skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: What to do when a botnet is requesting password resets?
Hey there HN, I'm currently having an issue on one of my accounts where, what seems like a botnet, is constantly sending password reset requests on it. This has been going for more than a week now.

I have contacted the service in particular (part of GAFAM) and their account security department told me there is nothing that can be done in this case and I should just disregard the emails.

I now ask you, HN, what can _we_ as developers, do to prevent this from happening on our services? Limit the amount of password reset requests for an account? (still doesn't solve the issue), etc.. As I, genuinely, have not managed to come up with a solution.
Absolutely yes, if you have only been working with langs such as C, Java, Javascript etc. Basically it will fundamentally shift your thinking.

Honestly though, I prefer ocaml much more than haskell because it has a cleaner syntax.
Abuses such as this infuriate me, and I typically have a very low tolerance for them now.

Any business that is causing trouble at my expense still gets one polite attempt to contact them via their preferred means and a reasonable chance to respond, but usually only one. I'm not hanging around on the phone for more than a few minutes or waiting more than a couple of working days for a substantial response to an online message.

My next contact is normally now a recorded delivery letter sent to their registered address, which here in England is something any business with the typical legal structure must have as a matter of public record and where mail sent to it must be read. I set out my grievance, what I want them to do about it, and often at this point some compensation I want for the problem and/or subsequent trouble getting it dealt with, in a form that can become the start of a formal legal action if necessary.

This strategy has generally been enough to get whatever the problem was resolved reasonably quickly and without any further messing around. I suspect this is because anything that turns up in that form and is potentially relevant to a real legal action automatically gets passed to the business's legal team to deal with. The legal team presumably then has both the awareness to recognise a legitimate grievance and the authority to do something about it rather than let it escalate.

I don't like that this seems to have become necessary to get a reasonable response from a lot of large businesses today, but fortunately for all of us in my country, there isn't actually any obligation to play by the business's rules in a dispute if they're giving us the run-around.
> Immigrants starting businesses aren't doing it on H1-B visas.

Because it's very difficult. Even then Zenefits' co-founder (Laks Srini) started on an H-1B.[1]

What's that saying? "Entrepreneurship uh...finds a way."

1. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2852250/silicon-valley...
What to Know About the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre
Nationalism is rampant and leaking through in this thread. “English” sucks, replace with ______ native tongue is better. Someone posted a thread about cost of their neighborhood road renovation project and immediately an Australian tells the thread that America feels like a third world country from a sample size of exactly 1. I am not even American.

Everyone is getting tribal. Humanity is splitting apart with infighting even on a highly intellectual community as HN.

Folks, please try to be civil and self-introspective, especially if something you say perhaps is hypocritical or fuels your own nationalistic pscyche. Seek truth - the language nature understands, not our evolutionary tribalism and cultures.
What does RP exactly do that you can't do in Figma? With the right plugins and component libraries, I dare say that Figma is definitely more powerful than Axure's offering.
No, just the opposite.

His schools have had issues, because the schools were meant to be sandboxes for the students to get real world experience, and try things which may or may not work. The fact that the schools have become landmarks after his death has nothing to do with Wright's design philosophies.

If you look at Wright's own house, it incorporates lots of clever ideas in terms of engineering more rugged forms which will hold up over time (like molding profiles that are designed to be coped from multiple directions to keep joints in place, and stained glass patterns that lend themselves to 'hiding' extra reinforcement on one side where the structure will be invisible to the beholder, for example).

Here are my pics of his house when I went through it last time I was in Chicago. I tried to get as many such above examples as possible...

https://imgur.com/a/ontIR
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23546695
IIRC Comcast also does this. They tell you your account is canceled and then you start getting charged extra. A facet of giving pay based upsell targets to desperate call center staff.
It's not supposed to be believable - quite the opposite. The entire point is that it's an artifical example to demonstrate irregularities.
Users have a platform choice but they have no choice in where to get software for their hardware.
Very likely they're using military psychological training.
The rules of engagement they adopt against citizens don't seem that different from those used by soldiers in enemy territory. The complete lack of empathy towards human life reminds of the depersonalizing of the enemy that helps soldiers remain efficient and detached while they slaughter their "targets".
For that matter, even more important than the manuals are the speeches by their instructors; I would like to see the videos and what indoctrination techniques they use during training. A cop can't turn himself into 9/10 of a psychopath just by reading books.
And of course I would push for mandatory drugs and steroids abuse tests for all of them.
This is really obvious and not that remarkable. Replace English with your own mother tongue, German, I guess? And then ask the same exact question to non-native German speakers. The reason why you can't see that is because you're unaware of proficienty of your own mother tongue. Everyone is.
meh.

as a thinkpad user, i almost always used any random screwdriver i had around, as long as it fitted.
What Is Web Accessibility and Why Does It Matter?
Life expectancy may have been that low, but overwhelmingly due to infant mortality. It's not like primitive humans were dying of old age in their 20s.
Adding a rate limit to the number of password reset emails in a given day or hour is trivial.

SELECT count(*) FROM account_reset_tokens WHERE accountid = ? AND (NOW() - created) < '1 hour'::interval

if ($count > 3)
throw new RateLimitException();

You could also restrict based on IP, but that doesn't specifically help with the botnet.

That's what developers can do. What developers should do is consider what prevents their customer support funnel from getting overloaded.
So when you're in an ambulance having a medical emergency, you'd be OK with being asked a question like that? And having to worry about whether the answer might affect the quality of care you receive?

Not everything about "my feels" is without consequence. Try and be a human being. Have some empathy.
Then they make a choice to buy the more open platform if that’s more important to them. I can’t whine because I can’t get software from XBox Live for my PS4
Not quite infinite, but consider that the K numbers go up to 626. If you disallow the misattributed pieces that's
still around six hundred complete pieces of music, all written in long-hand, many fully orchestrated, some lasting hours, all written in the thirty years or so that Mozart was active, with many considered classics of their type.

Take off time for travel and other disruptions - of which there were many - and that's an insanely productive schedule.
I once downgraded my Virgin package, the online support was helpful and let me know which department to ask for and exactly what to request. Once on the phone I think I was forwarded on about 3 times before I got the right person. From that point on it was really painless. I think it took about 20 minutes in total? All I wanted to do was drop down to the lowest speed package and stop paying for the landline phone service I was never going to use.

I now have the opposite problem, I'd like to upgrade my package and get a higher uplink speed, but the website just throws a generic error if I try to view upgrades available to my account. I'm not bothered enough to pick up the phone yet.
How about something counter-intuitive: lower the limit? There is a built-in hard limit imposed by the structure itself. Set the marked limit to something well short of that, like 8 feet. Then add very obvious soft barriers like light swinging bars to indicate the lower boundary. That would encourage anyone driving anything that might actually hit the hard limit to take an alternate route. (Of course, that means there actually needs to be a realistic alternate route.)
because people care about the ecosystem and that has real monetary value to all three (consumer, seller, marketplace)
It sounds like we are in more agreement than it seemed - for a full throated defense of thinking over execution, I like Rich Hickey’s talk “Hammock Driven Development” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
If I lived there a long time, I still wouldn't be Japanese. Look, it's definitely an emotionally charged issue the longer someone has been in a place, but that doesn't change the basic facts. We can discuss the merits all day long but not the legitimacy of the government to decide who can and cannot stay.

For the purposes of this debate, "Americans" means citizens and those that can vote, the ones to whom the government answers.
Having infinite pan/zoom is a very exciting, you always have free room to write new things! I made BigPicture a few years ago for this purpose. Live demo: https://josephernest.github.io/bigpicture.js/index.html

Note: I never did a mobile version, so it only works on desktop; same for the website https://bigpictu.re/demo
Thanks for the honest reply.

Nim interests me but this nil business seems questionable to me.

Just found this comment from the language creator,

https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/6638#issuecomment-487...

"We need the nil state to disarm pointers but that only means these can be nil and so would require a nil check before deref. Doesn't seem to be too hard nor too cumbersome."

Seems a bit dismissive to me
I've always heard that his designs and concepts are great (that's my opinion too), but the actual construction quality was lacking.
> Unless it can be proven that he provided sub-par care because I was a foreigner,

If the patient has an adverse outcome and it comes out that a question like this was asked, you can bet someone will try to convince a jury that that was the case. You think the ambulance company wants to waste months or years in litigation?

At best, the paramedic was a moron asking a pointless question in an emergency situation. And alienating the patient, potentially worsening their condition. As an employer, I'd put them on a PIP immediately.

At worst they've opened up the company to a multi-million dollar suit.
>> That's why simple, clear signage helps.

> But the bridge is signed, isn't it?

But is it done clearly?
I think it's going to be hard to build an audience with a paid newsletter from the start. It seems like you should write for free + Patreon. As you build your email list and audience you can then start including non-intrusive ads or your own offers, for example an ebook. Eventually once your audience is large enough, you can add a premium list and convert your existing, already highly targeted audience.

Nathan Barry has a book called Authority which basically talks about this.
Thanks for that perspective. I understand that it can appear unfair for someone whose ancestors had to build everything from scratch, to watch folks start leading a luxurious life, right from the moment they land here.
And this is why consumers like Apple’s iOS subscriptions.
Tangential curiousity: Does anyone here have or use the .aero TLD?
The most feared words for most users in modern software "it's a new design that will likely become the default, it's currently possible to disable it just because there are a few bugs remaining."
It's a huge bridge, right in your way.

What more do you really think they should do?

Why is anyone driving underneath a bridge without carefully checking the height.

If the height isn't clear, why don't people stop rather than just ploughing into it.
This is why consumers like easily-cancelled subscriptions, which iOS implemented. It was important to implement easy cancellations on iOS to show how you can cancel any time so you're not being defrauded when small utilities, kids games etc discretely charge $500/year with Apple's approval. It's your fault for not canceling the subscription that costs 200x more than the app did last year.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/07/12/predatory-ios-app-subscri...
> Research, analyze, digest, and then execute.

I mostly disagree. Too many people (including myself) get sidetracked with tasks that are not actually “doing the real thing” as the article says. For low risk activities, making mistakes is important. Semi-relevant: one term for wantrepreneurs is “making house” where they give the appearances of building a business without actually doing so.

For some riskier tasks, there are obvious “real“ steps to perform before doing the real thing e.g. doing a SCUBA course before using an aqualung. Or getting advice when buying your first home.

For many tasks, just doing it is far more successful e.g. learning a language by speaking it with people that have that language as their first tongue. Listen to people who have learned English as a second language, and so many mistakes are due to learning from reading rather than just speaking (babies learn languages naturally, and adults can too, but most adults follow the standard crap techniques which screws their language learning, especially trying to learn to speak by following rules and reading written material).

While doing anything, it is important to mix in introspection, videos, books, and training. Repetitive practicing without feedback ingrains mistaken habits into our minds: habits which are extremely difficult to correct later e.g. I have skied a lot but I still make habitual errors learnt as a child. If you are using learning techniques while applying them, the material sticks in your mind and you can take what is relevant.
In the UK, use this: https://www.aa.net.uk/

I'm not affiliated with them in any way. They just have a great reputation for good technical knowledge, privacy, and support.
Any of the popular text-mode browser will do it, afaik (links, lynx, w3m) since it's already pretty much part of their functionality. Calibre might be able to do it, as well as exporting many other formats.
Nothing is harder than cancelling internet service, with the possible exception of cancelling a gym membership.

In order to cancel Mediacom's 'service,' I had to send a letter[1] to them, with copies to their general counsel, threatening 99 kinds of lawsuit. I made the letter intentionally deranged, complete with footnotes about financial BDSM, to give them the impression that I would actually do it. They cancelled the account. It was pretty fun to ignore the panicked calls from their lawyers for a bit too.

Once I had to cancel an entire credit card to get out from under a gym membership.

[1] https://gowder.io/pgmediacom.pdf
We've tried to downgrade our Virgin Broadband but never managed to succeed no matter how many times we tried to call. They ask for some passwords, which they are suppose to send by mail but never send it; they ask to verify our identity but always find some reason why they couldn't verify (despite having full access to our account). Every time it's 15-20 min wait in the phone, every time different new BS from a different operator, it's quite infuriating.

Eventually, our contract expired and got auto-renewed to a more expensive one (because the one we were on didn't exist anymore). So every month we're paying for something we don't need, like TV etc, and we don't have a choice because there's only Virgin where we are.
Don't stop submitting! Some of what you write is excellent, and I regularly upvote each one the first time it's submitted. I do think it belongs here, and I honestly don't understand why it doesn't regularly hit the front page.

It's just that you submit the same thing over and over. Submit it once. If after a few days it hasn't got many votes, or your analytics show it didn't get many visits, submit it again at a different time of day.

If it still doesn't get many votes or comments, then go back to writing and submit the next thing. But also find other stuff in the same line and submit that as well.

There's no need to stop submitting, just re-read the FAQ and the guidelines, then re-think your tactics. And for goodness sake don't think it's worthless garbage. As I say, I've upvoted nearly everything you've submitted. I just wanted to say that submitting the same item over and over again is not in the spirit of HN.
> It’s more money for Apple

I'm not sure that would be true with a share of revenue set at 6%. Maybe 15% or 20%
Actually, there's a "good faith" (aka. "ignorance of the law") exception for cops. So even a lawyer might not be able to save you.

https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/search-and-seizure...

>A mistake of law by a police officer sometimes can trigger the exception. If an officer takes steps based on the existing interpretation of the law, but a court later rules that the law should be interpreted differently, they may be found to have acted in good faith.
You should whine because you can't get my PS4 software on your PS4. Even if you wanted to get my software, there is no way for you to do that without Sony's approval.

So if Xbox suddenly became an open platform, you'd be ok with me telling you "well if you want my software you just have to buy an Xbox and get all new software for it and learn an all new system, but they're totally the same thing so it's fine".
John Ritchie was my high school English teacher! After I chose something about computers as a topic for some essay, he asked me if I knew what Unix was. I did not.
I've been looking for something like this for ages.. Thank you!
When I cancelled my home braodband contract a while ago (because I was moving), I eventually ended up with a debt collector after me because they had kept billing me. They had also disconnected me, connected someone else at the same property with the same cable, billed them and been paid by them, so they were not only billing me after I had cancelled, they were billing twice for the same connection. I tried csalling their customer services to sort it, they were no help. Eventually one of their agents admitted there was nothing they, or anyone else I could call with a publicly available number, could do.

(Edit: I forgot, I had also sent recorded delivery mail about it, but got no response).

I eventually got it resolved by finding the number for the CEO's secretary or someone, and harassing them about it until they got it sorted.

Now, the same thing has happened with Virgin Media Business at work (I cancelled because it was always going down, including the PSTN phones, the service was awful and we no longer need it - we had it before I joined, they have been billing us for months after we cancelled).

Worst ISP ever.
For Australians:

https://www.tio.com.au/

Don't be afraid to use the TIO. ISPs get away with way too much crap here, and you'll find all your problems (I'm looking at you Telstra) are magically fixed extremely quickly once the TIO are involved.
IRC, Slashdot, niche communities hosted on phpnuke instances, free/open source software. The early 2000s convinced me the power of sharing knowledge freely online would solve many of society’s problems.

I still can’t reconcile just how wildly wrong i was. I didn’t appreciate that it’s not common to want to know truth, common is titillation and tribalism - which always existed anyway, it’s not that the internet increased it or made it more popular, it’s that i was a geek hacking away in my bedroom and didn’t see much of real society.

Although my biggest hangup contrasting then vs now is that Microsoft is my favourite tech company these days.
Definitely don't let them run their script and mess you around.

Personally, I tend to start any call with a customer support person with something like "Hello, I'm calling about an existing account, would you like the account number?". Almost invariably, they will say yes and then do a couple of checks to confirm my identity for data protection purposes.

At this point they know exactly who I am, and they probably ask why I'm calling. If I'm asking to change or cancel something, I state that immediately, so now they have a record of both my identity and my request.

By now, I'll also have a pretty good idea of whether I'm talking to a human being who is interested in helping me or some call centre automaton who's just going to be awkward and stick to a script.

If they then try to give me the run around, I just repeat that I've informed them of my details and my wish to change/cancel, if necessary state that I'll be cancelling payment authority accordingly, and then tell them I'm ending the call.

If possible, I'll also keep a recording of the call (which is legal in my country) but at the very least I'll make an immediate written record of the time of the call, who I spoke to, and what was said.
Actually actually, now you can use any old USB cable, even the charging cable that comes with the Quest works for Link. The quality is a bit reduced on USB2.0 but honestly still totally fine.

The thing that most amazes me about how well this works is that I can actually get a great experience rendering remotely on a cloud pc (Shadow, 350 miles away) using VirtualDesktop or one of the other streaming solutions.

So there's a bit to be said for both approaches. But as far as the hardware goes, a decently powerful standalone device is still necessary for a lot of local operations such as view reprojection or frame interpolation that is necessary to make the remote experience usable.
The Sultan's gift was improperly given, no person can own the cultural heritage of a country.

The statue of liberty wasn't an archeological find to begin with.
Would consumer protection help with this situation?
also ZGC and Shenandoah
Yes, Moore's law is hitting its limits: For example 5nm distance equals like about 25 silicon atoms. That's like: Quantum electron tunnelling will ruin your life.

So if we want increase our chip's performance any further, we need a fundamental change in our technology. And since silicon atom is 210 pm big and carbon atom (graphene is made from carbon) is 170 pm big, we need to change our architecture as shrinking transistors will not be possible anymore. I mean CISC/RISC, drop x86 support and so on.
I remember once seeing a commercial for an 'online virtual credit card' website/company? Quick online search tells me there are many providers out there.

As far as I know you can create virtual credit cards on the fly and use them to pay. So you could have one with which you pay your Streaming Subscription, one with which you pay for Cable, et cetera and their pitch was exactly this: You can destroy the virtual credit card and there is no fear of any fees whatsoever, so when you cancel some subscription or something...

I didn't follow up at that time, but made a mental note. Has anyone any experience with such services? It's funny that the 'fear' of cancellations not working and being charged 'unlawfully' was the main pitch in the commercial I've seen. Also funny: Cable and Mobile Phone providers are the same devils in the US than in Europe it seems ...