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Chat Control Must Be Stopped
Chat Control is back to undermine everyone's privacy. There's an important deadline on October 14th, 2025. We must act now to stop it!
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 992 posts.
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iPhone dumbphone
I used Apple Configurator to turn my iPhone into a dumb phone. I can only access the apps and websites I want to use, and it’s feeling great!
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How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads
The death rate per mile driven has declined 22-fold since 1950.
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The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
The demo scene was recently proclaimed a UNESCO Living Cultural Heritage in Sweden, following several other European nations. As a scener, I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. It's amusing on some level, there's maybe even a bit of pride involved, but also fear that it might bring unwanted attention to a Good…
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Over 80% of sunscreen performed below their labelled efficacy (2020)
The Consumer Council keens to be the trusted voice of consumers in striving to build in the market an environment of safe, fair and sustainable consumption.
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AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time
All the same privacy harms with online tracking are also present with AI, but worse.
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There is cost to your lifestyle.
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GOP Cries Censorship Over Spam Filters That Work
The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week sent a letter to Google’s CEO demanding to know why Gmail was blocking messages from Republican senders while allegedly failing to block similar missives supporting Democrats. The letter followed media reports accusing Gmail of disproportionately flagging…
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I kissed comment culture goodbye
It started out harmlessly, a comment on hacker news roughly 16 years ago.
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Poisoning Well
An experimental strategy for contaminating Large Language Models
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Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety
Even if you can’t stop Flock’s use entirely, you can still help protect civil liberties in your community.
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Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself
When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound prudish and monk-like. But we shouldn’t forget how interesting and overpoweringly pleasurable sustained attention can be.
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The worst possible antitrust outcome
Last year, Google lost an antitrust case to Biden's DoJ. The DoJ lawyers beat Google like a drum , proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Google had deliberately sought to create and maintain a monopoly over search, and that they'd used that monopoly to make search materially worse, while locking competitors out of…
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Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
New research: Eight popular, commercial VPN apps operate deceptively and put more than 700 million users at risk of authoritarian surveillance.
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For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
The personal blog of Thomas Steiner
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I want to be left alone (2024)
Seriously. Please just leave me alone.
378
Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate
The X account of a Turkish opposition leader with 9.7M followers is restricted in Turkey. Although his new account is not restricted, many users say they don't see his posts on their homepages.
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Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
At this summer's HOPE conference, Joshua Aaron spoke about ICEBlock, his iPhone app that allows users to anonymously report ICE sightings within a 5 mile radius, and to get notifications when others report ICE sightings near them. You can see the full talk, and the lively/infuriating Q&A,
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We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own
Refuting the common and flawed argument of
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When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire
A while ago I treated you to a dissertation entitled “Does The Sun Set On The British Empire?”, and concluded that it doesn't. The UK's widely scattered overseas territories, sparse though they are, mean that the sun is still always shining, somewhere in the world, over British territory.
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Are people's bosses making them use AI tools?
Andy Bell had heard companies were forcing employees to use AI tools so spoke to developers to determine if that was the case and learned some horrors in the process.
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The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
Americans are having a record low amount of sex, especially young adults.
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Is it possible to allow sideloading and keep users safe?
In which I attempt to be pragmatic. Are you allowed to run whatever computer program you want on the hardware you own? This is a question where freedom, practicality, and reality all collide into a mess. Google has recently announced that Android users will only be able to install apps which have been digitally signed…
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The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch
Do you register with Google, Amazon or Microsoft to use the web?
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Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy
Claude Free, Pro, and Max users can now opt in to having conversations used to improve models, with a five-year retention period for participants.
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Open Source is one person
The Register recently published a story titled Putin on the code: DoD reportedly relies on utility written by Russian dev. They should be ashamed of this story. This poor open source developer is getting beat up now to score some internet points. It’s very upsetting. But anyway, let’s look at some receipts. If you’re…
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CDC officials’ resignation emails
The end of an era.