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A typesetter could recreate the document through looking at it, doing some font research, and playing with the kerning for a while. Saying it's not possible to recreate a typeset document that is readable is absurd, no matter how twisted and insane the actual postscript is.

The war against pdfs is based on AI being too stupid to read them? That's a condemnation of AI, not pdfs. I, a natural intelligence, can easily read pdfs.

Perfect response.

Meanwhile, all available hardware will only allow attested operating systems that conform to regulations. All hardware that does not conform will be illegal.

Before they do this, it will be easy to lock the internet to only allow attested operating systems online.


This website has no content at all. It doesn't mention a single regulation or law. It's just something for politicians to cite from the floor or in reports when they're demanding deregulation or subsidy, and a url that sounds like a slogan.

If this were real instead of dogshit lobbyist slop, you'd see the details, and there's be clear arguments and action plans.

But the action is that they're going to pay politicians off, and the politicians are going to give speeches that start "I went to a website the other day, and it was called Banned in California - you might like electric cars, think they're good, but because of bad regulation, we could never make them here." And that's going to provide cover as they vote for something horrible. And buy a boat with the money they made for doing it.


Getting stories on the front page of HN can get them spread across the entire media. Also, you end up with a bunch of accounts that can upvote comments/posts that you're pushing and downvote/flag the ones that criticize them.

Lots of dumb blogs from unknowns about vibecoding entire products in a weekend using specific AI slop generators from new startups that are getting to the front page lately.

remember: 1) those accounts that are causing 10x as many em-dashes are the dumb AI accounts. The smart ones are at the least filtering obvious tells from the output. They might even outnumber the dumb ones.

2) Also, a lot of people are real, but using AI to make themselves sound smarter. It's not necessarily completely nefarious.

Using em-dashes as an estimate has to result in a bunch of undercounting and overcounting.


> In Google's announcement in Nov 2025, they articulated a pretty clear attack vector.

If you can be convinced by this, you can be convinced by anything. What if the scammer uses "fear and urgency" to make the person log onto their bank account and transfer the funds to the scammer?

If you can convince people to install new apps through "fear and urgency," especially with how annoying it often is to do outside of the blessed google-owned flow (and they're free to make it more annoying without taking this step), that person can be convinced of anything.

> I agree that mandatory developer registration feels too heavy handed, but I think the community needs a better response to this problem than "nuh uh, everything's fine as it is."

There's no other "solution" other than control by an authority that you totally trust if your "threat" is that a user will be able to install arbitrary apps.

The manufacturer, service provider, and google, of course, won't be held to any standard or regulations; they just get trusted because they own your device and its OS and you're already getting covertly screwed and surveilled by them. Google is a scammer constantly trying to exfiltrate information from my phone and my life in order to make money. The funny thing is that they are only pretending to defend me from their competition - they're not threatened by those small-timers - they're actually "defending" me from apps that I can use to replace their own backdoors. Their threat is that they might not know my location at all times, or all of my contacts, or be able to tax anyone who wants access to me.


> only truly independent browser

Only truly independent browser engine left. Firefox is entirely independent on google, but unlike its competitors this dependency is through direct cash payments.


Perhaps the Europeans will end up funding Firefox to get away from American corporate tech dependency. Firefox has tried valiantly to get away from Google money but it's difficult to fund browser development from small donations or without cross-subsidies from other business, like web advertising.

> People can work for a better world. That sometimes works, too.

Not when people make arguments based on dreams, hope, and optimism.

If somebody tells me that we can build a shed, I want them to talk about wood, nails and concrete, or to stop talking.


If someone tells me we can build a shed, I'm going to ask who's land are we building it on, who's paying for it, what zoning/permitting laws apply, who's going to own it (form an LLC or a -corp with shares). The kind of wood and the type of nails aren't even worth wasting time discussing until we've answered those questions first.

Sometimes action outside concensus is needed.

But you don't necessarily need wood, nails or concrete to build a shed. Once we start specifying things like that we stop considering alternatives that could be legitimate options.

But until we start specifying things like that nothing gets built

A shed is in your garden. Happiness is in your head.

There isn't a radical authoritarian fringe in the US. There are multiple, competing radical authoritarian perspectives in the US, and I wouldn't be surprised if the sum of them constituted a majority.

They disagree on the authority, not the methods, and help the two institutional parties cooperate to destroy civil liberties by accusing their counterparts of abusing ("weaponizing") civil rights to commit crimes, spy for foreign governments, and/or abuse children.


That's not easier, and they don't have shame. They're proud of becoming wealthy.

I certainly agree about the lack of shame - but even if you destroyed all of the Flock cameras (and any other public traffic cams) you're still left with no actual protection for your private data.

There's more of us then there are of them - so their wealth can't protect them from everything. They can and do buy privacy so there must be something worth protecting that the masses can expose using their same methods.


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