Hacker News Reader

FormulatedEditson Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software (2019)

I’ve had a search around and cannot find a single thing about it.

This is quite strange to me as I was very upset to uninstall it, and distinctly recall reading about the security concerns on this very website. But, whatever it was, I must infer that it was a flash in the pan about nothing.

FormulatedEditson Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software (2019)

Hello. I used to use Dark Reader but then some it changed hands and a very questionable update appeared and freaked many people out, so I uninstalled. IIRC the changes were removed, or the additional code was not correctly activated, maybe both. Anyway, you may wish to check the status of that particular extension. I use some flag in config now to do approximately the same thing, it’s not as effective, but it’s close.

FormulatedEditson Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

I think you may have misunderstood my comment, which was disagreeing with the parent comment.

I do not want those companies (or anyone, really) to be able to decide what is or is not an allowed hardware/software setup to access anything.

FormulatedEditson The burden of Long Covid “so large as to be unfathomable”

The BBC isn’t typically considered right-wing garbage, except perhaps to consumers of extremely left-wing garbage. I promise you that while it may have been talked about, it was never the main or even a major part of the story*. The comment I’m replying to (yours I guess from the attempted burn) implies heavily that it was the agreed-upon and media-promoted main strategy, which is an obvious falsehood, hence the downvotes that comment received. Maybe you think this site is all right-wing too? (Not untrue tbh, depends on the issue at hand.)

*in my memory, which is fallible to be fair

FormulatedEditson Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

And if ad-blockers are considered illegitimate software?

This would be entirely in line with financial incentives of the proposed attesters and even logically defensible (oh well, we haven’t vetted uBlock, so you can’t browse with that installed).

FormulatedEditson The burden of Long Covid “so large as to be unfathomable”

Sorry, but that’s not the narrative that was all over the news at all. If that’s what the powers that be were thinking they didn’t tell us so!

FormulatedEditson Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised

In case you hadn’t seen this story, which I believe fits a similar bill, here is the case of the Cyberbunker. This took place in the Netherlands.

Darknet Diaries has an (excellent, as always) episode about it. If it wasn’t that podcast it might have been Malicious Life.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/the-cold-war-b...

FormulatedEditson Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

Its speed as compared to the laptop - I assume it was running online, on OpenAI’s hardware. That hardware is quite extensive, I thought. I believe I’ve seen the cost of one (not ‘search’, what’s the word here, ‘output’?) is something like 1-10 cents.

FormulatedEditson Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

Peter Daszak’s letter to the Lancet (prestigious British medical journal) on this matter is a very interesting rabbithole. Sadly it seems that most of the top of my search engine is filled with less substantial writing on this matter than I recall finding.

From the memory of this conspiracy-minded non-scientist:

- The signers declared no conflict of interest, but their lives would be made substantially more complicated and less lucrative by any increase in/scrutiny of biohazard control. One signer worked at or with the lab in question.

- The letter dismissed (VERY early and without any evidence to speak of) out of hand the possibility of a lab leak.

- The letter was picked up by the media and influenced public discussion and scientists’ opinions significantly.

According to the search I just did, Peter Daszak has recently been booted from investigations of this matter by the US government. He stands to gain and lose enormously depending on the future of virology research. This includes (iirc) the ‘ban’ on gain of function research, and the current loophole that taking an animal virus and changing it to be infectious to humans does not count as gain of function. There is much more to this story but that’s all I can remember with confidence.

Additionally, I would like to note that I’ve seen some solid-looking science tracing the outbreak to the wet market, but nobody seems to ever mention that lab workers have been (iirc) caught selling lab animals to wet markets in China in the past.

(Note again: I am not a scientist and I am conspiratorially-minded)