I audited the privacy of popular free dev tools, the results are terrifying
52 points
2 hours ago
| 9 comments
| toolbox-kit.com
| HN
hohithere
1 hour ago
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> Free Dev Tools

And test only online websites (」°ロ°)」

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gmuslera
1 hour ago
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Using canary URLs in these and other sites may be interesting too.
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beart
1 hour ago
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I love regex101.com, so really happy to see it breaks the mold here.
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speedyapoc
1 hour ago
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Comment is a bit of an aside, but it's a shame what happened to JSONFormatter.org. The UI was preferable to alternatives for me, it ranked highly in Google so I could just search "JSON formatter" and access it, etc.

Now the site freezes 50% of the time when loading it on my Mac and when it doesn't freeze, there's a 5 second period of waiting before I can paste any input. Not to mention ads taking up 40% of the screen. The classic tech cycle of life.

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bmenrigh
1 hour ago
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Can we stop it with "and the results are terrifying", "and you won't believe what I found", "the <x> situation is insane", etc.? The over-hyping of low quality, low effort content is making it hard to find actually interesting or informative things.
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SunshineTheCat
1 hour ago
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Yea I was thinking the same thing.

When you reach for the most exaggerated, over-the-top word possible when describing something relatively mundane, what will you use when you talk about something that actually is "terrifying?"

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thfuran
1 hour ago
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“The most terrifying thing you’ve ever heard”. You can even stick with that one as long as your subjects are monotonically scary.
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cheschire
1 hour ago
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Find a better and more accessible solution than clickbait.

Please, do it.

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arcfour
1 hour ago
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"Privacy concerns found in audit of popular dev tools" (or something along those lines) would work without feeling sensationalized.
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cheschire
5 minutes ago
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Yes this one time. I’m speaking generally in response to the general plea.
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bmenrigh
1 hour ago
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"better", "more accessible"? What the hell are you talking about? Clickbait doesn't make anything better or more accessible.

Instead, it makes it impossible to pre-select for interesting information. Instead of telling you what something is about, it tells you how you should feel about it. That's not improving accessibility.

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cheschire
6 minutes ago
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I meant from the author’s perspective. Clickbait is too easy, which is probably why it’s so popular.
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dbacar
1 hour ago
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Glad that I am using Firefox with:

- uBlock Origin

- cookieAutodelete

- privacy badger

Any additions to my arsenal welcome!

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ozlikethewizard
36 minutes ago
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Ironfox/Librewolf with just uBlock. The more extensions you have the way easier you are to fingerprint.
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iberator
2 hours ago
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That's why real programmers are those who can work offline without the Internet. (just the repositories)

:)

local first.

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deafpolygon
57 minutes ago
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what dev uses public websites to do any kind of work?
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OsrsNeedsf2P
1 hour ago
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Decent article. Painful to read the LLM output.
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