Top all-time · #284
Daniel Aleksandersen
Personal blog · ctrl.blogsecuritysystems
Daniel Aleksandersen writes Ctrl blog, a personal blog at ctrl.blog about security and systems. Since 2017, 174 different Hacker News readers have linked it 308 times, most often “Get rid of the annoying Safari notification ads in macOS (2014)”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link it for practical privacy and security how-tos, such as Firefox First-Party Isolation, systemd service hardening and GDPR web server logs.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter calls a systemd hardening guide "a great guide"; another calls a font stack breakdown "quite a good break down".
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A personal blog mostly on everyday tech.
Most-linked posts?
- Get rid of the annoying Safari notification ads in macOS (2014)5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-08-28
- EU GDPR and personal data in web server logs5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-01-30
- First-party isolation in Firefox: what breaks if you enable it?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-08-17
- Systemd service sandboxing and security hardening (2020)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-01-14
- A survey of DNS caching and TTL in end-user client software (2018)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-03-29
- SELinux is unmanageable; just turn it off if it gets in your way4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-04-27
- Opera Unite tried decentralizing the web ten years ago4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-11-17
- You can no longer bypass microsoft-edge:// links using apps like EdgeDeflector4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-11-11
- The trouble with decommissioning a used FIDO security key4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-08-08
- Firefox Contained in Flatpak vs. Snap Comparison4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-12-19
What Hacker News says?
It reminds me the KMail bug: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/kmail-cve-2017-9604-openpgp Some security bugs exist in the Linux/BSDs kernels for a loooong time before someone notice and fix it (e.g., https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2025/DEF%20CON%2025%20pre... )
Comment linking /entry/kmail-cve-2017-9604-openpgp
on “macOS High Sierra: Anyone can login as “root” with empty password”Submitted TeamViewer installs suspicious font only useful for web fingerprinting as a story · 706 points
HN discussion> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to You might want to take a look at the Firefox Multi-Account Containers Add-on, it lets you set domains to always open in a given container, which cuts down on the micromanagement a lot once you get it "trained". [edit: This is not well-advertised, it's accessed thro…
Comment linking /entry/firefox-fpi
on “Why I’m done with Chrome”Submitted Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge as a story · 570 points
HN discussionFirst-Party Isolation https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/firefox-fpi.html
Comment linking /entry/firefox-fpi.html
on “Total Cookie Protection”Submitted SELinux is unmanageable; just turn it off if it gets in your way as a story · 491 points
HN discussionFastmail looks great, but having "Get the email features you need, without giving up your privacy" and "Your data is always private" at the top of their homepage while knowing full well that is far from the case[0,1] seems disingenuous. [0] FastMail loses customers, faces calls to move over anti-encryption laws https://www.itnews.com.au/news/fastmail-loses-customers-face... [1] Goodbye FastMail https://www.ctrl.blog…
Comment linking /entry/goodbye-fastmail.html
on “Ask HN: Gmail account security”Submitted TP-Link firmware sends six DNS requests and one NTP query every 5 seconds as a story · 485 points
HN discussionFedora doesn't even create swap partitions anymore, so you have to enable that first to enable hibernation, enabling it requires you to create a swap-partition, change things in systemd and meddle with the grub-configuration: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/fedora-hibernate.html
Comment linking /entry/fedora-hibernate.html
on “Do not leave XPS laptop in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag”Submitted You don’t want to be on Cloudflare’s naughty list as a story · 484 points
HN discussionAre you going to purge all your logs of IP addresses, since those are considered personal information too? Also if your website is ad supported in any way, are you sure they are in compliance, or will you get nailed because your ad provider wasn't completely compliant? https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/gdpr-web-server-logs "All of these logs contains personal information by default under the new regulation. IP addresses a…
Comment linking /entry/gdpr-web-server-logs
on “StreetLend.com shuts down, citing GDPR regulations”Submitted Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar? as a story · 447 points
HN discussionThe fact that it can be trivially blocked by anyone on the network path does not make it "much better". Of course anyone on the "network path" can block almost any protocol; DoT isn’t unique in that regard. The concern is many large businesses block port 853 but that's because prior to the development of DoT, there was no reason for IT departments to configure firewalls to enable it. Most organizations only have a h…
Comment linking /entry/unbound-tls-forwarding.html
on “Mozilla’s DNS over HTTPs”Submitted How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works as a story · 423 points
HN discussionKudos to Chris Hartwig for throwing in the towel and shutting it down. Here, read this blog where the author suggests that the service is free and that free account has no limitations and allows you to scan thousands of websites... appalling: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/review-sslping.html
Comment linking /entry/review-sslping.html
on “I must announce the immediate end of service of SSLPing”Submitted The 0.5 MB of nothing in all Apple Music files (2020) as a story · 407 points
HN discussionyes, for a project optimizing workflow a static page would be fitting, but with pngs or webp instead of gifs :-) appearently lossless webp steals pngs crown now that iOS and MacOS support it and the computational costs on high compression are less: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/webp-flif-comparison.html https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery2
Comment linking /entry/webp-flif-comparison.html
on “Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME”Submitted First-party isolation in Firefox: what breaks if you enable it? as a story · 347 points
HN discussionSo, Flattr 2.0 ? https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/flattr2.html
Comment linking /entry/flattr2.html
on “Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots”Submitted From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server as a story · 333 points
HN discussionFor privacy, I use first-party isolation. The effect is that all domains get their own container. In day-to-day use I haven't seen any sites that don't work with it enabled. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/firefox-fpi.html
Comment linking /entry/firefox-fpi.html
on “Firefox Multi-Account Containers”Submitted On-device browser translations with Firefox Translations as a story · 312 points
HN discussionIt looks like the answer is yes: https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/gdpr-web-server-logs
Comment linking /entry/gdpr-web-server-logs
on “How GDPR Will Change The Way You Develop”Submitted Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019) as a story · 297 points
HN discussionYou're right thats its not actually every time but neither is this Edge install thing. If you click "Later" I think it won't do it for 3 days according to this blog post [0] and I think that's still accurate. If you hit Try Now I think you get a little more time to whenever Apple updates Safari/macOS. [0] https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion....
Comment linking /entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion.html
on “What happens if you try to download and install Firefox on Windows”Submitted Systemd service sandboxing and security hardening (2020) as a story · 293 points
HN discussion> https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/firefox-fpi.html First Party Isolation is part of their quest to re-import privacy features from the Tor browser. It basically completely isolates every domain. You can look up the about:config values to enable it (they're at the bottom of the article too). IIRC I had it enabled for about a year with no breakage, but about a month ago it suddenly broke my university's login system. But…
Comment linking /entry/firefox-fpi.html
on “The Original Cookie specification from 1997 was GDPR compliant (2019)”Submitted Yahoo, AOL results biased in favor of parent company Verizon’s websites as a story · 285 points
HN discussionThis issue has been fixed by a new firmware release from TP-Link. The updated firmware changes the behavior to use ICMP pings on the local network rather than NTP+DNS requests out on the public internet. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/ntplink-fixed
Comment linking /entry/ntplink-fixed
on “TP-Link firmware sends six DNS requests and one NTP query every 5 seconds”Submitted How to take back control of /etc/resolv.conf on Linux (2018) as a story · 251 points
HN discussion
