joepie91

Don't use VPN services.

No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.

Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.

• A Russian translation of this article can be found here, contributed by Timur Demin.
• A Turkish translation can be found here, contributed by agyild.
• There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.

ionelmc

*.cbor
*.log
*.xml
*.yaml
*.json
*.msgpack
*.html
*.marshal
*.pickle
.tox

mnot

Edward Snowden at IETF 93

Edward Snowden answered questions after a showing of CITIZENFOUR at the IETF93 meeting; this is a transcript of the video recording.

For more information, see the Internet Society article.

• Introduction
• Scale of Pervasive Monitoring
• Returning to the US
• Preserving the Internet

koreno

Prebase

git-prebase improves on 'git rebase -i' by adding information per commit regarding which files it touched.

• Each file gets an alpha-numeric identifier at a particular column, a list of which appears below the commit list. (The identifiers wrap around after the 62nd file)
• Commits can be moved up and down safely (without conflicts) as long as their columns don't clash (they did not touch the same file).

Installation

Add the executable to your path and git will automatically expose it as

ttsiodras

   #
   # I inherited a large code base, where hundreds of code paths end up
   # calling "common_function_called_in_gazillion_places". 
   #
   # And the need arose for this function to access the HTTP request's
   # headers... 
   #
   # What to do? Refactor all the places leading up to here? In a dynamically
   # typed language, with no compiler to tell us the places to refactor?
   #

chrismdp

# You don't need Fog in Ruby or some other library to upload to S3 -- shell works perfectly fine
# This is how I upload my new Sol Trader builds (http://soltrader.net)
# Based on a modified script from here: http://tmont.com/blargh/2014/1/uploading-to-s3-in-bash

S3KEY="my aws key"
S3SECRET="my aws secret" # pass these in

function putS3
{
  path=$1

imjasonh

* {
    font-size: 12pt;
    font-family: monospace;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: black;
    cursor: default;
}

adewes

To use this bot:

• Download ads_bot.py and requirements.txt.
• Type pip install -r requirements.txt to install the requirements.
• Fill out the required information in the Python file.
• Ideally, create a (free) Slack account and set up a web hook to receive notifications from the bot.
• Run the script :)
• Relax and be ready to answer incoming calls :D

drkarl

Linux Backup Solutions

I've been looking for the best Linux backup system, and also reading lots of HN comments.

Instead of putting pros and cons of every backup system I'll just list some deal-breakers which would disqualify them.

Also I would like that you, the HN community, would add more deal breakers for these or other backup systems if you know some more and at the same time, if you have data to disprove some of the deal-breakers listed here (benchmarks, info about something being true for older releases but is fixed on newer releases), please share it so that I can edit this list accordingly.

Amanda (comments by sammcj)

• It has a lot of management overhead and that's a problem if you don't have time for a full time backup administrator.

mpasternacki

FreeBSD on a MacBook Pro

Since 2008 or 2009 I work on Apple hardware and OS: back then I grew tired of Linux desktop (which is going to be MASSIVE NEXT YEAR, at least since 2001), and switched to something that Just Works. Six years later, it less and less Just Works, started turning into spyware and nagware, and doesn't need much less maintenance than Linux desktop — at least for my work, which is system administration and software development, probably it is better for the mythical End User person. Work needed to get software I need running is not less obscure than work I'd need to do on Linux or othe Unix-like system. I am finding myself turning away from GUI programs that I used to appreciate, and most of the time I use OSX to just run a terminal, Firefox, and Emacs. GUI that used to be nice and unintrusive, got annoying. Either I came full circle in the last 15 years of my computer usage, or the OSX experience degraded in last 5 years. Again, this is from a sysadmin/developer ki