I audited the privacy of popular free dev tools, the results are terrifying

hohithere an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Free Dev Tools

And test only online websites (」°ロ°)」

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gmuslera 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Using canary URLs in these and other sites may be interesting too.

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beart 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I love regex101.com, so really happy to see it breaks the mold here.

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speedyapoc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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?"

	▲	thfuran 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		“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 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Find a better and more accessible solution than clickbait.

Please, do it.

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arcfour 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Privacy concerns found in audit of popular dev tools" (or something along those lines) would work without feeling sensationalized.

	▲	cheschire 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes this one time. I’m speaking generally in response to the general plea.

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bmenrigh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"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 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

I meant from the author’s perspective. Clickbait is too easy, which is probably why it’s so popular.

	▲	bmenrigh 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh completely. But my perspective is that we all should individually punish clickbait by not clicking. More broadly, we should strive to keep HN full of quality tech content rather than clickbait.

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dbacar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Glad that I am using Firefox with:

- uBlock Origin

- cookieAutodelete

- privacy badger

Any additions to my arsenal welcome!