I think two things can be true here: the article's assertion that "IPv6 is not insecure because it lacks NAT" is correct, and other peoples' assertions that NAT provides an extra layer of security are also correct.
A correctly configured IPv6 firewall provides equivalent protection to a correctly configured IPv4 firewall and NAT. Either way, connections that do not originate from within the local network are going to be rejected.
But if the firewall is misconfigured, then NAT will make it more difficult for an attacker on the internet to discover and exploit vulnerabilities on the local network.
"Defense in depth" is a valid security principle. But NAT also creates real-world problems that IPv6 solves. As with all things, there are tradeoffs, and whether or not you should enable IPv6 on your local network depends on your use case.
Ipv6 also creates real world problems that NAT solves -- multi upstream WAN with path selection for example
Dual stack introduces security problems (you now have two things to secure). There are still devices which will fail to run on an ipv6 network -- even with a 64 gateway (software which communicates to a specific IP address for example - e.g. a device which "checks internet connectivity" by pinging 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8, yes it's terrible, and yes it happens)
> Every router I’ve ever used has blocked incoming connections on v6 exactly the same as on v4.
A few years back my ISP didn't properly support prefix delegation, and the only way to get IPv6 to work was in "Passthrough" mode. My router (Asus ax86u) was really unclear about what passthrough mode meant, but I think that it might also disable the IPv6 firewall (I have read conflicting reports, and was never able to find an authoritative answer). The setting is buried pretty deep in the router and off by default, so I don't think most people would enable it by accident, but a quick google search does show lots of people on forums enabling Passthrough mode to get IPv6 working. So seems pretty dangerous and there is no warning or anything [1] that you are potentially exposing every device on your network to the internet (if that is indeed what it does).
Fortunately, my ISP has since implemented proper support for prefix delegation.
I got curious about what "passthrough" might be doing and found this assertion [0], which reminded me of the existence of '6relayd' [1]. So I assume that that mode relays the RAs & etc, but replaces the link-local address in the RA & etc with that of the relaying interface.
Pickup trucks also portray toughness - the other all-important American virtue in addition to wealth. I always get a kick out of American Football ad breaks, where every other commercial is either a truck commercial narrated by some guy with an extremely gravelly voice talking about how tough their trucks are, or an ad for ED pills.
I wonder if there are any other countries in the world where the best-selling automobile is something completely impractical? Or are Americans unique in that regard?
Serious question. I can't think of any, but I'm also not familiar with car markets the world over. In Japan, for example, the best-selling car is the Honda N-BOX [1], which is an incredibly practical car.
I have an old PC that I built that I’ve been meaning to take to Hard Off. I wonder if it would if it would be better to sell the parts individually, or as a single unit. For reference, it has a Ryzen 9 3900x, 64 GB DDR4, an RX 5700 XT graphics card, and 512 GB NVME.
Probably not worth much anymore, and I’ll probably just sell it as-is to save myself the effort of taking it apart. But Hard Off occasionally surprises me with how much they pay for a piece of old gear.
Yeah it’s still totally usable, but I just haven’t booted it up more than a handful of times in the past couple years. I built it for software development on Linux (with a little extra graphics capability for occasional gaming) in the era when Apple was making those terrible “touchbar” keyboards. But have since switched back to a MacBook (and a Switch 2 for gaming), and now it’s just taking up space.
Wow. Your old PC is more powerful than any computer I own. Faster version of my CPU, double the RAM, newer generation GPU. A fraction of the storage, though. I built it in 2020 to replace the desktop that I built in 2008.
That's part of the reason I want to sell it - and hopefully get it into the hands of someone who can give it a second life before it becomes e-waste. I feel a bit guilty every time I think about it sitting and collecting dust.
The specs are still more than enough for any of the development I do. My main issue is just the form factor - a laptop is so much better for my current situation. The power consumption also kind of bugs me - things have improved a LOT in that regard since 2019 - although it's kind of nice for heating my office in winter. It also doesn't help that I built it with a full ATX motherboard and a giant case (Fractal Design Define R6), which is kind of ugly and takes up a ton of space.
For anyone who thinks IPv6 is without merit, I recommend reading up on the various challenges of NAT traversal [1]. In cases where CGNAT is deployed in particular, there are scenarios where the only way to make everyday P2P connections work is to route traffic through a 3rd party - which can impact latency and bandwidth.
While IPv6 doesn’t make establishing a P2P connection trivial (there are still firewalls to contend with) - it does simplify things dramatically. And as someone who is behind CGNAT, I am very grateful for the existence of IPv6.
Yeah this article didn't really sit well with me. Not the part where they procrastinated and never wrote the book... life happens. But as you say - the title is a bit misleading.
But the bigger issue to me is that after failing to write a book, they have now started accepting pre-orders and promising to deliver chapters as they are written. Because first, if they were capable of writing the book, they probably should have honored their original contract. And second, if they are not capable of finishing the book, they probably shouldn't be taking peoples' money in pre-orders for a book that they may not ever be able to deliver.
To be fair, it does sound like they were mistreated and/or mismanaged a bit by the publisher, which may well have hindered the writing process and helped prevent the book from getting written. So I'm not going to lose any sleep worrying about the poor publisher - who I am sure deals with this pretty frequently. It's mostly just the concern about not being able to follow through with their obligations to pre-order customers that concerns me.
WarCraft II was among the first games that I ever played "online" (direct connection via dial-up modem with my friends). I can't overstate how absolutely incredible that felt to me at the time - pure magic.
The other games we were playing at that time were Doom II and various other first-person shooters (Rise of the Triad, Hexen, etc) - which were also pretty incredible. But the WarCraft II experience really took things to the next level with far richer gameplay.
This is different than the July megaquake prophecy, which was indeed dumb. With a strong quake like this there will be aftershocks. Most will be small, but there is a risk (about 5% according to the USGS) of an even stronger quake than the first within the next week or so [1].
I agree the parent will likely be fine, but it can be stressful in the aftermath of a large quake. And if they want to leave the area and have the opportunity to do so calmly and safely, I think that’s justified.
This isn’t something that I personally wish to debate, but I’ll leave link to the wikipedia page for the July 2025 prophecy [1] for anyone who may not know what we are talking about.
And also point out that last night’s earthquake in Northern Japan was not a “prophecy”. Just a regular, large earthquake - which do occur pretty frequently in Japan. And I say "large" not just because of the magnitude, but because parts of Aomori experienced 6+ shaking on the shindo scale [2] which is categorized as "brutal" [3].
The July megaquake prophecy scare was dumb because it originated in a work of fiction, not intended to be taken seriously by its author and not based on any scientific evidence. If the "prophecy" had come true, it'd be by luck alone. fwiw, I'd say it didn't come true; the 8.8 magnitude earthquake was near Kamchatka and didn't actually damage Japan, though a tsunami seemed plausible enough that there was a precautionary evacuation.
This "strong quake" is a thing that happened, not a "smart prophecy" [1]. Talk of aftershocks is not a prophecy either; it's a common-sense prediction consistent with observations from many previous earthquakes.
[1] smart prophecy is an oxymoron. A prediction is either based on scientific evidence (not a prophecy) or a (dumb) prophecy.
You are certainly reading something into my question that isn't there. I'm genuinely ignorant. I thought you were saying that predictions of a strong aftershock following an M8.8 were dumb, but the same thing following an M7.6 were smart. Is that not the case?
Again, sorry if this seemed antagonistic or something, I really am just unsure of what you were saying.
A manga book published in 1999 randomly predicted a disaster in March 2011, which seemed to come true with Fukushima. The manga was re-published in 2021 predicting a M8.8 in July 2025, but nothing happened. This is the dumb prophecy part, it was not based on seismology studies, just a shot in the dark to try to seem prophetic again. Countless works of fiction are published every year which predict some future disaster at an arbitrary date. Every once in a while, one of those thousands of random predictions can be interpreted as coming true when something bad happens on that day, which retroactively drives interest in that work of fiction, and less scientific minds believing the author has actual future predicting power beyond the abilities of science.
A relatively major (but not M8.8) quake has now hit in December 2025. It is intelligent to expect there may be aftershocks in the days after a significant earthquake actually happens, which can sometimes be larger than the initial quake. This is a well-accepted scientific fact born out of large amounts of data and statistical patterns, not whimsical doomsdayism.
Fukushima's M9.0-9.1 was around a 1-in-1000-year scale event. The last time Japan saw such a powerful earthquake was in the 869 AD. It would be reasonable to expect one of that scale to not happen again for another 1000 years.
Math nazi in me really wants to point out that an event with a 1:1000 probability would be expected to be seen (> 50% probability) in about 700 years, not 1000.
Heh, hence why I said 1-in-1000-year, rather than just 1-in-1000. Indeed 1:1000 would happen within 693 years with 50% probability, 1:1443 would happen within 1000 years with 50% probability.
Great response and very informative - no clue how I totally missed the references and stories about this manga. That’s pretty cool - I’ll have to look it up!
You asked what I would have asked, in a sentence, my understanding is: it was LITERALLY a prophecy, I.e. an unscientific statement out of thin air, that in July, there would be an earthquake followed by a larger one. Here, we have reality, an earthquake, ergo the first prong of a mega quake was satisfied, as opposed to prophesied.
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