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Michael W Lucas
blather.michaelwlucas.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2011
Michael W Lucas, a technical author, writes about BSD systems, OpenBSD, networking, and the business of writing books.
What HN saysHN links it for his BSD and OpenBSD writing, including an ifdef critique tied to Heartbleed, plus book recommendations like DNSSEC Mastery.
21HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
27stories submitted
307story points
9 years agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1My OpenBSD Story3 people · 158 points · first shared 2012 · 32 comments on HN
- 2LibreSSL at BSDCan2 people · 88 points · first shared 2014 · 29 comments on HN
- 3Git commit murder1 people · 7 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 4Cisco supports CARP? Ha ha ha hahaha…1 people · 6 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 5My OpenBSD story -- solving hosting problems with open source1 people · 5 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 61st draft of Absolute OpenBSD, 2nd Ed. complete « blather.michaelwlucas.com1 people · 4 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 7Unlicensed Book Downloads and the Writer1 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 8European Union VAT and my bookstore1 people · 4 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9A Christmas Wish (List) Gone Wrong1 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10On the title of “git commit murder”1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 11Running FreeBSD 4 in FreeBSD 101 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 12Jordan K Hubbard (FreeBSD) and Michael Lucas on being – and not being – a dick1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 13Get your name in “Absolute FreeBSD 3rd Edition” book (and help raise money)1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 14OpenBSD and Google Compute Engine1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 15Sponsoring a Scam1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
thomasvendetta · 2017-09-20
I too would love to hear more about this, unfortunately this article on FreeBSD Jail Management Tools [1] seemed to be the most relevant thing I could come up with.
[1] https://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/2291
cdjk · 2013-04-08
I recommend DNSSEC Mastery, by Michael Lucas:
http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1640
It's not out yet, but an nearly-complete draft is available on leanpub (with updates once he finishes copy editing):
https://leanpub.com/dnssecmastery
edit reply: I think the thread is nesting to far...
lovelearning · 2016-06-11
It probably depends on what the product or service is, and how it's sold. Coursera already provides some courses for free, and even those attract some high maintenance types from what I've seen in the forums. Does providing a pay-what-you-want option increase the number of nasties or the degree of nastiness, for example, inviting legal risks? I don't really know. But I feel Coursera should atleast experiment and gather the data before deciding, instead of missing out on all that data.
Leanpub and Gumroad are two services that follow this strategy. I don't know if they are successful ventures, but I notice they have maintained this pricing strategy since their inception and never changed or stopped it.
Leanpub says "...the pattern we have seen with multiple books, about a third of people will pay the suggested price, a third will pay the minimum price and a third will pay somewhere in between. Finally, the odd person will pay more than the suggested price" [1]. Some anecdotal experiences of individual authors [2],[3],[4] support it.
[1]: https://leanpub.com/help/author_faq
[2]: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1626
[3]: http://blog.ppenev.com/2013/07/16/what-i-have-learned-from-leanpub.htm…
[4]: http://blog.gumroad.com/post/75707736685/is-pay-what-you-want-pricing-…
haberman · 2015-07-15
> But the code works.
The "#ifdef maze" in OpenSSL was criticized by the OpenSSH/OpenBSD guys as a key part of the picture that allowed something like Heartbleed to happen: http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/2071
Tons of ifdefs make it much more difficult to ensure that all permutations of flags are correct, or can even compile. I think I remember reading that OpenSSL wasn't even capable of being compiled with the standard, system malloc(). No one compiled it that way, so that build configuration broke without anyone knowing it.