Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | mimsee's commentslogin

> ...cold "hostile" relation like Pakistan and India, who have learnt to tolerate each other.

..by launching missiles at each other just last year?


Yes, but I guess it was a poor example. I was thinking that technically, they aren't at war all the time. Every decade or two, they declare a war and fight each other, and then settle. In between they even talk with each other civilly.


Time to cash in?


Prices have been coming down for years in nominal terms, let alone real terms. Cg nat does everything that’s needed, there are no significant ip6 only services, there are plenty of ip4 only services, so you have to support ip4 anyway, so why bother with ip6

My company has just turned off all ip6 connectivity for its corporate laptops because it’s considered a security risk. I disagree, but I do agree that having 4 and 6 is a higher risk than 4 alone or 6 alone, and 6 alone sadly still doesn’t work reliably.

All the “promise” of ip6, direct connections etc, were lost when stateful firewalls became required and memory became cheaper than $20 a megabyte. Some bespoke old protocols don’t like ports changing, which can be a problem, but it’s a very small number and easier to work around with modern protocols than support a dual stack environment securely for the majority of places that struggle securing a single stack.


> My company has just turned off all ip6 connectivity for its corporate laptops because it’s considered a security risk.

If your corporate laptops are running Windows, then you're going against the officially supported configuration of the vendor (Microsoft):

> Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a mandatory part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and newer versions.

> We don't recommend that you disable IPv6 or IPv6 components or unbind IPv6 from interfaces. If you do, some Windows components might not function.

* https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-serve...

> Cg nat does everything that’s needed […]

Except for making it convenient for end-user to, say, play P2P video games, or host Mindcraft servers, etc.

> […] and 6 alone sadly still doesn’t work reliably.

It's so unreliable that half of all Internet traffic uses it. It's so unreliable that Microsoft has been going IPv6-only in their corporate networks (a decade ago):

* https://labs.ripe.net/author/mirjam/ipv6-only-at-microsoft/

It's so unreliable that Google is now 99% IPv6-only/mostly on their corporate networks:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTRsi6mbAWM


Everything that's needed besides letting computers talk to each other, that is.

With ipv4 you have a two tier internet. Computers talk to servers, servers talk to servers, computers can't talk to computers so every video call must be routed through a server.


I hear this as a cited as a benefit of IPv6 a lot. Honest question: Isn't this at least a privacy issue, at most a security issue? SLAAC seems like what we already have with extra, breakable steps, which doesn't effectively address the privacy issue anyway.


Where's the privacy issue?

That the server can figure out that two computers in the same house are different since your laptop and phone no longer share the same ipv4 address but instead have two ipv6 address?

Your phone and laptop can just have multiple ipv6 addresses and rotate through them regularly... as apple does by default https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/security/seccb625dcd9/...

Security? NAT is not a firewall, you need a firewall, and switching to IPv6 does not remove your firewall.

Before IPv6: The server gets "1.2.3.4:56789" for your device. After IPv6: the server gets "1:2:3:4::56" or whatever for your device. In either case, if the server makes a connection to 1.2.3.4:56789 or 1:2:3:4::56, your router sees the packet and firewalls the connection. Cool.

Want to give me a concrete example of where IPv6 is hurting my privacy or security, because I've been using it for over a decade with zero mishaps, zero privacy issues, zero security issues (to my knowledge at least)


> NAT is not a firewall,

I've only read that on HN, I've never heard this anywhere else. Since it's been a good 20+ years since my CCNA (and haven't needed to renew it since), could you please offer a real-world example where NAT is not a firewall w/ practical examples relating to 99.9% of cases of home use? I just can't get why people say this a lot here.

NAT works and passes the grandma test. If grandma buys a crappy vulnerable 40$ printer and plugs it in, even if it accepts unauthenticated stuff on every local port, you will not be able to connect to it behind NAT. So what's the difference? The only way I could think this can apply is if the ISP is compromised or criminally mismanaged, in which case you probably already have bigger problems.


> I've only read that on HN, I've never heard this anywhere else.

Well-regarded networking architect, author, and instructor:

* https://blog.ipspace.net/2011/12/is-nat-security-feature/

> NAT works and passes the grandma test.

So does my Asus with a default deny IPv6 rule on incoming connections.

You're more likely to click on a link that installs malware that attacks your network from the inside, and that attack works regardless of IPv4 or IPv6.

Treating a firewall as some impenetrable moat has not been network security practice for a decade(+), and waving around RFC 1918 address space like systems with a 10.8 or 192.168/16 can't get infected is lazy thinking. It leads to complacency: I'm behind NAT, I'm safe.


Grandma’s ISP can send RFC 1918 traffic to her router and likely be able to directly connect to every internal host. You should have learned in your CCNA training that NAT makes it harder to send inbound traffic to a system, but doesn’t by itself provide the filtering that a firewall does.


Right, I get that. I can see the ISP angle. But my question was specifically for outside attacks. Tangible, real-world threats in existing ISPs, reachable from the outside.


If we're talking tangible, real-world threats in existing ISPs, then NAT is doing nothing to protect you. In fact it's doing the exact opposite, because without NAT you wouldn't be able to connect out from your network.

Even if you want to ignore the fact that most attacks arrive via outbound connections and restrict the discussion to just inbound ones... remove NAT and the exact same set of people that could connect to you before can still connect to you, so it's doing nothing for your inbound connections.


NAT was not designed as a security boundary. Sure, it may block some kinds of incoming traffic accidentally and as a side-effect disrupt some attacks.

But why would you rather have an always-broken network that might block attackers instead of a deliberate "deny incoming" rule that does exactly what you want -- and that you can punch holes in if desired?

Instead we have apps circumventing this accidental barrier with STUN, uPNP, etc with little/no oversight and we also regularly encounter brokenness.


I agree. NAT, while occasionally limiting, was a godsend. Just imagine how the world would look if everyone out there was at the mercy of a well configured router with firewall.


I don't have to imagine, because that's how things are right now for the billions of people using v6, and it's fine.


In the early 2000s people installed ZoneAlarm on their computers and that was that.


They used to recommend using the MAC address. This was ok 30 years ago when a computer sat in an office on a desk but it makes it very easy to fingerprint a moving computer as it moves across different networks.

Using a random address (Privacy Extensions) solves this problem though, but do we expect everyone to know what that is and check it's enabled? Mine wasn't enabled by default (on Linux) and I only noticed when a bittorrent site warned me.


As mentioned by GP, Apple enables privacy extensions on all their OSes:

* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/security/seccb625dcd9/...

As does Windows (since Vista), and Android (8+).

So why are we still talking about this?


Could you publicly shame the distro that had that issue? Pretty sure it should be the default (on NixOS at least it is).


Fedora doesn’t enable privacy extensions by default, if I recall correctly.


Debian does.


Everything useful is a security issue. Security is a trade-off, not a positive stat you maximize. Every security tightening removes some utility from a system; the hope is that this disproportionally disrupts the "bad actors" over "good ones".

(All of that hinges on the key question that people seldom ask: what is being protected, and from who. The "two-tier" Internet is, in a way, pointing out a case where regular users are seen as threat actors.)


And wasn't that THE POINT of the internet and it's decentralised design?


Yes. Letting anyone talk to anyone was the point of the internet. It's been co-opted by these massive centralising forces and you know what? They're right. With IPv4 everything has to be centralised, we don't even have the faintest chance to avoid it. With IPv6 at least we have a chance to take it back.

Some people will mention stateful firewalls. They're pretty easy to holepunch through because you just need each side to send a packet to the other, then each firewall sees it as an outgoing connection and allows it. It's nothing like IPv4 NAT.


The comparison between a statefull firewall and NAT is often because they feel like they are doing the same thing from a mechanical point of view.

For example here is how to achieve the same result in PF, note the single additional operator needed to specify nat.

block in on $EXT_IF

#NAT

pass in on $INT_IF to any rdr-to $EXT_IF

#statefullfirewall

pass in on $INT_IF to any


> My company has just turned off all ip6 connectivity for its corporate laptops because it’s considered a security risk. I disagree, but I do agree that having 4 and 6 is a higher risk than 4 alone or 6 alone, and 6 alone sadly still doesn’t work reliably.

I had a very concreteish security risk with IPv6 and openvpn. At least in Debian config openvpn tunneled only IPv4 by default. I only noticed this by being surprised I got results tailored to my origin country instead of the VPN out node country.

It's eternal (dual stack) paper cuts like this why just turning IPv6 off makes life a lot easier.


About 2023 I think


Apparently they deleted the Github Actions account as it shows up as ghost in PR comments.


if that's the case, such a thing is so absurd that it goes around and it becomes almost hilarious


I would love to know how much of their internal workflows are being handled by AI workflows. Because this seems like the kind of thing your agent might do.


The team got greenlight to more tokens and the problem should be fixed soon. Fingers crossed. /s

source: voices in my head. Not affiliated with MSFT.. anymore.


it's apple maps bad


I’m in a location where Apple Maps is significantly better than Google’s. So I’m unsure if you mean ”it’s Apple Maps meme bad” or if you just mean ”it’s rather meh, could be better, could be worse”.



> When I'm typing, there's a delay, then all the letters pop up at once. You took a good phone, and you made it all shitty. It pissed me off.


Apple Maps used to direct people off of bridges and into ditches and stuff.

It’s a swell experience, now, but, the “meme” comes directly from reality.


And Google Maps literally did something very similar to me once, just a few years ago. Told me straight ahead when there was a sharp hairpin obscured by overhead bridge (literal mapping issue in unusual motorway adjacent road). Caused a crash with minor injuries I got back up and walked away from (on two wheels, would have been fatal if I didn't brake so well, or didn't get off the road fast enough, a large truck came round the corner). Takeaway is "never make driving decisions based on what the screen shows." There is no platform worth trusting more than your eyes on the road ahead.


But you can change the commit date from cli when committing? Github just shows the commit metadata, right?


If you're referring to Google Safe Browsing lists, all major browsers check agains the same list. I've managed to get mine listed there and immediately banned on all major browsers.


Not only that but I think Google listens to "cyber security" companies lists and feed from them. My website got in some of these lists (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/a4c9f166d2468f5bbb503ec79...) and I had to go through like 6-7 of them to whitelist my domain again. Something about code and input triggered something in some of these list's filters that my website is hacking related.


Aren't most Show HN's plugs to whatever they're presenting?


I mean, sure but I think it would be helpful to explain a couple of things.

How it was decided which vendor is an alternative, what were the criteria etc

How can this be kept up to date?

Can I submit missing data, if so how?

This isn't unique at all, so what sets this one apart from the others?


If you turn on showdead, you'll see OP's explanatory post.


Hard link to [dead] comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624742

[vouch] for comment, if you have that option, it got caught in the noob green comment auto-flag filter (that is easily triggered).

EDIT: now undead.


Interesting, didn't know that existed...

I would've still put it in the submission itself but that makes sense


I didn't know you could SEND mail with Hide My Email feature, but apparently this is a feature directly in the Mail app. Tapping the From in the mail compose screen opens a dropdown of possible addresses to use or create a new one with Hide My Email.


> So perhaps a better solution was to teach them to setup their own git repo in a cheap or free uni server.

And then lose access after graduating. Great idea!


Tell the students that they will receive a one week notice during the middle of the semester that they need to migrate their git repo to a new server, then teach them the 2 or 3 commands they will need to enter to do this.

They will then understand that it is extremely easy to move a git repo.


It's just an educational exercise to teach students to setup and mantain their own git server.

Obviously students don't expect to use uni servers forever. They can setup their own with the lessons learned.


Probably but I never got why that is. It seems a school could be there in all kinds of ways for the entire duration of the career.


Any Git clone is also technically a Git server, so no, they don't lose access to their own filesystem after graduating.


IMO there isn't a cookie nightmare but rather a tracking nightmare. I'm not fully up-to-date on if there is a separate EU directive on cookies on the internet specifically, but the GDPR is the _General_ Data Protection Regulation. Meaning that if I go and collect your info on pen and paper, I must then ask your permission on how I process and share that data, especially if sharing that data is not necessary to complete the main transaction but is somehow done auxiliary to the main purpose. (e.g. I buy a pillow online, my info is used to target ads for me.)

GDPR itself doesn't require consent for functional cookies. For example, Apple.com does not have a cookie consent box _at all_.

On tracking specifically, I feel there are at least two levels. One that happens in-browser by third party companies. These are your classic advertisements. The other is more first-party backend-heavy. These would be your local grocery store using your purchase history linked to your membership card and using that data to create analytics and targeted ads etc.

So creating a browser setting would likely not toggle all tracking away, just the ones that are "annoying" while browsing.


There is no legislation on cookies. The legislation is on tracking, or more generally, personal data collection. It doesn’t matter if websites use cookies or other means for those purposes.


Consider applying for YC's Winter 2027 batch! Applications are open till November 2.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: