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trog's haus
Personal blog · trog.qgl.orgprogrammingsystems
trog's haus is a personal blog at trog.qgl.org about programming and systems. Since 2020, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-06, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly link this blog's 'Why your anti-spam idea won't work' checklist, citing it as a reference in discussions of spam, identity and proof-of-work schemes.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/10 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2020-03-17
What Hacker News says?
After writing a response about using this for games below, it occurred to me that most tunneling solutions have one or more fatal flaws that prevent them from being "the one true" tunnel. There are enough footguns that maybe we need a checklist similar to the "Why your anti-spam idea won’t work" checklist: https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo... I'll start: Your solution.. ( ) Can't punch thr…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Dumb Pipe”Submitted A Random Solution to 100% CPU Usage in Windows as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThe usual checklist for anti-spam ideas applies.[1] Some minor fixes to implementations might help, though. - Mail forwarders and the SMTP server side of receiving servers should, when possible, forward immediately, making a connection to the next node while holding the incoming SMTP connection open. Pass back errors immediately as SMTP errors if at all possible. Phone to phone emails should be as fast as SMS. - Sam…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Thinking out loud about 2nd-gen email”The problem with identity is summarized in the "why your anti-spam idea won't work checklist"[1] We still don't have a solution to identity that prevents generating large numbers of fake identities, doesn't cost each user money, and doesn't require a central authority. Blockchain systems are a demo of this. A blockchain just needs some number of players who are independent and not colluding. That ought to be simple,…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?”Software does suffer from obvious defects. Though you may not get total agreement on what those obvious defects are, you would get some substantial agreement at the same time. One of the major effects in software right now is that we pour such a staggering amount of effort into our current forms and patterns that it can create an overwhelming barrier to "better ideas", because there's just no way that even a much be…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Bicycles for the mind have to be see-through [pdf]”Have you seen this: https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo... ? You're proposing a legislative change, and bots in the US, Russia, China, whatever can care less about the acts of the EU parliament. I also don't see how EU solves issues with CAPTCHAs. Anonymous CAPTCHAs are allowed in the EU.
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “CAPTCHAs: 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service'”https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/... ...and the requisite checklist: https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo...
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “A thought on JavaScript "proof of work" anti-scraper systems”Not sure. It's one of those "the solution to everything is a market" fixes. See the "The “Why your anti-spam idea won’t work” checklist.[1] [1] https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo...
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Telegram bot provides time-based сurrency”sigh refer to https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo... In this case, proof-of-work is proof-of-waste.
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Ask HN: Why isn't email spam solved using Proof of Work yet?”I went through the same path as you - I think I even landed up with 14 takeout files as well! Its a bit of a trial, but quite doable. Its likely that things have improved since I did it about 6 months ago. *Getting the files from takeout* I tried downloading the files onto my laptop via a browser, and then copying them over to my NAS, but quickly gave up. The best approach is to download them directly to the NAS. As…
Comment linking /20241001/downloading-a-google-takeout-file-with-curl/
on “Immich v3.0.0 Released”The usual answer: The “Why your anti-spam idea won’t work” checklist. [1] If you can create identities at zero or modest cost, no majority-vote scheme will work. Amusingly, what does work is Second Life. Space keeps everything from being in the same place. You can shout at most 100 meters, and the 3D world is the size of Los Angeles. There's no broadcast system built in. Jerks are a local problem. Local landowners c…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Trust-Based Moderation Systems”https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo... "Specifically, your plan fails to account for: (X) Extreme profitability of spam"
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Elon Musk announces more changes to X”Nicely done! For completeness, this refers to a 20+ years old meme that went around, specifically related to why anti-spam solutions would not work. [0] [0]: https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo...
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “Make people pay to get into your inbox”Because using technology to solve human problems rarely/never works. [1] was originally written for spam and bore mostly correct. Explain how replacing spam with “AI-generated spam” changes anything? You can try to fight this stuff but it will look more like AI to detect AI (similar to our current anti-spam tech). No reason to believe cryptography has some kind of magical bullet here as it’s an unrelated problem dom…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “AI: Markets for Lemons, and the Great Logging Off”This strikes me as a well-meaning project which has utterly misconceived both the source of the problem, and its solution. Apologies for length. I'm thinking that privacy solutions need their own version of the "why your anti-spam idea won't work" checklist, which would be shorter... < https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo... > I've written a bit on the hierarchy of failure, or reversing the s…
Comment linking /20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wont-work-checklist/
on “What does it mean for users to be in full control over their data (draft) [pdf]”
