Top all-time · #2000
semicomplete
Personal blog · semicomplete.com/blogsystemssecurity
semicomplete is a personal blog at semicomplete.com about systems and security. Since 2008, 37 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “SSL handshake latency and HTTPS optimizations (2010)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jordan Sissel's (semicomplete) tool pages such as keynav and xdotool, and posts on SSL handshake latency, DNS hijacking and shell tooling. Two comments explicitly praise the writing.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- The SSL handshake latency article is called very well-written, and another commenter found a linked post an interesting read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- SSL handshake latency and HTTPS optimizations (2010)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-05-20
- KeyNav – Rapid pointer movement with keyboard5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-02-11
- /bin/false is not security4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-09-16
- Xdotool - fake keyboard/mouse input, window management, etc4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-05-04
- DNS Redirection and how it will break things3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-09-23
- keynav - retire your mouse3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-05-02
- Keynav – retire your mouse2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-06-21
What Hacker News says?
> There are so many things that the command line can't do -- GUI commands, window switchers, and so on. Check out "xdotool": https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/
Comment linking /projects/xdotool/
on “Learning to code vs. learning to automate”Submitted /bin/false is not security as a story · 140 points
HN discussionNobody has mentioned keynav[0] yet. "It lets you move the pointer quickly to most points on the screen with only a few key strokes." With some software or web pages you're better off with this kind of workaround than installing browser plugins or configuring the software, especially if you use them infrequently. Another tip: use ' in firefox to search for links when the focus is not in a text area. For instance, typ…
Comment linking /projects/keynav/
on “Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment”Submitted /bin/false is not security (2005) as a story · 110 points
HN discussionFex is your new best friend! https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/fex/
Comment linking /projects/fex/
on “Awk As A Major Systems Programming Language, Revisited (2018)”Submitted Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure as a story · 100 points
HN discussionI wouldn't game with it, but keynav ( https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav/ / https://github.com/jordansissel/keynav ) is pretty great.
Comment linking /projects/keynav/
on “Retro Compaq LTE Laptop Powered by Raspberry Pi”Submitted Thoughts and a crazy prediction on ipv6 as a story · 35 points
HN discussionThis is very cool. Not the tasydrive, your "keynav" http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav/
Comment linking /projects/keynav/
on “Hashify: what becomes possible when one is able to store documents in URLs?”Submitted SSL handshake latency and HTTPS optimizations (2010) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionhttp://www.semicomplete.com/projects/tastydrive/
Comment linking /projects/tastydrive/
on “Hashify: what becomes possible when one is able to store documents in URLs?”Submitted SSH Security and You - /bin/false is *not* security as a story · 7 points
HN discussionYou sound like someone who'd like keynav http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav
Comment linking /projects/keynav
on “Way Cooler tiling window manager”Submitted /bin/false is not security as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is even more so if your site is served over HTTPS given the latency for the initial SSL handshake[1]. Even better not to load anything and have it properly cached on the client side. If you do it right you don't even have the client send/receive an HTTP 304. For our app we have a lot of modular dependencies but we serve all of them from a unique prefix per build (eg. 'assets-SHA(build)/js/foo.js'). The second p…
Comment linking /blog/geekery/ssl-latency.html
on “Show HN: Minified.js – a fully-featured, 4K alternative to jQuery and MooTools”Submitted fex – flexible token-field extraction as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIn order to implement https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav/ (or anything else that listens for a specific key combo to activate)
Comment linking /projects/keynav/
on “Why Is It So Hard to Detect Keyup Event on Linux?”Submitted Xdotool - fake keyboard/mouse input, window management, etc as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYep. There also is dxargs which looks very useful http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/distributed-xargs.h...
Comment linking /blog/geekery/distributed-xargs.html
on “GNU Parallel - build and execute command lines from standard input in parallel”Submitted KeyNav – Rapid pointer movement with keyboard as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've gone so far as to create a separate autossh user with separate key, with no shell access (by setting the user's shell to /bin/false). It still permits tunneling (call ssh with -N), but does not allow shell sessions. Perfect for when you want to access remote systems via a remote tunnel but do not want to give shell access on the relaying machine to the tunnel origin. It trusts that the machine originating the t…
Comment linking /articles/ssh-security/
on “SSH tunnelling for fun and profit: AutoSSH”Submitted Keynav – retire your mouse as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTake a look at this article which measures handshake latency versus encryption latency, it's very well-written: http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/ssl-latency.html : Anyway. The point is, no matter how fast your SSL accelerators (hardware loadbalancer, etc), if your SSL end points aren't near the user, then your first connect will be slow. As shown above, 22ms for the crypto piece of SSL handshake, which means…
Comment linking /blog/geekery/ssl-latency.html
on “False Start: Google proposal reduces SSL handshake to single round-trip”Submitted Grok and automatic log pattern discovery as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf someone is interested, the same can be accomplished on X by using xdotool [1]. http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/
Comment linking /projects/xdotool/
on “Terminal Window Manager for OS X”Submitted keynav - retire your mouse as a story · 1 points
HN discussionA working demo is here: http://urly.stackgeek.com/C2v . Author of Logstash is here: http://semicomplete.com .
Comment linking /
on “Bootstrap Based UI for Logstash (Open Source Splunk)”Submitted Debugging SSL Handshake Latency as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMy two points were unrelated. If it's a simple HTML site - who cares? A simple HTML site with < 100KB of content and < 15 resources to fetch isn't a bit deal anyways. Two or three seconds to a user on a mobile device isn't unreasonable. If the site is more complex, the SSL handshake most likely isn't your bottleneck. I found this[1] to be an interesting read. [1]: http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/ssl-latency…
Comment linking /blog/geekery/ssl-latency.html
on “Add SPDY support to your Apache server with mod_spdy”Submitted When all you have is a hammer, make your own tools? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
