Thunderbird 102
720 by moojacob |
393 comments on Hacker News.
Life is not short
643 by dbrereton |
380 comments on Hacker News.
Ask HN: GPT-3 reveals my full name – can I do anything?
616 by BoppreH |
287 comments on Hacker News.
Alternatively: What's the current status of Personally Identifying Information and language models? I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search carefully, but in today's hostile internet I see this kind of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect to have it respected. When playing around in GPT-3 I tried making sentences with my username. Imagine my surprise when I see it spitting out my (globally unique, unusual) full name! Looking around, I found a paper that says language models spitting out personal information is a problem[1], a Google blog post that says there's not much that can be done[2], and an article that says OpenAI might automatically replace phone numbers in the future but other types of PII are harder to remove[3]. But nothing on what is actually being done. If I had found my personal information on Google search results, or Facebook, I could ask the information to be removed, but GPT-3 seems to have no such support. Are we supposed to accept that large language models may reveal private information, with no recourse? I don't care much about my name being public, but I don't know what else it might have memorized (political affiliations? Sexual preferences? Posts from 13-year old me?). In the age of GDPR this feels like an enormous regression in privacy. EDIT: a small thank you for everybody commenting so far for not directly linking to specific results or actually writing my name, however easy it might be. If my request for pseudonymity sounds strange given my lax infosec: - I'm more worried about the consequences of language models in general than my own case, and - people have done a lot more for a lot less name information[4]. [1]: https://ift.tt/316HCXJ [2]: https://ift.tt/TjBoy4a... [3]: https://ift.tt/rVb3eRc [4]: https://ift.tt/yYn9acj...
Goodbye Zachtronics
484 by danso |
101 comments on Hacker News.
Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
444 by bbarnett |
258 comments on Hacker News.
I recently bought a Brother colour laser printer, with the understanding that OEM toner was not chip-locked. Wanting to update the firmware, and being on Linux, I started to look at ways to do it manually. After finding a few guides to do so manually: https://ift.tt/9lBhVdf https://ift.tt/OscwpR6 I decided to poll my printer. I then noticed an OSS/python project to just handle it via a package. However, I noticed this issue: https://ift.tt/GOsd3Qy Startled, I Googled... and the printer listed is an inkjet. For a second I was relieved, but then started to search for other issues, and found this: https://ift.tt/iQMhYFA Not only is the above, post-sale firwmware update a change of what I understood to be Brother's historical policy, the method is beyond evil. Brother seems to be apparently accepting the ink, but then purposefully making the print quality poorer. I literally cannot think of something, product wise, more evil. It's one thing to say "We refuse to use 3rd party toner", and another to accept the toner, and then just purposefully print like garbage. I was a happy HP customer for years, and only switched to Brother (which, by all accounts, is a much smaller / less renowned company) for the sole reason to not be vendor locked. I will likely return this printer, but thought HN should know what Brother seems to be up to.
Tailscale SSH
723 by ignoramous |
292 comments on Hacker News.
Deno raises $21M
601 by 0xedb |
374 comments on Hacker News.
I fucking hate Jira
745 by yakshaving_jgt |
423 comments on Hacker News.
Tell HN: Triplebyte is, yet again, making user profiles public without consent
550 by teraflop |
98 comments on Hacker News.
Triplebyte (YC S15) is a tech recruiting company that operates by getting developers to take skill tests, and then using the results to match them with employers. Back in 2020, they got in a lot of hot water by suddenly announcing that user profiles -- which had been collected with assurances that the data wouldn't be shared without consent -- would be made public, unless you opted out within a week[1]. This provoked a lot of backlash, especially since the CEO seemed totally oblivious to the privacy concerns[2]. After a lot of angry comments, he publicly apologized and reversed course[3]. Then in 2021, some users started once again being notified that their profiles were automatically being made public[4]. This time, it was explained away as an "oversight" related to the fact that previously, opt-outs weren't permanent but had a hidden expiration time. Triplebyte once again apologized and promised that it wouldn't happen again, and many people seemed satisfied with the "transparency and candidness" of their response. Now it's 2022, and yesterday I got a recruiting email from a company that found me via the Triplebyte account I created back in 2019. When I logged in to check, sure enough, my profile was set to "publicly visible" and "open to new opportunities". I was pretty sure I had never made those changes, but just in case I was misremembering, I contacted Triplebyte support to find out what was going on. Today I got this response: "I was able to do some digging on to why this must have happened, It looks like before we did our last update to the platform you did not have the profile visibility set to indefinitely so the profile was turned on. Since then we have made a privacy chance once you set the profile to off there is not reset time frame it will remain off until you turn it on." (Unlike the user in [4], I never got any kind of notification that this automatic change was being made.) So despite their explicit promises, Triplebyte did not actually go back and fix the privacy settings for users who had them silently changed by the previous "dark pattern". This is a heads-up to anyone else who has a Triplebyte account and might be affected by the same issue. [1]: https://ift.tt/LcxtFpI [2]: https://ift.tt/0IQyN9e [3]: https://ift.tt/ZSABipu [4]: https://ift.tt/0U5lQFA
Tell HN: Banned from LinkedIn for Reporting Wickr Drug Spam
510 by silent_speech |
157 comments on Hacker News.
It made the news recently that Wickr (Amazon owned E2EE chat app) is full of illegal imagery. I read about this on my LinkedIn feed then decided to search for "Wickr" there to see who else was talking about this. The search returned dozens of spam messages offering drugs in Asia and the US with information to contact on Wickr for price. I reported these drug spam posts to LinkedIn - which is supposedly an anonymous report. Next day I got a flood of reports on my own comments (nothing to do with that topic), so many I didn't bother to appeal as I had other things to do. Few hours later my account was down. Seems that for retaliation the drug network decided to find me out and use their accounts to subvert LinkedIn's policy and ensure I can't stop their spam. They have new spam up now while my account is gone. No good deed goes unpunished I guess.
Thank HN: Five months ago, I was feeling like a loser, now I am opposite
529 by ac2022 |
211 comments on Hacker News.
I posted this a few months ago: https://ift.tt/7e5Z0S3 I thought I hated programming and was ready to quit or even divorce my wife. I was not able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was burned out but I thought I was having midlife crisis. My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress. My job was easy and I had a lot of control over my time, work location, etc. I didn't think it could be the job that was causing me feel depressed. What I didn't realize while my work gave me freedom on work schedule, it didn't give me any real freedom to make important decisions. We were checkmark driven company. I was forced to do a lot of compliance and security related tasks which added zero benefit to our service. After my post, I decided that I either move into management at my last company or get a new job. I worked longer hours and spent all my free time doing LeetCode. LeetCode was hard and pointless. But I was motivated and was able to solve most easy and medium question in 30 mins. However, that was not good enough for FAANGs. I applied to some smaller companies and got a few offers. I picked one really great Series D startup. I believe in their mission and I have freedom to make real decisions here. I got a decent bump in my salary but not really FAANG TC. However, more importantly, work is 1000 times more exciting. I feel alive again. Wife and I are not fighting anymore. I work longer hours but have more energy at the end of day. I just want to thank everyone that responded to my post and tell everyone that if you find your work or life unfulfilling, change your job now!
Hertzbleed Attack
673 by arkadiyt |
228 comments on Hacker News.
A Trail Tale
519 by royalroad |
53 comments on Hacker News.
DNS Toys
712 by edent |
74 comments on Hacker News.
If OpenSSL were a GUI
642 by soheilpro |
206 comments on Hacker News.
“Code” 2nd Edition
606 by emme |
129 comments on Hacker News.
Tools for Better Thinking
777 by andsoitis |
67 comments on Hacker News.
Apple Unveils M2
588 by yottabyte47 |
740 comments on Hacker News.
Apple Passkey
757 by samwillis |
355 comments on Hacker News.
What rr does
691 by mmarq |
66 comments on Hacker News.
Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down
691 by RBBronson123 |
135 comments on Hacker News.
So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobile social network for this population). When I launched 70MR in 2016, I was motivated to build a company that could short circuit the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities. I sought to disrupt the sleepy reentry industry by applying technology, focusing on data, employing an aggressive, accountable team, and moving with some urgency. And for the first time, approaching the challenge as a national, for-profit venture. This approach, which I named “RaaS,” (Reentry as a Service), turned out to be wildly effective, and by the beginning of 2020, we were delivering on our mission of driving “double bottom line returns”: build a big, successful business and do massive social good. With the help of Y Combinator and nearly 1,500 investors, I assembled a team and got to work. We succeeded in facilitating employment for thousands of deserving men and women and became operationally profitable. However, the pandemic had other plans for us. When it hit in force in March 2020, companies made wholesale terminations of nearly all our people, and continued their halt in hiring for two years. Our revenue dropped like a rock to almost nothing. I immediately responded by paring our expenses to the bone and began letting team members go. There was no opportunity to raise additional funding, so I began injecting my own money into the company—money I barely have—just to keep the lights on. When the economy and job market began storming back, we were inundated with inbound requests for our services. Our perseverance seemed to be paying off. Except now we were hit with a new gut punch: “The Great Resignation.” Now our workers were reticent to come back to work. And if they did accept a job, they’d often leave after only a few days. It became obvious that we lacked the resources to weather this new storm while hoping and praying the world would normalize soon. (It still hasn’t.) Our coffers are empty. We’ve incurred a relatively small amount of debt (that I personally guaranteed) that I hope to negotiate down. All employees have been paid what they were owed (except for me). I will explore sale of assets we hold. On a personal note, I can’t tell you how grateful and humbled I’ve been that many would entrust their investment or business with me. For a person who’s done time in prison (me), it’s almost impossible to ask for someone’s trust. I have not yet forgiven myself for things I did which ultimately got me into trouble. But I will be eternally grateful to those that assisted me in my efforts to settle the score and win back my karma. From the beginning I was blessed by an unbelievable team of smart, funny, passionate young people who shared my ambition to cause change. They stuck with me/us until the very end. I’m most saddened by the millions of formerly incarcerated men and women who we won’t be able to help. These are some of the most sincere, honest, and heroic people I’ve ever met. It was my life’s honor to work with them. I’m pretty sure I’ll continue my reentry work. Several prominent organizations have indicated their interests in me assuming a leadership role. I need to work, and I need to continue my work. I’m so sorry for this outcome, despite the good we’ve done. I’m not sure we could have done anything differently or better, but ultimately, I take full responsibility. Needless to say, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out, here or at Richard@70MillionJobs.com. This has been the greatest experience of my life; it couldn’t have happened without my getting a second chance. Richard
Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released
634 by iliketrains |
174 comments on Hacker News.
I've seen some interests in (simulation) video games here on HN so I thought I'd share a short version of our story. More than 6 years ago, me and my friend from university were playing around with an idea of making a game we always wanted to play. We worked on it on weekends but the progress was quite slow, especially due to so many dead ends and wasted effort. Eventually however, we solidified our direction and decided to take the risk to resign from our well paid SWE jobs and work on it full time. It took more than a year but yesterday we have finally released it on Steam: https://ift.tt/1reJjlB... I am still not sure if this was a good decision financially, but unlike in a corporate environment, I am so much happier working on a product that I can put my love into and see people enjoy it, see my direct impact, and be able to make big decisions (although this also adds a lot of stress). I also quite enjoy the added SWE challenges. I had to write so many complex algorithms (path-finding, logistics, serialization, ...) and optimize things down to bits (shaders, compression of in-memory data, ...) that were rarely required by my corp job. Anyhow, this is getting a little long, feel free to ask any questions, I will do my best to answer them.
June 30, 2022
By
Aquaman
