique, I could see them recommending a cypher that is weak to it. (This is only a hypothetical concern. I have not studied the specifics…
Comment linking /ref/1994/coppersmith94.pdf
on “Linux Cryptography: Speck's real standing with the academic community”Submitted The Unix-HATERS Handbook [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDon Norman wrote a similar essay titled "The Trouble with UNIX" in 1981 [1], where he praised UNIX as an "elegant system", but criticised its commands for their "incoherent, inconsiderate design". The greatest surprise actually is that Unix still lives on, warts and all. The frustrations I experienced in the paper were real and still exist today [1987]. In a similar vein, but also quite entertaining, is the UNIX-HAT…
Comment linking /ref/ugh.pdf
on “We Who Value Simplicity Have Built Incomprehensible Machines”Submitted A study of disk sanitization practices as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
