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Why Local-First Apps Haven't Become Popular?

https://marcobambini.substack.com/p/why-local-first-apps-havent-become
42•marcobambini•43m ago•32 comments

Easy Forth

https://skilldrick.github.io/easyforth/
57•pkilgore•2h ago•13 comments

Kmart's use of facial recognition to tackle refund fraud unlawful

https://www.oaic.gov.au/news/media-centre/18-kmarts-use-of-facial-recognition-to-tackle-refund-fr...
108•Improvement•3h ago•81 comments

SGI demos from long ago in the browser via WASM

https://github.com/sgi-demos
132•yankcrime•5h ago•28 comments

CompileBench: Can AI Compile 22-year-old Code?

https://quesma.com/blog/introducing-compilebench/
13•jakozaur•1h ago•3 comments

How I, a beginner developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me

https://anniemueller.com/posts/how-i-a-non-developer-read-the-tutorial-you-a-developer-wrote-for-...
570•wonger_•12h ago•271 comments

A Beautiful Maths Game

https://sinerider.com/
22•waonderer•2d ago•5 comments

Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

https://hsu.cy/2025/09/how-to-read-hn/
28•firexcy•4h ago•4 comments

You did this with an AI and you do not understand what you're doing here

https://hackerone.com/reports/3340109
597•redbell•6h ago•279 comments

Biconnected components

https://emi-h.com/articles/bcc.html
24•emih•14h ago•5 comments

M4.6 Earthquake – 2 km ESE of Berkeley, CA

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ew1758534970/executive
104•brian-armstrong•4h ago•47 comments

What happens when coding agents stop feeling like dialup?

https://martinalderson.com/posts/what-happens-when-coding-agents-stop-feeling-like-dialup/
35•martinald•1d ago•23 comments

Privacy and Security Risks in the eSIM Ecosystem [pdf]

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/usenixsecurity25-motallebighomi.pdf
203•walterbell•9h ago•107 comments

DeepSeek-v3.1-Terminus

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/news/news250922
32•meetpateltech•1h ago•10 comments

Sj.h: A tiny little JSON parsing library in ~150 lines of C99

https://github.com/rxi/sj.h
435•simonpure•21h ago•214 comments

Show HN: Software Freelancers Contract Template

https://sopimusgeneraattori.ohjelmistofriikit.fi/?lang=en
83•baobabKoodaa•6h ago•25 comments

Optimized Materials in a Flash

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2025/09/18/optimized-materials-in-a-flash/
9•gnabgib•3d ago•0 comments

Metamaterials, AI, and the Road to Invisibility Cloaks

https://open.substack.com/pub/thepotentialsurface/p/metamaterials-ai-and-the-road-to
26•Annabella_W•4h ago•8 comments

We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01035
101•chosenbeard•13h ago•45 comments

Why is Venus hell and Earth an Eden?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-is-venus-hell-and-earth-an-eden-20250915/
158•pseudolus•15h ago•247 comments

A Generalized Algebraic Theory of Directed Equality

https://jacobneu.phd/
49•matt_d•3d ago•15 comments

The death rays that guard life

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-death-rays-that-guard-life/
24•ortegaygasset•4d ago•12 comments

Download responsibly

https://blog.geofabrik.de/index.php/2025/09/10/download-responsibly/
262•marklit•8h ago•182 comments

Simulating a Machine from the 80s

https://rmazur.io/blog/fahivets.html
58•roman-mazur•3d ago•8 comments

How can I influence others without manipulating them?

https://andiroberts.com/leadership-questions/how-to-influence-others-without-manipulating
165•kiyanwang•15h ago•158 comments

I uncovered an ACPI bug in my Dell Inspiron 5567. It was plaguing me for 8 years

https://triangulatedexistence.mataroa.blog/blog/i-uncovered-an-acpi-bug-in-my-dell-inspiron-5667-...
130•thunderbong•4d ago•15 comments

What if AMD FX had "real" cores? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb4FDtAwnqU
12•zdw•3d ago•4 comments

40k-Year-Old Symbols in Caves Worldwide May Be the Earliest Written Language

https://www.openculture.com/2025/09/40000-year-old-symbols-found-in-caves-worldwide-may-be-the-ea...
169•mdp2021•4d ago•99 comments

Lightweight, highly accurate line and paragraph detection

https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.09638
131•colonCapitalDee•16h ago•22 comments

Be careful with Go struct embedding

https://mattjhall.co.uk/posts/be-careful-with-go-struct-embedding.html
115•mattjhall•14h ago•83 comments
Open in hackernews

Kmart's use of facial recognition to tackle refund fraud unlawful

https://www.oaic.gov.au/news/media-centre/18-kmarts-use-of-facial-recognition-to-tackle-refund-fraud-unlawful,-privacy-commissioner-finds
105•Improvement•3h ago

Comments

SirFatty•2h ago
What's more surprising is that Kmart still exists...
lemonteaau•2h ago
too cheap to die
tech234a•2h ago
This is Australia
SirFatty•2h ago
Yes, I saw that in the article. What's your point, that if in Australia it's not real?
carefulfungi•2h ago
I was curious so read the Kmart wikipedia article over morning coffee. Seems like these (no longer) share any ownership with the original. Which I guess raises a philosophical question about names and existence that will require at least a second cup of coffee :-)
bombcar•1h ago
to be fair, Australia does kind of seem like a made up place with made up animals
eej71•2h ago
Kmart in Australia is best thought of as a fork from the original. The original in the United States is effectively defunct now.
bombcar•1h ago
This is more common than you’d think - often subsidiaries are distinct enough that the Canadian or Australian version survives the US parent’s bankruptcy.

And sometimes it’s just a different store that licensed the name for 100 years.

eej71•1h ago
My other favorite example of this is the A&W Restaurants which in the states was a bit more of a fast food establishment. It was never that successful, but you'd see them every so often. Gone now in the states, but I believe its Canadian successor is still going strong.
natebc•1h ago
There's still quite a few A&W restaurants around in the US though they are rareish.

https://awrestaurants.com/locations-list/

400+ according to their wikipedia entry.

lupusreal•24m ago
The Canadian A&Ws are very good as far as fast food burger joints go. The American version is quite shitty though, last time I saw one years ago.
Klonoar•45m ago
Australia also still has E.B Games.
JackFr•5m ago
On a recent visit to the UK (from the US) I briefly thought I was in an alternate universe because their TJ Maxx stores are virtually identical but inexplicably called TK Maxx.

(Well, not quite inexplicably. Wikipedia cleared it up for me.)

hopelite•2h ago
Even more astonishing to me is that we’ve not just simply allowed something like ubiquitous camera surveillance and facial recognition, increasingly with effectively 100% coverage, but most people have actively participated in it with all their various cameras they even installed inside their home, let alone set up neighborhood surveillance systems.

And yes, they are all tapped and not even Orwell imagined what we’ve done to ourselves. But don’t worry, it will only get more apparent and worse once things are far beyond too late, when Minority Report will be noted for its cute and naive depiction.

spicyusername•1h ago
Orwell never imagined that the surveillance data would be worth so much money or that every single technological advancement could only be accessed once one agreed to surrender all of their privacy.
hodgehog11•1h ago
As an Australian, I can say that Kmart here is an absolute powerhouse. They sell highly curated goods made in China for very cheap, it's a dream for young people on a budget. Poor delivery services here pushes people toward brick and mortar stores too.
nenenejej•1h ago
Amazon is not too strong in Australia in terms of variety or price. So kmart is great and free delivery over a small amount makes it convenient.
ha-shine•1h ago
Kmart in Australia is pretty good to be fair. Cheap goods with good enough quality. I put them above Temu or Shein. For toys or pet accessories, they are unmatched in price anywhere else.
Gigachad•1h ago
For stuff like cups, power boards, tooth brush holders, etc they are basically the best. The furniture is pretty garbage though and not really that cheap compared to something much better at ikea.
nenenejej•1h ago
My house is full of kmart dog toys. I keep forgetting we got them there as they are good quality. It's a place you get everything, fairly cheap but good quality for the price. Notwithstanding TFA.
zenmac•1h ago
Yeah remember a decade or two ago they filed bankruptcy. Guess that is the wonders of Chapter 13 bankruptcy law in USA. And thanks to obfuscation of owner ship for corporations, god knows who owns them now.
nl•1h ago
Kmart in Australia has been owned by Coles Australia since 1978, and since 1994 has had no association with the US Kmart.

It's very successful in Australia.

darylteo•1h ago
Additional, Australia has a Target that isn't at all related to Target US.

Which also now owned by the same owners of Kmart (Coles Group, now owned by Wesfarmers).

And both Kmart and Target Australia operations have merged (though still operating 2 separate brands)

JackFr•4m ago
Woolworths too!
avsteele•2h ago
Interesting line to draw:

- you can record all manner of video in your store...

- but you can't process it in this particular way.

BolexNOLA•2h ago
First paragraphs pretty clearly read to me like the issue isn’t “processing it,” it’s the indiscriminate filming of everybody who enters the store without consent that’s the problem.
llm_nerd•2h ago
Everyone who enters almost any store is "filmed" with their implicit consent. Cameras are everywhere, and certainly are everywhere in every Australian court as well.

The root comment is precisely right. Deriving data from filmed content -- the illusory private biometric data that we are leaving everywhere, constantly -- is what the purported transgression was.

BolexNOLA•43m ago
Very well could be that I am misreading it.
mrits•1h ago
Is this from the 90s? Who doesn't expect to be recorded when entering a retail chain? How the hell does the government have the right to decide what this private company can do on their private land? If you enter onto someone else's property you should play by their rules.
Ylpertnodi•1h ago
>Who doesn't expect to be recorded when entering a retail chain?

Me. Unless it's clearly stated outside. It's why I wear a covid mask when shopping.

mx7zysuj4xew•1h ago
Wearing a mask alone isn't sufficient anymore.

At best it degrades overall recognition but doesn't fully prevent it

Eisenstein•1h ago
That's why I wear Groucho glasses.
nottorp•1h ago
Business opportunity: sell covid masks with patterns designed to thwart facial recognition on them.

Why are they covid masks anyway? Medical personnel wears them during surgery, and there were those photos of ... some asian people i think ... wearing them outdoors to protect themselves from air pollution in their city too.

pc86•25m ago
Because this person never knew they existed until covid and now wearing it has become a core part of their identity.
CaptainOfCoit•1h ago
> How the hell does the government have the right to decide what this private company can do on their private land?

Because the world is bigger than just the wishes of private businesses. I don't think there is anywhere on this planet where you as a private business can do literally whatever you want, there are always regulations about what you can and cannot do. The first thing is usually "zoning" as one example, so regardless if you own the land, if it isn't zoned for industrial/commercial usage, then you cannot use it for industrial/commercial usage.

What libertarian utopia do you live in that would allow land owners to do whatever they want?

nl•1h ago
In Australia we expect companies to follow the rule of law, which encodes the expectations of society.

The Australian Privacy Act falls well short of European standards, but it does encode some rights for people that businesses must abide by.

pc86•27m ago
And filming people who walk into a private store is not a violation of any Australian law.
IanCal•1h ago
> How the hell does the government have the right to decide what this private company can do on their private land?

Unless you think a grocery store should be allowed to grab you and sell your organs then you agree that this private organisation should be subject to some limitations about what it can do on its own land. The question is then where the line should be between its interests and the interests of those who go on the land.

You can be absolutist about this, that’s certainly a position, but it’s extremely far from mainstream.

josefx•1h ago
> How the hell does the government have the right to decide

It generally owns more weapons than your average deluded shop owner.

nl•1h ago
Security filming is common in Australia and not outlawed by this ruling. It is specifically the non-discriminate use of facial recognition technology this ruling applies to.

The specific difference is "sensitive information". General filming with manual review isn't considered to be collecting privacy sensitive information. Automatic facial recognition is.

The blog post makes this point about how the law is applied:

> Is this a technology of convenience - is it being used only because it’s cheaper, or as an alternative to employing staff to do a particular role, and are there other less privacy-intrusive means that could be reasonably used?

https://www.oaic.gov.au/news/blog/is-there-a-place-for-facia...

omcnoe•40m ago
I don't really understand their reasoning behind the "technology of convenience" point.

Say I implement facial recognition anti-fraud via an army of super-recognizers sitting in an office, watching the camera feeds all day (collecting the sensitive information into their brains rather than into a computer system). It'd be more expensive and involve employing staff (both the "technology of convenience" criteria. From a consumer perspective the privacy impact is very similar, but somehow the privacy commissioner would interpret this differently?

Maybe that is the point the privacy commissioner is trying to make, that collecting this information through an automated computer system is fundamentally different than collecting this information through an analog/human system. But I'm not sure the line is really so clear...

onionisafruit•18m ago
I don’t understand it either, but it’s just one thing she said she will consider. No idea how much of a factor it is.
IanCal•1h ago
This should be very familiar to people working with data in a lot of jurisdictions. I can speak to Europe but I think similar things exist elsewhere - data is less restricted in how and what you collect than it is how you use it. This makes a lot of sense, you should be able to have a basic record of ip addresses and access times for rate limiting, but that shouldn’t mean you can use it for advertising.

Similarly it seems reasonable that shops should be able to record for some purposes but not all.

consp•1h ago
You forget store. This depends a lot on the type of data. Duration, specific laws related to it and protection are very different for randomised numbers vs medical as an example.
pessimizer•47m ago
> This makes a lot of sense

I don't think it does, because it is completely unverifiable. It's like allowing people to buy drugs, but not to use them.

I'm not worried about people collecting IPs, I'm worried about people who collect IPs being able to send those IPs out and get them associated with names, and send those names out and be supplied with dossiers.

When they start putting collecting IPs in the same bag as the rest of this, it's because they're just trying to legitimize this entire process. Collecting dossiers becomes traffic shaping, and of course people should be allowed to traffic shape - you could be getting DDOSed by terrorists!

edit: I'm not sure this comment was quite clear - it's 1) the selling of private, incidentally collected information by service providers, and 2) the accumulation, buying, and selling of dossiers on normal people whom one has no business relationship that is the problem. IPs are just temporary identifiers, unless you can resolve them through what are essentially civilian intelligence organizations.

tbrownaw•41m ago
Don't the industry-imposed rules for handling credit cards work that way (restricting use of data you already have) though?

Like, I thought a big part of why some stores do loyalty cards is because they enable tracking things that they'd get their credit card privileges revoked if they tracked that way.

pessimizer•36m ago
Retaining credit card numbers is problematic in and of itself. Then you're just operating a skimmer.
geoduck14•25m ago
>It's like allowing people to buy drugs, but not to use them.

Well, since you mention it: I have prescription drugs that I am allowed to buy, but I am NOT allowed to abuse them. I must take exactly 1 each day.

detaro•42m ago
I don't think "less restricted" is a good framing. How you are using it is the core, and you get to collect and store what's necessary for your legal uses, and use it for those uses. You don't get to have access logs because there is no restriction on logging IPs, you get them because you argue a justified use of them, and thus you can have them to use them for it (and not for anything else).
nenenejej•1h ago
This is good. It means we have laws and rulings that understand the technology. That balance the need for business to protect their stores with people's privacy.
bko•51m ago
I noticed that as well, it's a bit frustrating. I personally think if you're allowed to do something legally, you should be allowed to do it using technology.

It's seems silly to me that you can have a human being eyeball someone and claim it's so and so, but you can't use incredibly accurate technology to streamline that process.

I personally don't like the decay of polite society. I don't like asking a worker for a key to buy some deodorant. Rather than treat everyone like a criminal, why don't we just treat criminals like criminals. It's a tiny percentage of people that abuse polite society and we pretend like it's a huge problem that can only be attacked by erecting huge inconveniences for everyone. No, just punish criminals and build systems to target criminals rather than everyone. If you look at arrests, you'll see that among persons admitted to state prison 77% had five or more prior arrests. When do you say enough is enough and we can back off this surveillance state because we're too afraid to just lock up people that don't want to live in society.

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/acceptance-of-crime-is-a...

_qua•1h ago
I get the desire to limit data collection, but banning tech that deters and punishes crime is bad policy.
kijjure•1h ago
Sorry but anti-racism trumps fraud deterrence. If your tech might identify racial trends in criminality then you have a moral obligation to avoid it.
delfinom•1h ago
I can't tell if this brain rot statement is sarcasm or not.

If technology is identifying a real trend, that isn't due to some training bias in the machine learning, then it is a real trend.

And in this case, Kmart is not targeting individuals based on race as a result, simply refusing refunds on individuals identified.

bpt3•54m ago
Burying your head in the sand is an excellent policy, because the root cause always just vanishes at some point.
honeybadger1•39m ago
who said anything about race
singular_atomic•18m ago
bot reply
nla•1h ago
Good to see Kmart back in action.
coreyzzp•1h ago
Do you believe it? I once had to use facial recognition at a train station to get free toilet paper, which was labeled for "environmental protection," avoiding waste of paper. At that time, I was in pain and urgently had to sell my face just for a piece of toilet paper
siva7•1h ago
Just take toilet paper all the time with you. Saves me the stress from having to think about if a public toilet has some.
stronglikedan•42m ago
Or do yourself a favor and adjust your diet so that you're regular. Then you never have to go anywhere that doesn't have your cherished bidet seat and squatty potty. Just wake up, "go", and we're done for the day!
trymas•12m ago
…unless you have any bowel affecting disease/syndrome or you are travelling and you have neither regular eating schedule, nor full control of your diet…
bryanrasmussen•39m ago
yes, every human must be self sufficient at any time or be forced into selling their data. When moving through society keep drinking water, food, toilet paper, spare clothes, umbrella, mask, fake travel papers, wigs, and other necessary items allowing you to opt out of the panopticon.
bonoboTP•54m ago
Somewhere in China, you have to watch ads to get the toilet paper. It made the rounds a few days ago (https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/chinas-public-toilets-require-w...)
fortran77•20m ago
What they really need is assial recognition. Sounds like a great start-up idea! YC 2026?
4ndr3vv•57m ago
Sounds like the tech wasn't deployed for "Refund Fraud" (it would be easier to just use facial recognition when a refund was made) but instead deployed across all stores to see what they could do with the data.

I'd be very surprised if refund fraud was the only POC that this facial recognition data was used for.

darylteo•49m ago
Either their CISO was shut out of the decision making, the SLT decided it was a risk worth taking, or their CISO was absolutely asleep at the wheel.
contravariant•44m ago
Of course, but fraud/theft prevention is easier to defend legally. There are exceptions for exactly those use cases.
darylteo•51m ago
The main judgement here seems to be: not everyone was there to get a refund, therefore, just entering the store is not an opt-in consent to biometric scans.

As a counter-example: Australian clubbing venues use facial recognition and id verification to identify banned individuals and detect fake documentation. This is required on condition of entry (therefore, opt-in), and this information is shared across all partner venues.

https://scantek.com/facial-biometric-matching-technology-sca...

byyoung3•39m ago
This is the problem with America
onionisafruit•36m ago
Australia
syngrog66•18m ago
Kmart exists?
benchloftbrunch•12m ago
In Australia, apparently
tiahura•9m ago
The paranoia around being seen feels a lot like the other reptile-brain based phobias like fear of poisoning with vaccines.
ahoneybun•6m ago
Kmart is still a thing? I haven't seen one in the US in YEARS.
mcflubbins•5m ago
SAME, what the heck. I know there's one in GUAM of all places...