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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.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1412
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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996
There is cost to your lifestyle.
1414
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…
1415
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
1418
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.
1419
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.
1420
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…
1421
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.
1422
For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
The personal blog of Thomas Steiner
1423
I want to be left alone (2024)
Seriously. Please just leave me alone.
1424
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.
1425
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.
1429
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.
1430
The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
Americans are having a record low amount of sex, especially young adults.
1431
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…
1432
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.
1435
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…
1436
CDC officials’ resignation emails
The end of an era.
1437
Researchers find evidence of ChatGPT buzzwords turning up in everyday speech
Within five days of ChatGPT’s release in 2022, the artificial intelligence chatbot gained more than a million users. Today, more than half of all adults
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Mapping connections of anti-offshore wind groups and their lawyers
Today we released a new CDL report: “Legal Entanglements: Mapping Connections of Anti-Offshore Wind Groups and their Lawyers in the Eastern United States,” a deep look into litigation efforts against offshore wind in the Northeast.
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I Am An AI Hater
I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater.