Hacker News: mossTechnician

New comment by mossTechnician in "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Safety"

mossTechnician — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:46:45 +0000

The exact same concern already existed without LLMs. It is called social engineering, and has been a known risk for a while.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Proton meet isn't what they told you it was"

mossTechnician — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:02:25 +0000

Proton can claim what they want, but when they promote themselves as supporters of peaceful protests while quietly handing over account details for people engaging in them, that is false advertising.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Proton meet isn't what they told you it was"

mossTechnician — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:58:12 +0000

> If proton hashed your email how the fuck would they send you an email?

By asking you to provide it again if you click the "recover account" button, comparing what you enter against the hash, and then sending recovery into to the valid email you provided

New comment by mossTechnician in "Proton meet isn't what they told you it was"

mossTechnician — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:23:01 +0000

Proton's homepage says:

We are a neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Proton Meet isn't what they told you it was"

mossTechnician — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:21:15 +0000

A recovery email address is your data, and a company that prides itself on encryption could figure out a way to hash it too. Maybe I'm just below average here, but I expected that from them at a minimum. I was shocked to discover they didn't bother.

It's not unreasonable to think Proton should significantly tone down promises like "We support peaceful protest" while seriously downplaying what they will turn over[0], or promising "We are... committed to defending your freedom" on their homepage[1]. It's certainly reasonable to have a complete list of data processors in their own privacy policy.

[0]: https://proton.me/blog/protesters-free-speech

[1]: https://proton.me/

New comment by mossTechnician in "Proton Meet isn't what they told you it was"

mossTechnician — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 14:03:26 +0000

The problem is the gap between marketing promises and realities. Proton markets itself as a safe Swiss product[0] for activists[1], but the reality is their accounts often expose more than a casual user may expect, like a secondary email address[2] (often required to sign up) or payment info[3]. The Swissness is even more suspect according to this article, if it's true that they rely so heavily on American infrastructure and don't responsibly disclose this even in their privacy policy.

[0]: https://proton.me/blog/switzerland

[1]: https://proton.me/blog/protesters-free-speech

[2]: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/13/infosec_in_brief/

[3]: https://slashdot.org/story/453084

New comment by mossTechnician in "Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language"

mossTechnician — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:23:50 +0000

I hope this doesn't reflect on translation with serious languages as well, because that could suggest large underlying problems.

Recently some major translation issues occurred in Wikipedia because translators were using general-purpose LLMs like Grok[0], leading to completely fabricated sources among other things.

[0]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3079595/wikipedia-has-an-ai-...

New comment by mossTechnician in "Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down"

mossTechnician — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 01:07:09 +0000

I think this entire thread has run its course; if it's not this detail, it'll be another, as a few others have already moved goalposts further down the discussion than the ones you're setting here.

But if you wish to sate personal curiosity, it is in his Substack, linked from the first link I posted, which was itself from the link posted by its GP.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down"

mossTechnician — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:14:29 +0000

> I notice that you didn't say whether this new leak was private information

The new leak was, according to journalist Jesse Singal himself, absolutely private information.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down"

mossTechnician — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 22:47:23 +0000

In my opinion, inappropriately leaked information should probably still be considered private, even if it was made publicly accessible. But even if not, Singal says the same leaker directly contacted him with a new leak, which he also published.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down"

mossTechnician — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:18:59 +0000

Distributing private medical information without consent is a violation of Bluesky's terms.

And to me, that sounds like a much more concrete example of someone being a bully.

New comment by mossTechnician in "Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down"

mossTechnician — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:26:38 +0000

The central complaint doesn't seem to be distaste, but rather the fact that he is uniquely privileged over other users, despite violating Bluesky's terms of service.[0]

[0]: https://www.change.org/p/bluesky-must-enforce-its-community-...

New comment by mossTechnician in "Global warming has accelerated significantly"

mossTechnician — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:57:30 +0000

I don't see why war is necessary. There could be something like the Space Race, where nations flex their technological skills at producing solutions to environmental problems.

New comment by mossTechnician in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

mossTechnician — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:14:56 +0000

There is a difference between a liquor store checking your ID, and a liquor store scanning your ID, appending it to a record of your purchase, and uploading it to a service to be processed by third parties (such as insurance companies, perhaps).

(In the US, the latter occurs more often than you may expect.)

New comment by mossTechnician in "History of the Graphical User Interface: The Rise (and Fall?) Of WIMP Design"

mossTechnician — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:45:50 +0000

I've seen footage of the Mother Of All Demos, and plenty of material depicting a real Xerox Alto exists online. It's too bad none of that material made it into the article, but AI-generated facsimiles did.

AI images in general are a red flag in articles, but these ones additionally push me to go elsewhere for information.

New comment by mossTechnician in "AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton"

mossTechnician — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 11:09:25 +0000

Everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle of artificial intelligence.

- Jensen Huang, February 2024

https://www.techradar.com/pro/nvidia-ceo-predicts-the-death-...

New comment by mossTechnician in "US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere"

mossTechnician — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 22:26:14 +0000

Shortly after the American version of TikTok was established in January of 2026, users began reporting that certain content was creating error messages, including using words like "Epstein" in direct messages, which news outlet CNBC was able to replicate and confirm, with the error message reading: "This message may be in violation of our Community Guidelines, and has not been sent to protect our community." Other users reported similar messages for content critical of U.S. President Donald Trump or other topics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok

New comment by mossTechnician in ""Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name"

mossTechnician — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 20:43:59 +0000

At one point, people said Google's optimization target was giving you the right search results as soon as possible. What will prevent Anthropic from falling into the same pattern of enshittification as its predecessors, optimizing for profit like all other businesses?

New comment by mossTechnician in "Testing Ads in ChatGPT"

mossTechnician — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 22:14:21 +0000

As of November 2025, no ChatGPT tier is profitable, not even the $200 a month one:

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-lose...

New comment by mossTechnician in "Windows 11 January Update Breaks Notepad"

mossTechnician — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 15:08:42 +0000

Partway through this article, Winbuzzer asks me to "Install Winbuzzer Prompt Station." I don't think this is a legitimate source.

It looks like most of the article is a rehash of this Windows Central article from a day earlier:

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...