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Theo de Raadt (ruBSD 2013)

fuckyoustupidzombie
Interviews
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this interview1 month2014–2020 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Pointed to in OpenBSD and virtualization threads for Theo's candid views on security mitigations and supporting modern x86 VMs.

A roughly 14-minute interview with OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt at ruBSD 2013. He talks about making painful changes, getting real feedback, mitigation techniques compared to other OSs, and virtualization.

“I found this ~14 minute interview with Theo de Raadt from ruBSD very interesting” (HN, 2014)

1 recommendations · 6 citations · Interviews · intermediate · partly dated

7 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@verytrivial May 2014 Recommends
on HN thread OpenBSD 5.5 Released
I found this ~14 minute interview with Theo de Raadt from ruBSD very interesting and apropos OpenBSD's approach to trail-blazing "painful" changes: [this video] tl;dw: Changes that must be done, must be DONE. The only way to see the ACTUAL impact is to just do it already and get feedback from real users. When the dust has settled, less brave projects can follow suit. I'm donating.
Theo de Raadt on making painful changes and getting real feedback

Citations, criticism and jokes

@protomyth Jan 2015 Cites it
on HN thread Security: OpenBSD vs. FreeBSD
If you watch the the ruBSD 2013 interview video with Theo de Raadt[1] at the 6:36, he states that they should take a shot at dealing with modern x86 VMs. That gives me quite a bit of hope along with the work on vmware related drivers in each release. 1) [this video]
Theo says OpenBSD should handle modern x86 VMs
@protomyth Mar 2015 Cites it
on HN thread Welcome to OpenBSD [pdf]
If you watch the the ruBSD 2013 interview video with Theo de Raadt[1] at the 6:36, he states that they should take a shot at dealing with modern x86 VMs. That gives me quite a bit of hope along with the work on vmware related drivers in each release. I use VMware at work, seems to do ok. 1) [this video]
Theo says OpenBSD should handle modern x86 VMs
@sydney6 Jul 2015 Cites it
on HN thread Docker on FreeBSD
[this video] Edit: First 5 Minutes De Raadt speaks about Mitigation Techniques in comparison to other OSs, including FBSD. I fear, this is still true in mid-2015..
Theo compares mitigation techniques with other OSs including FreeBSD
@protomyth Jul 2015 Cites it
on HN thread Quick and dirty way to have OpenBSD running on Linode
Read more
"The biggest problem with OpenBSD has been lack of support for hardware and virtualization, though a lot of the reason for this has been the OpenBSD team's own hostility towards virtualization. I get their reasoning (virtualization is a security issue), but the economic consequences have been devastating to their user base." If you watch the the ruBSD 2013 interview video with Theo de Raadt[1] at the 6:36, he states that they should take a shot at dealing with modern x86 VMs. That gives me quite a bit of hope along with the work on vmware related drivers in each release. I use VMware at work, seems to do ok. 1) [this video]
Theo says OpenBSD should handle modern x86 VMs
@protomyth Aug 2015 Cites it
on HN thread A native hypervisor is coming to OpenBSD
your link is from 2007-10-24. more recently: from ruBSD in 2013 [this video] (6:36 mark) People do change their minds as they learn new things or the world changes.
Theo's more recent view on virtualization at 6:36
@david_draco Apr 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Linux kernel lockdown, integrity, and confidentiality
Read more
Linux security has been criticised[1] for not having security enabled by default, and for allowing users to disable the security measures. This leads to users avoiding setting minimal-rights policies, and leaving the doors open. When security is optional, policy issues in distributions also aren't fixed quickly. To limit applications rights to a minimum, SELinux, firewalls, and (systemd) sandboxes are all tools that could be used, but aren't in most installs. However, I think we are still lacking user-friendly interfaces (opensnitch is ported from MacOS). One idea could be to let the desktop environment restrict one more capability a application on every run, inform the user before running it and ask the user after if the software worked correctly. That would gradually lead to a minimum set of software rights. [1] [this video]
Critique of Linux security defaults

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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