Talks to Watch

Nuke the entire site fom orbit

1.2M views · Mar 24, 2009 · 0:09 · 0 HN recommenders · 6 mentions · discussed 2016–2025

A clip from the film Aliens in which Ripley says to nuke the entire site from orbit because it is the only way to be sure.

Why Hacker News points people here: Posted as a joke reply wherever a drastic, scorched-earth solution fits.

What Hacker News said 6

JokemjolkMay 2016

“Nuke em from orbit" is a quote from the movie Aliens”

Full comment

"Nuke em from orbit" is a quote from the movie Aliens: this video I think (hope) it's being used in that playful way.

in “Lawyer lawyer lawyer LAWYER lawyer LAWYER” · view on HN
JokePorthos9KOct 2019

“Ellen Ripley would approve.”

Full comment

Ellen Ripley would approve. "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." this video

in “Laugh HN: We need this new tag for fun things to bring happiness to HN:)” · view on HN
JokeJoel_MckayOct 2022
Full comment

The best response is to rate limit nuisance traffic to 1kbps, and setup fail2ban firewall rules to trip a ban on scans/bot-blind-probes. In general, abuse reports are often useful for kicking users from services involved in illegal activities. If you don't get a response, than black-hole the entire IP blocks and their routes. i.e. play possum, and they will eventually get bored enough to find a softer target. The other users are collateral damage, but if they aren't a customer... than who gives a toss. =) this video

in “Ask HN: Are Whois Abuse Reports Useful?” · view on HN
JokeJoel_MckayMay 2024
Full comment

The complex formats of tiff and tga specifications makes it nearly impossible to span all the edge-cases with unit-tests. A VM can be in a known-state snapshot, process pre/post signature logged/compared with a scripted debugger, and binary input/output stripped of non-compliant metadata/blobs at each stage of the pipeline if the process behaves as expected. I've yet to find a better method than Honeypots to sustainably mitigate the complex leaky dependency mess on traditional architectures. It has been my experience that "all software is terrible, but some of it is useful". It may just be my bias, but I see code smell getting worse in recent decades... Have a nice day, =3 this video

in “Wuffs: Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safely” · view on HN
JokeJoel_MckayJul 2024
Full comment

One must assume most user IP edge proxies are compromised hosts. If someone paid for that list they were almost certainly conned, as the black hats regularly publish that content on their forums. These folks want as many users as possible in order to hide their nuisance traffic origin in the traffic noise. Allowing users known to have an active RAT or their "proxy friends" on a commercial site is not helping anyone.... especially the victims. this video Worth studying the problem from time to time when you get bored of the antics. These folks are generally uninterested in positively contributing to any community, but rather show up to cause trouble for fun and profit. User API quotas are popular for a reason. =3

in “AI crawlers need to be more respectful” · view on HN
JokeChrisMarshallNYAug 2025
Full comment

That’s how bad things have gotten, and a lot of it is because it’s profitable to fan the flames of rancor. I don’t see it improving. I think there was a post, a couple of days ago, where some folks concluded that social media is unfixable. “Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” this video

in “Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale” · view on HN