frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban

https://www.sambent.com/the-white-house-app-has-huawei-spyware-and-an-ice-tip-line/
161•speckx•2h ago

Comments

ethagnawl•1h ago
The names of the offending apps on the cards need much more emphasis.
pickleglitch•1h ago
I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the Hatch Act seriously.
fhdkweig•1h ago
Why is every part of this website animated, and part of the text is backwards? Am I the only one who sees it this way?
explodes•1h ago
If the webmaster notices this, the squares aren't great on mobile.
nancyminusone•24m ago
I think they are supposed to be like cards that flip over and you see what's on the back.
john_strinlai•1h ago
>This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then collects your name and phone number.

when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.

(the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")

malfist•1h ago
It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental illnesses.
bigyabai•59m ago
They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to Trump.

Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires know that you depend on them for news, social media and smartphones too.

malfist•56m ago
> still hasn't collapsed

Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying" twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI

sumtechguy•58m ago
I do not think it is the money that made them terrible. I know all sorts of terrible people that would do the exact same things. The only difference really is they do not have the money to execute on those ideas.

Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes you more of who you are already.

malfist•55m ago
I specifically did not say money makes them mentally ill, but rather the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness.
JumpCrisscross•12m ago
> the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental illness

Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything, they just didn’t sell their piece of the closely-held business they started, and they spend their time skiing, reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and family.

john_strinlai•7m ago
>Do we have any actual evidence of this?

to be fair, the original comment by malfist started with "makes you wonder", so i dont think they are asserting this as fact.

>I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who aren’t hoarding anything,

some people would see this sentence as contradictory, and they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money.

JumpCrisscross•5m ago
> they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly wealthy people are hoarding is money

And I’d say they’re literally wrong. They may be hoarding capital. And yes, some wealthy people do hoard money per se. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of people we just don’t hear about because they aren’t on social media talking about how rich they are. Because while it’s fun to postulate that the rich have mental illnesses, it’s documented that social-media addiction causes them.

nancyminusone•35m ago
Of course the money doesn't make them terrible. Being terrible makes them money. Lots of money. There aren't really other ways of obtaining so much money, which is why if you see someone that has that amount, they should be viewed with suspicion.
fhdkweig•50m ago
To get moderately rich doesn't require a special personality type, but obscene wealth requires breaking laws and asking forgiveness later (throwing lawyers at the problem). Not caring who you hurt while reaching for a goal is a trait of sociopathy.
psadauskas•27m ago
Right? If I had enough money that I could make a serious dent in local or even global poverty without noticing the change in my lifestyle, and I just... chose not to, I have no idea how I could sleep at night.
csallen•5m ago
Huge numbers (billions) of people have enough money to make massive changes to the lives of those less fortunate than them, but don't, and prefer instead to make incremental upgrades to their own lives. New rugs, more savings, first-class airline tickets, eating out a few more times a month, etc.

This is just human nature.

People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and below.

cl0ckt0wer•26m ago
They've pivoted to good news. It's more absurd.

https://theonion.com/breaking-all-of-world-s-problems-solved...

joshstrange•1h ago
Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes me think the whole thing is from an LLM.

While this post does have some interesting information, I have to wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes me questions all of it.

fhdkweig•54m ago
I can't read any of it, but the other comment's descriptions sound like the new mandatory Russian Max app, so it isn't without precedent.
beejiu•48m ago
I didn't even realise it was an article. I thought the grid thing at the top was just an index page linking out to other pages.
EA-3167•41m ago
Speaking for myself unless I know the site and like how they do things, my default these days is a reader view.

It helps a lot!

In this case it helped me lose interest in the article within about 20 seconds.

tolerance•32m ago
> Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations?

I don't think so. It's more likely that they're upvoted as a signal-boost; convene here to talk about bad government tech.

Some submissions are less about the subject matter than they are about providing a space to talk about only the subject in general. I've found this to be the case when the content is AI-generated.

raincole•13m ago
It's upvoted because the message is "the administration bad." Which, heuristically, is the correct take most of the time.
drnick1•1h ago
You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated gaming rig.

I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers, through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.

graemep•41m ago
Apps cannot gather data, and there are lots of things that requires apps now.
drnick1•35m ago
Apps obviously gather data. In fact, on common phone operating systems, they tend to have access to an insane amount of information, including what other apps are used, hardware identifiers, information related to Google/Apple accounts and more.

As for things "requiring" apps, I am happy to do without those. If I cannot access something through a website on a device under my control, I will not use it. No convenience is worth more than my freedom and privacy.

nickburns•19m ago
Can you offer some examples?
saadn92•52m ago
The closing point is the one that should get more attention — every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page. And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts: you want access to APIs the browser won't give you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser, and that's by, unfortunately, design.
alephnerd•49m ago
> Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot triggers — none of that is available through a browser

Most browsers do in fact offer that level of granularity, especially for PWA usecases [0].

And from an indicators perspective, having certain capabilities turned off can make it easier to identify and de-anonymize individuals.

[0] - https://pwascore.com/

nickburns•27m ago
Fingerprint? Yeah. Deanonymize? No.

There's a considerable difference. And doing whatever one can to mitigate the former shouldn't be discouraged by falsely equivocating the latter.

graemep•42m ago
Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app.

The UK's Companies House (required for anyone who is a director or has a shareholding of more than 15% etc.) requires a Onegov ID now. They offer a web version with a scan of a photo ID (passport or driving license). I tried it. I thought one of those would work. Apparently the web version needs to ask security questions (reasonable, as the app used NFC to read your passport) but despite the vast amount of information the government has on me (to issue those IDs, to collect taxes, etc) it cannot do that, so i had to either use the app or go in person to a post office in a different town.

Similarly I got an email from Occado saying that if I used the app I could change orders without checking out again. If I do it on the website i have to checkout again. Why?

themafia•36m ago
> access to APIs

It's mostly static data. Just publish it under a URL that won't change. Then we could actually cache and archive it.

shit_game•16m ago
The APIs in question are client-side iOS and Android APIs. Most of these apps are just WebViews wrapped in spyware, which is the point. It doesn't matter that most of the content is static or already uses browser-native APIs for functionality like forms, gating access to this information behind a surveilance device is the point.
nickburns•15m ago
Very well said.
zdragnar•11m ago
> And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to ship a native app

I have worked on several applications where the product managers wanted to make our web app something that could be installed through the app store, because that's how users expect to get apps.

I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and open whatever shows up in a search result.

I've tried pushing back against the native app argument and won once because customers actually reported liking that we had a website instead of an app, and other times because deploying an app through the stores was more work than anyone had time to take on. Otherwise, we would've been deploying through app stores for sure.

Marketing gets plenty of data from google analytics or whatever platform they're using anyway, so neither they nor product managers actually care about the data from native APIs.

JumpCrisscross•7m ago
> there's really only one reason to ship a native app when your content is just press releases and weather alerts

The flip side is there are real people downloading these apps. Maybe it’s a kid interested in a career in the FBI, or the family of someone who works there. Idk. But I am willing to entertain that there is a legitimate reason for an app to exist without conceding that it should be a pile of trash.

bluepeter•47m ago
Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal documents the US Federal Court system requires full name, birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%) also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands. (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the account.)
shevy-java•41m ago
There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only", say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand how democracies are undermined. See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...

Democracy needs to be adjusted - right now private interests can too easily sabotage and undermine it.

maest•8m ago
FYI, regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back
JumpCrisscross•3m ago
> regardless of election outcome, the next government is highly unlikely to roll this back

Well yes, it’s not a high priority. I’m not going to bring it up with my electeds. Are you? If everyone who thinks this is a huge deal is too lazy and nihilistic to do anything about it, it won’t be prioritized.

Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban

https://www.sambent.com/the-white-house-app-has-huawei-spyware-and-an-ice-tip-line/
165•speckx•2h ago•45 comments

Do your own writing

https://alexhwoods.com/dont-let-ai-write-for-you/
156•karimf•8h ago•51 comments

How to turn anything into a router

https://nbailey.ca/post/router/
479•yabones•7h ago•183 comments

Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018)

https://anishathalye.com/macbook-touchscreen/
43•HughParry•1h ago•13 comments

We Hid a Free Trip to Switzerland in Our Privacy Policy. Someone Found It

https://www.cape.co/blog/easter-egg-in-privacy-policy
29•bwoah•36m ago•6 comments

Bird brains (2023)

https://www.dhanishsemar.com/writing/bird-brains
265•DiffTheEnder•7h ago•170 comments

Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct

https://github.com/electrikmilk/cherri
158•mihau•2d ago•29 comments

William Blake, Remote by the Sea

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/william-blake-remote-sea
21•occurrence•1h ago•0 comments

OCR for construction documents does not work, we fixed it

https://www.getanchorgrid.com/developer/docs/endpoints/drawings-doors
79•wcisco17•4h ago•48 comments

CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font

https://www.codingfont.com/
226•nvahalik•5h ago•134 comments

Seeing Like a Spreadsheet

https://davidoks.blog/p/how-the-spreadsheet-reshaped-america
28•paulpauper•2d ago•5 comments

Vulnerability Research Is Cooked

https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2026/03/30/vulnerability-research-is-cooked/
37•pedro84•1h ago•14 comments

Build123d: A Python CAD programming library

https://github.com/gumyr/build123d
93•Ivoah•23h ago•37 comments

Roulette Computers: Hidden Devices That Predict Spins

https://www.roulette-computers.com/
8•o4c•2d ago•0 comments

In math, rigor is vital, but are digitized proofs taking it too far?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-math-rigor-is-vital-but-are-digitized-proofs-taking-it-too-far-...
76•isaacfrond•4d ago•60 comments

A sea of sparks: Seeing radioactivity

https://maurycyz.com/projects/spinthariscope/
30•maurycyz•2h ago•11 comments

Take better notes, by hand

https://brianschrader.com/archive/take-better-notes-by-hand/
134•sonicrocketman•4h ago•61 comments

What Construction at a Train Station Taught Me About Software Engineering

https://engineering.leanix.net/blog/engineering/
8•vinhnx•3d ago•2 comments

Mathematical methods and human thought in the age of AI

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26524
176•zaikunzhang•9h ago•70 comments

Recover Apple Keychain

https://arkoinad.com/posts/apple_keychain_recovery.html
20•speckx•3h ago•5 comments

FTC action against Match and OkCupid for deceiving users, sharing personal data

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/03/ftc-takes-action-against-match-okcupi...
192•gnabgib•5h ago•98 comments

Show HN: Coasts – Containerized Hosts for Agents

https://github.com/coast-guard/coasts
35•jsunderland323•5h ago•12 comments

The curious case of retro demo scene graphics

https://www.datagubbe.se/aipixels/
328•zdw•15h ago•83 comments

I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BJ4pnropWdnzzgeJc/i-am-definitely-missing-the-pre-ai-writing-era
194•joozio•13h ago•169 comments

I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

https://blog.lysk.tech/excalidraw-frame-export/
244•mlysk•13h ago•99 comments

An NSFW filter for Marginalia search

https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_134_nsfw/
57•speckx•4h ago•12 comments

Proactively Parasocial

https://nicklandolfi.com/posts/proactively-parasocial.html
22•jxmorris12•4d ago•3 comments

New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/new-washington-law-bans-noncompete-agreements/
250•toomuchtodo•3h ago•99 comments

Fibonacci's Composed Fractions

https://ztoz.blog/posts/fibonacci-fractions/
9•aebtebeten•3d ago•2 comments

Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Equation: Reinforcement Learning and Diffusion Models

https://dani2442.github.io/posts/continuous-rl/
138•sebzuddas•13h ago•41 comments