6 ms·
A 2FA app that tells you when you get `314159` (2024)
- mmsc 2y agoDubs and I upvote. >Like all recovered edgelords who came of age in the early 2010s, I somewhat miss the heyday of image-boards like 4chan. They were the final bastion of the wild-west early internet before the nazis ruined everything. Extremely true. I don't know anywhere like those times these days. Where do the young people/trolls hang out and push to the edge of acceptance these days? Or is the culture of "getting right to the edge of getting banned but not crossing the line for lulz" and "act in a way nobody knows whether you're actually trolling or not" dead?
- jakey_bakey 2y agoThe 4channification of the mainstream is quite sad - it took all the unpleasant sociopathic politics and none of the fun! > act in a way nobody knows whether you're actually trolling or not This is basically how I market my blog :)
- pests 2y agoFind a lot of it on discord.
- sanex 2y agoI think a part of what happened has to do with >"act in a way nobody knows whether you're actually trolling or not" Some people were joking and some weren't, or were just too dim to understand that it was a joke, and then when they all showed up in Charlottesville to march. They were mostly serious except for that one poor guy who still thought it was a meme and ran away.
- jampa 2y agoThere was even an old 4chan joke for this: "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company." -Rene Descartes
- mmsc 2y agoThe amusing thing being that the original source of this is hn, not 4chan [1]. deserves a spot on https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights imo. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082
- stavros 2y agoMy god, DarkShikari... I haven't heard that name in a decade.
- hooverd 2y agoEventually, the ironic becomes unironic. If you're pretending to be an idiot, eventually you'll find yourself surrounded by actual idiots. Or bigots.
- gbalduzzi 2y agoInstagram reels. There is a ton of content with dark jokes, black humor, very provocative content and even "nazi" memes and people send it to each other to laugh about it. Those reels usually have very few likes / comments but A TON of sends. I personally am on multiple group chats where we only send each other those kind of memes. The thing is, instagram being a huge echo chamber. Before you have no idea those exists, and once you are in you see a ton of those
- chatmasta 2y agoThe echo chamber on Instagram is deep. Even when there are a ton of comments, they’re sorted beginning with the most “relevant” (i.e. worldview affirming). So if you’re viewing a controversial video, you’ll see comments echoing your own beliefs, and others will see the opposite. You’ll both move onto the next video thinking “wow, everyone agrees with me!” I deleted instagram last year and haven’t reinstalled it. Those reels are so addicting. I’m glad I never installed TikTok because I imagine it’s just as bad. I still suffer from YouTube Shorts but at least the mobile web UI is janky enough to eventually push me out of its trance.
- wongarsu 2y agoTikTok has the same issue. Two people can see the same video, come to opposite conclusions, and only see comments that agree with them. TikTok is maybe the last bad echo chamber of the big short video platforms: stitches encourage some sort of debate and expose you to snippets of opposing view points, and the algorithm gives you at least a chance of finding new types of content you also like. But it's only the least bad, it's still very bad. Especial once you factor in your own confirmation bias and the comment algorithm
- Workaccount2 2y agoInstagram is a special level of degeneracy. That is an app made for the masses. I never used tik tok, but youtube shorts gives me actual quality content while instagram feels like its gunning for a mix of reality TV, post 2005 history channel, and animal brain fondling. Although I will admit that Instagram has their advertising insanely dialed in. The content is gross junk food but the ads I have actually clicked before.
- ivan888 2y ago> Dubs Not sure if anyone else noticed the item id of this comment does indeed end in 88?
- jakey_bakey 2y agoDubz get!!!
- dpedu 2y agoParticularly ironic since it mentions nazis...
- probably_wrong 2y agoI want to argue that there are some rose-tinted glasses at play. /b/ (which is what most people think of when they think about 4chan) has been considered "no longer good" since at least 2006 [1], probably earlier. And even by that time they were already organizing raids and causing real harm to communities, both online and offline. I'm not sure that it's 4chan the one who has changed but rather that the world got a lot more connected [2]. A 2010 edgelord may say "pool's closed" while a 2025 edgelord may say "it was a Roman salute", but the spirit behind is probably the same. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:4chan/Archive_4#Death_of_/b/_due_to_fame https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:4chan/Archive_4#Death_of_... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-internet-users https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-internet-users
- ToucanLoucan 2y agoAll of this 100%. And on a more personal level, while I had a grand old time as a 3edgy5me t(w)eenage boy on the early, "free" internet, that time has left me with numerous mental scars I carry with me every day. - Thanks to shock sites, for showing me things a 13 year old kid really should not be seeing, and I wish I meant something as banal as pornography. I'm still occasionally haunted by images I've seen to such a degree where I have to take short breaks at work to compose myself. - Thanks to political discussion boards, which turned important, real life issues and global problems that have genuine life or death stakes for people who weren't me into an alternative to sports that also let me pretend I was in any way intellectually superior to my peers for simply being willing and able to regurgitate conservative political propaganda that I barely comprehended. - Thanks to the entire thing, for helping me nurture a shut-in mentality, that other people were too much work to be worth it, that my peers were dumb and not worth my time, that they wouldn't understand me at all and so involving myself in school was completely pointless, ensuring I would have no social life or skills whatsoever when I graduated high school and later college. Instead you gave me an entire other world of similarly uninformed, loud assholes to live in that would completely dissolve by the year 2009, leaving me 20 years old with no idea who the fuck I was, or what I believed in, ripe for recruitment into reactionary politics that would make me an insufferable douchebag for the next 10 years or so until I managed to pull my head out of my ass.
- Goronmon 2y agoCommunity size and reach plays a big part in this. Aside from the the whole "Am I trolling as a racist or am I a racist trolling?" issue, communities get away with a lot more when they are smaller, more insular and more hidden from the public. Once the community starts to bleed out beyond the immediate site, you start to run into issues. Not just because the jokes and content are spreading, but the attitudes behind those jokes. And those attitudes (even if they make up just a portion of the users) have a tendency to not be great. I think a perfect example of this would be what happened on Reddit with the /r/antiwork subreddit. As soon as the community got too large and started spilling into other areas of the site, the cracks started to show. Culminating with the interview by one of the mods (?) on Fox News I believe. All of a sudden a chunk of the users are questioning "Wait, this is who I'm siding with?" and then the only people left are the people who aren't bothered.
- mmsc 2y agoWell said, and I think it extends to many communities which are founded on negativity of some sort: eventually people move on, except for those so-filled with negativity, it is all they have.
- bbor 2y agoOr is the culture of "getting right to the edge of getting banned but not crossing the line for lulz" and "act in a way nobody knows whether you're actually trolling or not" dead? Yup, among the sane! If there are any bastions left, we’re working on eradicating them. Honestly kinda baffled someone could type this sentence with the implication that this is a good thing…
- mmsc 2y ago>Yup, among the sane! If there are any bastions left, we’re working on eradicating them The communities of trolls trolling trolls have been replaced by larger communities of nazis training nazis to attack and terrorize. Thank you for eradicating the former, paving way for the latter.
- bbor 2y ago…I really don’t think Nazis are taking over because of a lack of bad faith Internet discussion.
- square_usual 2y ago> Where do the young people/trolls hang out and push to the edge of acceptance these days? Discord. It's all underground. The public internet is hostile to it, everyone has had to built their own spaces.
- mise_en_place 2y agoThey're still around, they just happen to be on X/Telegram. Roughly speaking they're in two camps: Groypers and BAP-adjacent Yarvinites. I suppose both are "Nazi" in the sense they are anti-intellectual and anti-egalitarian. Some are paid. Some do it for free. I don't see much of an equivalent on the left, maybe extreme far left Zizarian types or femcel/misandrists.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 2y agoThere's a very good video series that deconstructs "The Alt-Right playbook", with respect to how they exist between other communities, recruit new members, rhetorical argument, etc. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLJA_jUddX...
- rosstex 2y agoNo one noticed that you did, in fact, get dubs
- notorandit 2y agoAnd not telling when you get 271828? Racist!
- jakey_bakey 2y agoHonestly making it configurable for birthdays would be pretty neat
- lxgr 2y agoThe obvious solution here is to discover an important natural or mathematical constant that happens to match your birthday in its first six digits.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- a_tyler_ 2y agoThat’s a fun little Easter egg! It’s always cool to see small details like this that add some personality to otherwise routine tasks. Makes me wonder what other quirky things could be hidden in security tools without compromising functionality.
- jakey_bakey 2y agoThe password manager that... writes very short puns!
- jonas21 2y agoI love Easter eggs -- but security tools are the last place I want them showing up. Like do you really want to entrust your TOTP secrets to a random app by a guy you've never met just to get some fun push notifications?
- hiatus 2y agoTOTP seeds are only useful if you have the account they are associated with. How would the 2fa app by some random guy discern the identity associated with the seed?
- TZubiri 2y agoIt's not even worth the thought.
- jonas21 2y agoTo add an item, you scan a QR code. That QR code usually contains the name of the service and your username. For example, the format of Github's QR code is: otpauth://totp/GitHub:[username]?secret=[secret]&issuer=GitHub
- jakey_bakey 2y agoYeah this seed is what’s stored on Keychain
- 2y ago
- beny23 2y agoGiving a random app your 2FA secrets? Raises eyebrow…
- jakey_bakey 2y agoFeel free to network proxy and check I’m not being cheeky - I have another blog post about that ;)
- freehorse 2y agoWhat if one bad actor does it not initially do that, but only after the app has enough users, with a random upgrade? Not that _you_ would do that, of course. But it makes sense that people are wary about where they trust their TOTPs. Some time ago people were locked out of their TOTPs because some guy bought their app from its creator and turned it into ransomware having them pay to not lose their codes.
- jakey_bakey 2y agoYeah that’s fair to be honest, at least until my blog starts pulling enough money to not be worth destroying my reputation on a rugpull
- TZubiri 2y agoIt's just a lot of downside for almost no upside, cool idea though. Maybe it can be repurposed for some kind of rng app, like a dice app for dungeons and dragons or stuff like that.
- from-nibly 2y agoYeah that's all of open source. Only thing that would separate this from any other open source totp app is how popular it got OR if that open source app was funded by a for profit company like bitwarden is.
- Matumio 2y ago
- TZubiri 2y agoCute, but ultimately cute features are not compatible with a critical security application. If it had been developed as a feature of an existing application maybe it would fly (and probably even not there). But as a third party app, or even a third party library that needs to be added to the security supply chain? Not a chance for any serious business.
- zamadatix 2y agoThis calls me heavily towards the quoted note about halfway through: "Does nobody make apps for fun anymore?"
- jakey_bakey 2y agoI feel like sometimes I’m the only person in the world not shipping ultraniche paywall aso slop
- mckn1ght 2y agoThis doesn’t mean every app has to be fun. If I want to have fun, I’ll go play with something specifically built for fun. If I’m balls deep in an incident and suddenly my MDM security policy login TTL expires and I have to reauthenticate, the last thing I want to see is yet another interstitial with some cutesy BS to nuke my working memory.
- TZubiri 2y ago"interstitial" Sidetrack but this is interesting wording, what do you mean exactly? As in some software that is accesory to other software? Or something that you have to access while moving between software?
- geoffpado 2y agoUsually this means something in between steps inside a single piece of software. As in “interstitial ads”, which play, e.g., between levels of a game. In context, I think this means that GP doesn’t want to see something pop up and celebrate in between the steps of requesting a new OTP and actually being able to use it (such as copying it). (Also, for the record, since I’ve had people argue with or downvote me just for expounding on someone else’s point: this is not an endorsement of GP’s opinion, only an explanation.)
- remram 2y agoComplete tangent: "voila" is French for "here it is", but "viola" is French for "raped". Careful using foreign words if you're not sure you can spell them.
- mog_dev 2y agoNot exactly, its the 3rd person of passé simple
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> "voila" is French for "here it is" I thought it was French for "look at that" (or I guess, literally, "look over there").
- jakey_bakey 2y agoScare bleu!
- tedunangst 2y agoWhat if I want someone to look at my big violin?
- xandrius 2y agoViola also means purple/violet or the instrument. Let's try to be more chill about people making typos, nobody, even a fluent French speaker would read it as "raped". Only someone with a keen eye for drama and being a nuisance.
- remram 2y agoI very much meant it as a nitpick. This is a single comment labeled as a tangent, how is it "drama"? Chill.
- Dylan16807 2y agoThey weren't accusing you.
- jmholla 2y agoI think this is a bad idea and insecure. Obtaining a code needs to be an intentional effort and not just available to someone who happens to be screen surfing my phone at the right time. It's worse that it's on the lock screen as it seems the author does based on their screenshots. Lose your phone, and your passcode will not protect someone from using your codes.
- lxgr 2y agoI think it's a great idea, but definitely very insecure, yes. Don't load your actual TOTP credentials into it, obviously.
- jakey_bakey 2y agoTo be clear, you don’t see the account details in the notification, just the number, and can’t even read it until unlocking the device
- neilv 2y agoI have one of those time-based number hardware fobs, with the 6-digit 7-segment LCD display, which I'd guess I'd actuated less than 100 times, yet on one such actuation, it displayed 1-2-3-4-5-6. Maybe because the whole mode when using it is infosec, my snap first thought was about how this is highly unlikely and is someone messing with me. My next thought was to run to get a camera from the other room, regardless of whatever is going on. By the time I got back with a camera, and just barely missed photographing the display, I realized that someone compromising my airgapped self-contained hardware fob was even more unlikely than this number sequence coming up randomly within 100 actuations. And, like this article points out, there are many "unlikely" numbers that might come up, so the chance of any of them is not as unlikely as it would first seem until you thought about it.
- cdelsolar 2y agoI was driving my wife's car a few years ago when I managed to look down and see that the temperature was 55 degrees, and the odometer read 55,555. For a split second I couldn't believe my eyes; what are the chances?
- ipaddr 2y agoBased on NOAA weather data, a rough estimate for the probability of experiencing exactly 55°F at any given time in temperate U.S. cities is around 2-5% on average
- neilv 2y agoThat this-can't-be-correct reaction can be useful in emergencies, if it gets your attention, and activates a mode in which you can focus and act decisively in an instant. I once was applying a spray-can anti-slip treatment to a bathroom floor, when I might've heard a whoosh, looked up, and had a thought (that I remembered afterwards as) "fire shouldn't be coming from that direction". From the adjacent room, there was this flash fire shooting across the floor at me. That got my attention, and activated an emergency mode, parts of which I had no recollection. I somehow leapt backwards up onto the tub edge in an instant. Then the floor was on fire and lapping at the walls of the small bathroom I was in. The next thing I knew, I'd leapt over the flame, into the next room, somehow gotten the fire extinguisher from inside a cabinet, and was putting out the fire. Which worked nicely. Then, I guess, as that mode was winding down, without really thinking about it, I put the exhausted fire extinguished back in its spot in the cabinet. As I went to call the fire department to check out that there were no lingering problems. (Turned out that the floor treatment application also emitted a highly flammable gas, which rolled across the floor, into the next room, until it hit the pilot light in an old nat-gas oven.) Now, if we had an adrenaline reaction every time we saw unlikely numbers, that would be a problem. But, however the cognitive scientists deconstruct it, I'm fond of having what I'll call a good emergency mode feature.
- scarlehoff 2y agoI felt real joy reading this, thanks :) As someone starting to feel a bit of burnout I think I needed to read something like this.
- jakey_bakey 2y agoThis was 100% the most fun I’ve ever had coding anything. I was missing my tube stop levels of engaged
- johnisgood 2y agoSo... can I get 314159 by setting the time_step and start_time to a specific value? (With either hash algorithms like SHA-1 or SHA-512).
- dvektor 2y agoLove it :) Glad to hear there are others who appreciate things like this
- from-nibly 2y ago> I knew I was onto something: 90% of the people I explained this to thought I was a moron. The other 10% saw only sheer brilliance. This is the water witching stick of divine knowledge.
- rossant 2y agoYou need an option to send a notification whenever the code appears in the decimals of pi. /s
- jonwinstanley 2y agoEnjoyed this - didn't realise how those codes were generated and could be done relatively easily