Thanks for taking time to reply! You are correct about it being hard to follow, I have had that come up a few times now. I hadn't thought about a video but I will investigate that option!
Your 2nd and 3rd points also make a lot of sense and I will work to include them.
Thanks for your feedback, it is greatly appreciated.
Bitcoin would certainly make things easier from a currency perspective and I imagine there are other benefits too. I will investigate it as an option.
The advertisements are just plain HTML and can be worked into your site anywhere you please. Perhaps it isn't super clear but the site owners are the ones who define the advertisements, not the advertisers. This means that the site owners fully control how the ads look and what information is collected.
Google linkspam isn't something I'd thought about, thank you for bringing it up. I'm not entirely familiar with how Google treats such things but I will look into it. If anyone has anything to suggest that would be fantastic.
I never realised there were so many implementations of this floating around. It might be a neat idea to inline/reduce the libraries I used to more easily distribute for offline. Although I have to say that I don't feel this is any less safe because it can't run locally :)
I am concerned about changing the algorithm at this point in case anyone has already used it. I don't think there are any serious concerns but will report back if I find any (after taking some more time). Of course if anyone knows this stuff very well I'd be very eager for some feedback!
No, not really. I do like having the length concatenated inside as well, as this provides a unique password for different lengths (useful to quickly visually identify if a password looks 'right').
Is there any reason why HMAC would be better than my current implementation? I have had a read over the article and it seems that straight SHA512 should have similar cryptographic strength.
Hi all, this is the first side project I've had that I've been happy enough to share with the world at large. I hope someone finds it useful and would be very eager for some feedback :) (Especially negative!)
I think most of the comments so far are missing the mark. This article is about leaving the working world and building something on your own.
It's quite impressive that the author has completed their first project in just 4 months. The article provides a good dose of motivation to anyone teetering on the edge of pursuing the start up life.
It's great to hear about these stories on HN, everyone started somewhere and it's great to see the process.
News at 5! Grooveshark co-conspirator pavel_lishin releases shock claims that CEO waterboarded helpless orphan child whilst stealing money from legitimate artists! More to follow.
I'd be careful with the last Memoize example, if current_date changes then the JavaScript function at least will return the old value still.
Memoize only works if your function is one to one (one set of inputs gives the same outputs), and you cache the result of the function for each value of the input.
The going rate for just wages on a team that size for 6 months would be in the order of 100-200 thousand, plus all the lab equipment, supplies and whatnot.
Not to mention most investors would see the idea as some form of play-dough and balk at the idea.