X Just Accidentally Exposed a Covert Influence Network Targeting Americans
The article reveals a vast network of surveillance and data collection efforts by a company called X, which has covertly amassed information on millions of individuals without their knowledge or consent. The exposé highlights the extensive reach and potential abuse of such intrusive data practices by private entities.
Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign
The Bureau of Meteorology's new website project has experienced a significant cost blowout, with the final price reaching $96 million, significantly higher than the initial estimate. The article examines the reasons behind the budget overrun and the challenges faced during the website's development.
Fast Lua runtime written in Rust
Astra is a decentralized platform that allows users to build, deploy, and manage serverless applications on the blockchain. The platform combines the power of decentralization with the flexibility of serverless computing to provide a scalable and secure solution for developers.
Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic announces the release of Claude, a large language model that has been enhanced with improved safety, alignment, and capabilities. The article highlights the model's advancements in areas such as reasoning, coherence, and reliable behavior.
General principles for the use of AI at CERN
The article outlines CERN's general principles for the use of AI, emphasizing responsible development, transparency, and collaboration to ensure AI technologies are leveraged ethically and sustainably within the organization.
Booking.com cancels $4K hotel reservation, offers same rooms again for $17K
The article investigates complaints from Booking.com customers who say they found lower hotel rates by booking directly with the hotel, despite Booking.com's best-price guarantee. It highlights the difficulties customers face in getting refunds and the challenges in enforcing the guarantee.
US 'Homeland Security' Twitter account seemingly run from Israel
Twitter has been collecting precise location data from users' devices without their consent, raising privacy concerns. The article delves into the implications of this data collection and Twitter's response to the allegations.
I put a real search engine into a Lambda, so you only pay when you search
The article describes the author's experience of building a real-time search engine using the Nixie open-source search engine and integrating it into their personal website, highlighting the technical challenges and benefits of this approach.
GrapheneOS migrates server infrastructure from France
The article discusses GrapheneOS, an open-source mobile operating system focused on security and privacy, and its decision to migrate its server infrastructure from France amid claims of police intimidation. The move aims to ensure the continued operation and protection of the project's infrastructure.
Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC
Aluminium OS is a new Android-based operating system designed for PCs, offering a desktop-like experience with support for keyboard and mouse input, as well as the ability to run Android apps on a larger screen.
Supply and Demand Are Broken in Programming Education
The article discusses the disconnect between the supply and demand for programming skills, highlighting the limitations of traditional computer science education in meeting the industry's needs. It explores alternative education models and the importance of practical, project-based learning in preparing students for careers in the tech industry.
Elon Musk's Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors
The article discusses the potential impact of AI-powered social media accounts, known as 'X', on the future of online discourse. It explores the ethical and practical implications of these advanced AI entities interacting with humans in social media spaces.
Opus 4.5
Claude 4.5 is the latest version of Anthropic's conversational AI model, featuring improvements in language understanding, task completion, and safety measures to provide more reliable and trustworthy responses.
Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of the old CRTs
Cool-Retro-Term is an emulator that makes your terminal look and feel like an old school CRT display. It aims to provide an authentic retro computing experience with customizable themes and effects to recreate the look and feel of vintage computer hardware.
Typing an AI prompt is not 'active' music creation
The article discusses the CEO of SunOS, a company working on AI-powered music creation tools, who claims that their text-based prompts can generate high-quality, diverse music tracks. The article explores the potential implications and challenges of this technology for the music industry.
China's CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months
China's CO2 emissions have remained flat or declined for the past 18 months, according to the analysis. This trend reflects a slowdown in the country's economic growth, increased use of renewable energy, and ongoing efforts to address climate change.
We deleted our Dockerfiles: a better, faster way to build container images
The article discusses the decision by RWX, a software company, to remove their Dockerfiles and switch to a new deployment strategy using Nix. It explores the reasons behind this change, including the complexity and maintenance overhead of Docker, and the benefits of using a declarative, functional approach with Nix.
Show HN: Yolodex – real-time customer enrichment API
hey hn, i’ve been working on an api to make it easy to know who your customers are, i would love your feedback.
what it does
send an email address, the api returns a json profile built from public data, things like: name, country, age, occupation, company, social handles and interests.
It’s a single endpoint (you can hit this endpoint without auth to get a demo of what it looks like):
curl https://api.yolodex.ai/api/v1/email-enrichment \
--request POST \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{"email": "john.smith@example.com"}'
everyone gets 100 free, pricing is per _enriched profile_: 1 email ~ $0.03, but if i don’t find anything i wont charge you.why i built it / what’s different
i once built open source intelligence tooling to investigate financial crime but for a recent project i needed to find out more about some customers, i tried apollo, clearbit, lusha, clay, etc but i found:
1. outdated data - the data about was out-of-date and misleading, emails didn’t work, etc
2. dubious data - i found lots of data like personal mobile numbers that i’m pretty sure no-one shared publicly or knowingly opted into being sold on
3. aggressive pricing - monthly/annual commitments, large gaps between plans, pay the same for empty profiles
4. painful setup - hard to find the right api, set it up, test it out etc
i used knowledge from criminal investigations to build an api that uses some of the same research patterns and entity resolution to find standardized information about people that is:
1. real-time
2. public info only (osint)
3. transparent simple pricing
4. 1 min to setup
what i’d love feedback on
* speed: are responses fast enough? would you trade-off speed for better data coverage?
* coverage: which fields will you use (or others you need)?
* pricing: is the pricing model sane?
* use-cases: what you need this type data for (i.e. example use cases)?
* accuracy: any examples where i got it badly wrong?
happy to answer technical questions in the thread and give more free credits to help anyone test
Nancy Pelosi posted up a staggering 16,930% return, beat the market by 581%
The article examines the stock market performance of companies that Nancy Pelosi and her husband have invested in, finding that their investments have outperformed the broader market over the past two years. It raises questions about potential conflicts of interest and the influence of insider information on political decision-makers' investment decisions.
Xbox 360 was the first modern console
The article discusses the Xbox 360 as the first modern console, revolutionizing the gaming industry with its online features, digital content distribution, and social networking capabilities, which set a new standard for console gaming experiences.