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How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

blog.skullsecurity.org

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Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#21

Post by forgottenpass »

dang wrote: post #12
forgottenpass wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN moderators edit submission titles so that they match the submitted articles. Except in the cases where they arbitrarily change it to their liking. Like turning "laid off" into "let go."

We don't change titles arbitrarily and we certainly don't euphemize. Turning "laid off" into "let go" sounds like nothing we'd do, and there's nothing like it in the logs, so I don't believe we did this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8973023

Did the user edit it? I remember commenting at the time bacause I had two tabs open to the same discussion opened some time apart from each other and the title was different on them.

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#22

Post by iagox86 »

detaro wrote: post #7
joosters wrote: post #6

The crossed out '2025' in the timeline is bizarre. Have I missed some joke here, or does the author not like to use the delete key?

Probably fixed it after publishing the article, and wants to keep corrections visible?

This. Somebody pointed out my typo on Twitter. :)

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#23

Post by iagox86 »

pja wrote: post #10
tom_walker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, its a joke. vendors take a long time to respond, sometimes :-)

I used to work with the author of dnsmasq - I’d be surprised if he sat on a vulnerability report the way some larger vendors do.

Yeah, it was a fixed typo, not a tongue-in-cheek comment. :)

The vendor responded with a fix within hours!

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#24

Post by iagox86 »

joosters wrote: post #6

The crossed out '2025' in the timeline is bizarre. Have I missed some joke here, or does the author not like to use the delete key?

I edited the blog to make it more clear what happened - it was a typo I fixed. It didn't occur to me that it could be misconstrued, usually it's obvious that it's a typo fix, but in the case of the year it wasn't. :)

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#25

Post by dang »

forgottenpass wrote: post #21
dang wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't change titles arbitrarily and we certainly don't euphemize. Turning "laid off" into "let go" sounds like nothing we'd do, and there's nothing like it in the logs, so I don't believe we did this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8973023 Did the user edit it? I remember commenting at the time bacause I had two tabs open to the same discussion opened some time apart from each other and the title was different on them.

I don't have a record of the original title but the submitter definitely edited the post, and the only change we made to it was turning off the automatic penalty for posts without URLs.

If you noticed all the times we've changed "f* * *" to "fuck" in titles, I doubt you'd have suspected us of bowdlerizing that one. :)

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#26

Post by ytdht »

iagox86 wrote: post #23
pja wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work with the author of dnsmasq - I’d be surprised if he sat on a vulnerability report the way some larger vendors do.

Yeah, it was a fixed typo, not a tongue-in-cheek comment. :) The vendor responded with a fix within hours!

if he responded in less then 24 hours, I would include the times with the dates

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#27

Post by JadeNB »

dang wrote: post #18
jallmann wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The written guidelines might not have changed, but the enforcement policies certainly have. So instead of complaining about linkbait in titles, people complain about changing the title. Always going to be something to complain about... Anyway, I understand it's a hard thing to balance systematically. Titles aside, HN is still a much improved place under the "new regime". Thanks for your ongoing efforts with transpare…

> the enforcement policies certainly have I have to think you're falling prey to sample bias here. I'm the one setting the enforcement policies and can assure you they haven't changed. I also don't see as many complaints about title changes as I used to; that may be because we started posting comments about particular edits, so it's easier for people to know what's going on. The current thread is an exception, but it…

For the record, I wasn't arguing about it; I just didn't understand the reason. I do now!

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#28

Post by JadeNB »

MichaelGG wrote: post #16
jallmann wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the newer title enforcement policies are worse than the old ones. The old ones might have been unreasonably rigid, but at least they were consistent. Right now the policy is "Keep the original title... unless we feel like it." The definition of "linkbait" here is so vague that it destroys any possibility for creative expression (remember the days when writing a good headline was an art?) and reinforces the notion…

I wouldn't be interested in readinh an article called "I how I almost saved the Internet" as it sounds like the kinda stuff Wired or those tech blog/news sites publish. This new title, however, is far more interesting and the article was fantastic.

For what it's worth, my response would be that, if you want to decide whether or not to read posts based on their titles, then you want to see the original titles, linkbait-y or not; seeing a toned-down version will just 'trick' you into reading something you wouldn't have otherwise. On the other hand, since you are glad that you read it, maybe that's an argument against deciding whether or not to read based solely on the title.

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#29

Post by iagox86 »

ytdht wrote: post #26
iagox86 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it was a fixed typo, not a tongue-in-cheek comment. :) The vendor responded with a fix within hours!

if he responded in less then 24 hours, I would include the times with the dates

I could have, and perhaps next time, but I think <24h is enough information. :)

Re: How I nearly almost saved the Internet, starring afl-fuzz and dnsmasq

#30

Post by viraptor »

I really didn't expect dnsmasq to count the number of hops. I found a very similar issue in systemd-resolved, but with a different fix:

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.systemd.devel/...

The compressed label should never be allowed to refer to itself in the first place, so there's no point in counting how many times you loop.

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