Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | v5v3's commentslogin

>What can be done to mitigate this?

Buy hardware used by government computers that are rivals to your country.

So if American, buy Chinese CPUs and install Chinese Linux or HarmoneyOS Assuming there is nothing you are doing of interest to them, as that will also have back doors

After Snowden, one can only imagine the worst and think everything has a backdoor.

But unless you are a high level terrorist or other person of interest, no state organization is going to target you at this level

P.s. you say no one can trust closed source, but a lot of open source is maintained by one or two people or a small group, just takes infiltration by one or two trusted contributors to push malicious code in and unless someone looks and finds that code amongst millions of lines of code, may never be discovered (more so as mainstream media won't publish any thing)


While I do think this is a good idea, it may no longer be as good as it once was: https://journalrecord.com/2026/08/05/fbi-law-enforcement-tie...

If you’re just an average dissident, it’s probably still good advice though.


I was thinking about something similar recently: if you bought a US govt purchased laptop like the ruggedized Dell Latitude I saw, would it be less likely to have Intel's IME enabled?


If many people do this then I'm sure China will find some uses for that data at some point.


Sure but the cops aren't going to pull you over based on what you think about Chinese policy. Government do mess with people across international borders, but the capacity to do that is inherently limited.


> Sure but the cops aren't going to pull you over based on what you think about Chinese policy.

You might be surprised to learn that China has operated clandestine prisons in the US!

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/two-arrested-operati...


Blackmail is still a possibility ...

Plus your data can be sold on the market. To US based entities. While the Chinese still hold on to the data for future uses ...


That still doesn't resolve who is more likely to blackmail or otherwise misuse data. I think it's a Chinese saying: the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.


Can't Chinese government exchange the data with your government whenever they need it?


Bending Spoons IPO raised $1.68bn so taking away IPO fees and they have in effect spent all of it on 1 acquisition

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/01/bending-spoons-ipo-pricing


A lot of negative comments, but I read it and said the usual social. media response of "damn they got the reciepts".


>Typing the code myself forces me to slow down, which means I'm more likely to detect hallucinations or bad design choices the LLM might have made.

I think this depends on your level of expertise with the task.

If I'm writing a language I am extremely familiar with and so second nature to me, for example SQL then I can instantly read llm code.

But if a new language or a new piece of software then llm generating huge amounts of code can make it difficult to improve yourself and also manage the quality.


>There are similar services to this one, but they are either convoluted with ads, or require sign-up, or expect you to fill out a survey or something.

So you just want to offer it free?

What about ongoing responsibilities if you get DMCA and take down for copyright/child porn/fake nudes and so on


Looks like shelldweller learned how to code but doesn't know much about running websites and especially ones that allows randoms from the internet upload stuff ... it is bad to do so even if it is for 15 mins and he doesn't know it yet.


Its small and I have this vps for 2 years for basically free.

On the matter of dmca: the server doesn't accept large uploads, and only accepts pictures. So what will be stolen which is soooo tiny yet so important that grants legal action on a small service?

Also I don't know what people are uploading (and have no way of knowing), so my consciousness is clear. AND people don't use a random site on the internet for such filth, they have their own networks and chat apps. I wouldn't worry about them using my site.


> AND people don't use a random site on the internet for such filth

Actually, they do. Small, independent image hosts are great because they don't do any sort of VPN busting or user tracking, so hitting them with a few quick images to share is just as reliable, maybe even more reliable, than dedicated image hosting options.

You should double check your local legislation, and the legislation of the country you're hosting in. There's a chance you're liable for illegal imagery, regardless of whether you put it there or not. Plus, the moment someone puts something malicious on there and the indexers find out, your domain will be reported as dangerous/phishing and become inaccessible to 99% of the internet.


I used to be on a forum with only half a dozen people, someone in the group hosted it. We wanted to share images so someone wrote and hosted a pubic file sharing site...

We never shared the link to the uploader publicly, yet within a couple of weeks the URL was out there somehow and he was getting all manners of horrific stuff uploaded to it, he had to close it down just to protect himself.

You've posted this to HN.

I wouldn't take this risk.


If someone uploads child porn, you could be liable for hosting child porn. Ignorance and clear consciousness would not equate to innocence.


> don't know what people are uploading (and have no way of knowing)

Hosting CSAM is a strict liability offense in many jurisdictions.


You are being very naive, I'm afraid. You should fear the wronguns on the internet


I mean that in the nicest way possible, but you do not have the knowledge to operate such a website if that's the questions you are asking.


well it was really fun coding it (no ia btw) so I do wanna keep it up. How do you suggest I protect the service from abuse? File size limit? usage count limit? some kind of OCR that filters bad content and bans users... I dont mind extending the service...


Ask yourself the question "which of those things prevents me from going to jail for hosting CSAM" and the answer becomes pretty obvious.

I fear you are mentally modeling law enforcement as rational people who will just accept any explanation you make, and that model does not correspond to reality.

The other thing you may not realize is that the bad guys aren't just isolated guys in their basement who occasionally poke their heads out and maybe compromise a site every so often. There is a pipeline that operates with commercial efficiency, in all senses of the term, including that they are getting paid. I've seen it more directly with link forwarders; there are people actively and constantly seeking out new link forwarders and exploiting them to send spam. I've seen people put them up as a "hobby learning" project and within single-digit hours they're being used in spamming campaigns. You couldn't have escaped this pipeline's notice no matter what you did but with it being on HN you're certainly going to end up on their radar. By this time tomorrow, best case, maybe in a week, if you look at what is actually being stored on your site you better bring the eyebleach.


>Make offers so low...

Yes, all the company execs at Airtable and the VCs and their lawyers and finance guys and advisors are stupid and were incapable of fielding rival offers...

Businesses tend to sell for their market value at that point in time.


Having read their IPO prospectus, my reading - They buy a company which they feel has a sticky product for its loyal userbase and then integrate as many of its common services into its in-house platform e.g. data

They then fire nearly all of the existing new companies staff and think of all the ways they can maximally monetise the existing userbase. Growing the product via investing in it isn't a priority, revenue stream is.

They get a lot of stick, but in fairness they are up front about their business model; they don't hide the fact that they are going to fire most people, unlike traditional private equity firms who make false promises.


It's used by non technical people so not sure AI is the competition.

Perhaps Notion and all the project planning apps like Linear, ClickUp, Asana?


> It's used by non technical people so not sure AI is the competition.

I mean yes but most of them are vibe coding apps now

> Perhaps Notion and all the project planning apps like Linear, ClickUp, Asana?

Most probably, but their market share must have free fall for such valuation


you'd be amazed how little people are vibe coding their apps to have alternatives. I mean i recently did for a club, but other clubs are still buying the SaaS-solution for 250$ a year, while having more members and i'd assume at least 1 technical person, that knows what they are doing.


>Bending Spoons said Airtable's current net cash position implies an equity value of about $2.25 billion.

Bending Spoons must have amazing negotiaters to strike such a bargain.

We should send them to Iran to negotiate the peace deal.


I don't think this is quite accurate. The main question is how much revenue does Sortable bring in each year and after all expenses, how much cash flow does Airtable generate for its owners every year? I am positive it is nowhere near a billion dollars a year. If we roughly say it is annual recurring revenue of USD 0.5B a year, now the question is how much can bending spoon choke airtable neck forcing it to reduce expenses without meaningfully reducing revenue.


> We should send them to Iran to negotiate the peace deal.

I laughed so hard. But I mean seriously...


I'm assuming there is a lot of local competition to Cameo in other countries?

As it has a large potential market if it did dominate globally.


The very concept is quite culturally contingent - both in how much buyers would care about getting such a service, and in how much celebrities would be willing to engage in this type of fan service. Going global would also require a huge amount of celebrity contractors, a big problem for scaling.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: