Ask HN: What Is the Best/Worst Purchase You Have Made During the Quarantine? - IMAYousaf
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notmainacct
I bought a fishing rod and lures/hooks/bait and a fishing license. Going
fishing once a week has been a pretty nice break from working at home and the
activity itself enforces 6ft distancing pretty well so I can have a friend
meet me at a fishing spot. The other fishers at each spot are really friendly
too and happy to share what is working for them.

I used to fish when I was really young, but I dropped it at high school to
focus on grades. Now that I'm a working adult with a fun income and my own
car, I'm having a blast exploring my own city and the outskirts looking for
fishing spots, and finding new fish.

So far I've caught a few largemouth bass and a crappie!

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IMAYousaf
I bought a new chair as my old one was starting to kill my back. I have a
beautiful wooden table and chair set that works well as a writing desk for
short periods of time, but was not conducive to sitting for a couple of hours.
It remains to be seen if the chair is truly "comfy" but I have found my
posture to have been improved a ton which is the important thing to me.

On an impulse I bought the DJI Mavic Mini and I love that thing so much. It's
brought me so much joy.

As for worst purchase, I bought a new fridge out of an abundance of precaution
thinking that I could store a lot of food but it sits 90% empty unless I fill
it up with a ton of water bottles in my garage. Probably was an unnecessary
purchase and I should've gone for a deep freezer if I was serious about trying
to store food for long periods of time.

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phaus
Best - A freezer we bought a few years ago and didn't really use much until
recently. It lets us limit trips to the grocery store to about once a month.

Worst - $100 on Valorant skins. I knew I'd play this game a lot so I got some
currency because they had a promo where you'd get 20% extra after the beta.
Figured I would be a good amount of skins for it. Unfortunately time has
reveled that Riot is one of the most selfish companies in the world and their
pricing model is targeted directly at whales. Great game, but I'll never give
them another cent until they bring their skins down to sane prices.

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rawgabbit
What is your opinion of Valrant’s anticheat which requires kernel access?

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phaus
I'm a security analyst specializing in incident response forensics, but not a
great reverse engineer (although I'm trying to learn) or a software engineer,
so I have some insight that might be valuable but I might sound ignorant in
other ways when I step outside the bounds of my expertise. So forgive me in
advance.

I haven't researched Valorant extensively. I have a Windows desktop at home
that I use pretty much for gaming, browsing, and social media. I don't do
anything on it that would result in a financial disaster if I were
compromised.

There are lots of anti-cheats that do various things at the kernel level. I
haven't compared their actual functionality to Valorant's. An initial search
makes it seem like Valve's VAC is an exception. However I know back when I
used to play counter-strike global elite players used to claim like 40% of
their games at that level had at least 1 cheater. That doesn't mean it was the
result of them not having kernel access if they don't, but I suppose its a
possibility.

Some poorly implemented anti-cheats supposedly used to ban people just for
having any reverse engineering tools like debuggers and more obviously RE
oriented stuff running on a system whether you were attempting to interact
with a game related process or not.

AVs, Endpoint Security Agents, and other security related software generally
gets more access and do things that would seem highly suspect if they weren't
trusted applications. However, sometimes the access was necessary in order to
detect increasingly sophisticated malicious activity.

I think in a way we're seeing the same thing with anti-cheat software. If
people want to play a serious competitive game without hackers, that might
eventually be the price of entry.

Most security decisions are a compromise between usability and safety. I used
to work for the government in places where in the name of security they locked
down their computers to the point where brand new high end hardware was too
slow and broken to accomplish a meaningful amount of work.

So I'm not sure what specific things the Valorant anti-cheat is doing with its
kernel level activities. I would need to know in order to compare it to other
anti-cheats. I just know that in general there are frequently good excuses for
that level of access in anti-cheat programs.

One thought that has occurred to me (which may be a thought born out of
ignorance of software development) is that perhaps rolling your own anti-cheat
is kind of like rolling your own crypto algorithm, that its a fool's errand
for every game company to try making their own when there's something that
still works on the market already. Each anti-cheat is bound to have growing
pains (Valve got some backlash for things VAC did with DNS queries a long time
ago).

I haven't really studied the state of the anti-cheat industry though, perhaps
they are all bad.

Basically there are two major concerns from having kernel access. A lot of
people focus on the potential of the company to do something nefarious with
that access. I actually think that's the smaller risk. Sure it can happen.
Sure that knowing what I know about the Chinese government as an Incident
Response analyst makes China's partial ownership slightly concerning. However,
the most likely scenario that people should be worried about is a 3rd party
finding a vulnerability in Riot's anti-cheat solution.

Neither of these concerns is enough to make me stop playing videogames until
there's some kind of outrageous discovery about Riot or a working exploit for
their software. However, if your whole job or life is stored on the same
computer you use for gaming, each person has to decide what level of risk is
OK.

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tmaly
Two good purchases:

I bought a chest freezer. I was running out of space in my small freezer. It
is extremely efficient, and I can store more food.

I bought more sun shirts to protect my skin from UV rays while I am out in the
garden.

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chewz
Worst - small power generator - world didn't fall apart..

Best - bag of real flour from small local mill. My Mom mastered baking real
bread without yeast. Cheap, tasty, healthy, simple. Will never touch what they
are selling as bread.

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reactor
Would you mind telling how does she do it?

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chewz
Try watching videos below (they are in Polish but 3rd video has CC
translated). This type of bread is Polish Lithuanian tradition. You just mix
flour with water and keep it warm for a few days, let it ferment to make
'zakwas' \- sourdough.

You use rye flour, possibly crude. I have purchased type 720 rye flour
(pytlowa - Google translates that as bolted?).

My Mom then experimented and fine-tuned these recipes.

[https://youtu.be/6BeDDl8-VD0](https://youtu.be/6BeDDl8-VD0)

[https://youtu.be/PzWD89vITNQ](https://youtu.be/PzWD89vITNQ)

[https://youtu.be/qhq32b7zMwE](https://youtu.be/qhq32b7zMwE)

This is a link for this particular flour on Polish auction site, they are
shipping to Europe.

[https://allegro.pl/oferta/maka-zytnia-typ-720-10kg-
chlebowa-...](https://allegro.pl/oferta/maka-zytnia-typ-720-10kg-chlebowa-
pytlowa-z-mlyna-9103680153)

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rdtwo
Got a hp x360 laptop right before the pandemic that was an excellent buy and
build quality was the best of all the laptops I’ve ever owned.

Got my kid a cruzee balance bike and transitioned her to a woom bike. Both
excellent products.

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seanwilson
Some big bags of flour while experimenting with sourdough recipes for bread,
pizza, pancakes etc. I've learned a lot about working with yeast and won't
feel dependent to find it in shops anymore.

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impendia
I purchased a combination standing desk and exercise bike. In my first two
weeks I've run the odometer to 360 miles.

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mvind
Found a great deal on a herman miller aeron. No more back pain, it's great!

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verdverm
Employees, trademark, and the Hololens 2

