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Vates

115 karma · joined November 29, 2025

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Vates··on Think of the children: How to force real ID for all internet traffic (2023)
The billionaires don't want it though, that's why most of the big tech CEOs are against it. Perhaps we should listen to Elon Musk though, after all, he "brought free speech back to Twitter." That is, as long as we ignore the adjustments to the algorithm that boost his personal flavour of politics. At least he isn't banning anyone, bots included.
Vates··on Think of the children: How to force real ID for all internet traffic (2023)
This is a really weird thing to comment
Vates··on Vercel April 2026 security incident
When one OAuth token can compromise dev tools, CI pipeline, secrets and deployment simultaneously, something architectural has gone wrong. Vercel have had React2Shell (CVSS 10), the middleware bypass (CVSS 9.1), and now this, all within 12 months.

At what point do we start asking questions about the concentration of trust in the web ecosystem?

It's funny that at the engineering level we are continuously grilled in interviews about the single responsibility principle, meanwhile the industry's business model is to undermine the entirety of web standards and consolidate the web stack into a CLI.

Vates··on The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
I'm also surprised by the tone of this thread. HN discussions usually involve more nuanced debate, but many comments here are hitting very specific talking point. Comparisons to China, sarcastic references to 'diversity,' grooming gangs, that I more commonly see in certain Reddit communities rather than in typical HN discussions about tech policy or civil liberties.

There are legitimate concerns about UK surveillance, protest policing, and speech regulations worth discussing. But when the same cluster of talking points appears with this particular framing, it makes me wonder about the makeup of who's participating in this thread versus other HN discussions.