Top all-time · #1144
James Fisher
Personal blog · jameshfisher.com · on HN as jamesfisherprogrammingsecurity
James Fisher writes Jim Fisher’s blog, a personal blog at jameshfisher.com about programming and security. Since 2017, 62 different Hacker News readers have linked it 100 times, most often “Syntax highlighters are wrong (2014)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Syntax highlighters are wrong (2014)5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-05-27
- My parents are Flat-Earthers (2019)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-04-17
- The Dots Do Matter: How to Scam a Gmail User (2018)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-05-07
- The Hacker Hype Cycle4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-03-25
- /2018/03/16/how-to-create-an-ssh-certificate-authority/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-08-08
- I hate telephones (2017)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-10-05
- The inception bar: a new phishing method3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-27
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-09-29
- The dots do matter: how to scam a Gmail user3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-04-09
- Jim scoring: a probabilistic pub quiz for nerds2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-26
What Hacker News says?
Potentially you can do more than just port scan; it's possible to use/access the servers that you have running on your local machine if they're left open. See my post about this: https://jameshfisher.com/2019/05/26/i-can-see-your-local-web...
Comment linking /2019/05/26/i-can-see-your-local-web-servers/
on “Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?”Submitted The inception bar: a new phishing method as a story · 1046 points
HN discussionHave a look at https://jameshfisher.com/2017/08/04/golang-dns-server/ DNS is actually pretty simple if you don't want to implement DNSSEC.
Comment linking /2017/08/04/golang-dns-server/
on “Build Your Own X”Submitted The dots do matter: how to scam a Gmail user as a story · 1023 points
HN discussionSounds like it could be the scam where they put in your email address and hope that you pay the bill for them: https://jameshfisher.com/2018/04/07/the-dots-do-matter-how-t...
Comment linking /2018/04/07/the-dots-do-matter-how-to-scam-a-gmail-user/
on “HBO Max accidentally sent an integration email test to users”Submitted I hate telephones as a story · 493 points
HN discussionReminds me of this experience of someone from the UK: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/05/19/granddad-died-today/ "Terminal dehydration is a way to skirt the Suicide Act, because we can claim that withholding water is just like withholding treatment. Ramping up painkillers and sedatives is a way to skirt the Suicide Act, because we can claim that the medication helps the patient cope with their death, rather than induc…
Comment linking /2017/05/19/granddad-died-today/
on “Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths”Submitted Syntax highlighters are wrong (2014) as a story · 233 points
HN discussionOn Linux, a full asm program with syscalls isn't too bad. Here's one example: https://jameshfisher.com/2018/03/10/linux-assembly-hello-wor...
Comment linking /2018/03/10/linux-assembly-hello-world/
on “Steve Wozniak's floating point routines for the 6502”Submitted How Hacker News Stays Interesting as a story · 227 points
HN discussionI just watched the talk "don't say 'simply'" the other day [1]. You're right, "simply" is wrong here. [1]: https://jameshfisher.com/2018/09/13/dont-say-simply-writethe...
Comment linking /2018/09/13/dont-say-simply-writethedocs-prague.html
on “Google Takes Its First Steps Toward Killing the URL”Submitted My Parents Are Flat Earthers as a story · 179 points
HN discussion>Maybe there should be? How do you prevent a website from faking the address bar? The only reason that you can trust address bars right now is that the website can't draw outside the content frame. There's already attacks on mobile[1] involving fake address bars because the address bar can be hidden, allowing the site to draw a fake address bar in its place. The only secure way to do it would be to opening another w…
Comment linking /2019/04/27/the-inception-bar-a-new-phishing-method/
on “Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?”Submitted A formula for responsive font-size as a story · 165 points
HN discussion> Ever wondered why facebook.com is fast no matter where you are? They provide app-level tooling to make this superpower available to everyone. They're doing that in the app? GeoDNS has been around for quite some time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoDNS or more thoroughly explained: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/02/08/how-does-geodns-work/
Comment linking /2017/02/08/how-does-geodns-work/
on “Ask HN: So you moved off Heroku, where did you go?”Submitted Hello world in C inline assembly (2018) as a story · 163 points
HN discussionI wrote about something similar a few years ago! [1] I'd be interested in hacking something together one day. I imagine it would display your Google Calendar events, in a format reminiscent of Google Calendar, but where the smallest cell is a week. 1: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/06/06/long-calendar/
Comment linking /2017/06/06/long-calendar/
on “Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace every year (2013)”Submitted The sorry state of OpenSSL usability (2017) as a story · 161 points
HN discussionI totally agree, made a while ago a snippet for Atom with syntax highlighting based on a similar article [1] that will make comments bright pink (meta-tweet with the code in effect): https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1133733608785473536 For copy/paste (in Atom -> Stylesheet...): .syntax--comment, .syntax--punctuation.syntax--definition.syntax--comment, .syntax--comment .syntax--markup.syntax--link { color: rgba(…
Comment linking /2014/05/11/your-syntax-highlighter-is-wrong/
on “Syntax Highlighting Is Backwards (2018)”Submitted Shape typing in Python as a story · 131 points
HN discussionfor those interested, there's a longer discussion of this idea at https://jameshfisher.com/2014/05/11/your-syntax-highlighter-... (2014)
Comment linking /2014/05/11/your-syntax-highlighter-is-wrong/
on “Syntax Highlighting Is Backwards (2018)”Submitted Diffing Coronaviruses as a story · 119 points
HN discussionThis is actually my beef with almost all cool looking syntax color themes for sublime, they make comments fade into the background. And imho it should be the opposite, comments should jump out at you. https://www.benkuhn.net/syntax/ https://jameshfisher.com/2014/05/11/your-syntax-highlighter-...
Comment linking /2014/05/11/your-syntax-highlighter-is-wrong/
on “Show HN: Penumbra, a perceptually optimized color palette based on natural light”Submitted The sorry state of OpenSSL usability as a story · 78 points
HN discussionJames Fisher's article titled 'I hate telephones' resonates so strongly with me on this topic: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/ (see also the associated HN comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15677560 ) You are 100% right- they are human interrupts that we're all subjected to just by virtue of forcing to interact with people and companies who refuse to use an asynchronous medium of co…
Comment linking /2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/
on “FCC plans to rein in “gateway” carriers that bring foreign robocalls to US”Submitted I hate telephones (2017) as a story · 61 points
HN discussionThank you! Yes I've shamelessly ripped off Notion in many ways :) My family are also into every kind of quackery [1], which is one reason I felt comfortable taking the piss out of homeopathy. Maybe I'll change it to a course on flat earth instead. [1]: https://jameshfisher.com/2019/01/20/my-parents-are-flat-eart...
Comment linking /2019/01/20/my-parents-are-flat-earthers/
on “TigYog”Submitted A job queue in two lines of JavaScript as a story · 57 points
HN discussion> the expectation you can immediately and synchronously interrupt any person and demand their full attention Needs to end as soon as possible. Calling on the phone is one of the most rude things someone can possibly do. https://jameshfisher.com/2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/
Comment linking /2017/11/08/i-hate-telephones/
on “David Frankel is a man on a mission against robocalls”Submitted Syntax highlighter is wrong (2014) as a story · 43 points
HN discussion
