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> It runs locally on your Mac with no uploads and there is no subscription.

From the bottom of the description on apps.apple.com:

  SUBSCRIPTION
  • Free tier: 10 images, common ratios, JPEG & PNG export
  • Premium: Unlock all 500 images, 9 formats, 15 ratios, and pro tools
  • Plans: Weekly ($2.99) · Monthly ($6.99) · Yearly ($39.99)

yeah earlier versions had subscription, I was experimenting with pricing but I did not like it either, especially for something like this

latest version is one time purchase now

trying to keep it simple and local, no uploads and no ongoing fees


You should figure out how to fix the way it appears in the MAS listing, it's going to cost you a lot of downloads among a savvy audience. I always check that IAP section on free apps before I bother downloading.

I get why the previous subscription option would still appear, but I'm not sure why the one-time option wouldn't be appearing. Maybe not enough transactions on it yet?



Thanks! We'll put that in the toptext too.

(It didn't get much frontpage time, so we won't treat the current post as a dupe)


> Microsoft's PhotoDNA scanning is not just in OneDrive, through the Microsoft's eco-system. Basically, if you are using your Microsoft account to sign in to Windows 11, PhotoDNA scans your entire computer. This information came directly from Microsoft Support.

This sounds like a horrible privacy violation. Is it true? What do they do if they find a match?


The general consensus from I saw from discussions years ago was that scanning of your local files was not something that happened (which would be detectable and eventually discovered and called out by someone). Doing so would also require the dll which contains how photodna works, which Microsoft does/did not want out in the wild and requires an NDA to use. Secretly exfiltrating your files for scanning would get Microsoft in legal trouble.

Incidentally, how it works is clever and interesting imo, though defeatable if you know how it works: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?%2Farchives%2F93...

The obvious alternative of course, is openly and aggressively getting users to agree to uploading their files to Microsoft’s computers (OneDrive), which are scanned.

However in the age of machine learning, copilot and the like, I would not be surprised if local scans start becoming a thing, since offering classification of objects in photos is a perfectly reasonable thing to offer from Microsoft’s point of view, and of course CSAM detection can come along with that.


An alleged implementation of PhotoDNA was posted to GitHub a few weeks ago:

https://github.com/ArcaneNibble/open-alleged-photodna/


I’m surprised that such scanning isn’t built into windows defender, the enabled-by-default tool already designed to scan all your files.

But yeah, they also just super aggressively try to trick you into sending all your files to onedrive.


According to the post, they called the police (!)

> Authors, screenwriters, et al. have a new niche to explore. Any day now I expect an A24 trailer featuring a villain who speaks in the register of ChatGPT. “You’re absolutely right, Kayleigh,” it intones. “I did drown little Tamothy, and I’m truly sorry about that. Here’s the breakdown of what happened…”

May I recommend Pluribus (2025-)


Yes. The creator has said he didn't have AI in mind while writing the show, but I think it's still a very stimulating AI parable despite that.

The sycophancy, the grinding inevitablity of assimilation, the homogeneous entity that speaks out of a billion mouths. It's all there.


Rather than the alien infecting humanity with it's DNA virus thing, it could somehow seize the "means" to existing LLMs/models/etc and claim to have "archived humanity's essence". This could then become the 'brain' that speaks from a billion mouths.

It's a large difference in concept but potentially only a small difference in outcome.


“You cannot give me anything, because all that you have is stolen.”

Also, the show Devs (2020), by Alex Garland. The joke is "Devs Ex Machina", Ex Machina being another film of his.

Eh. I enjoyed it enormously and I do likewise recommend it, but its story isn't related to AI (either the concept of its moment or the technology of ours) even slightly, nor trying to be, or at least not in any way I saw. It was pretty open with its themes, so I would expect that one to have been pretty noticeable if it was present alongside the questions of reality, artifice, grief, and simulationism with which the miniseries does concern itself.

You're right, not necessarily AI, more so what an omniscient and omnipotent device could do especially in the wrong hands.

What's the difference between the idle imaginings of a god's mind and a universe scale simulation?

I always got advanced AI vibes from Devs, that it was a mind interfacing with reality in some sort of weird inception / simulation / manifestation way.


In the show the device is not autonomous, humans use it.

That can be a type of mind, though? It can also be a type of interface - a tap into a system not fully understood, controlling the perspective or view but not the process. The whole "mind of god" Deus/Devs, etc - I think it's left ambiguous on purpose for the hook but I always took it to be an AI flavored story at the core.

Maybe. The plot itself is based on a short story that Garland read, both the 2007 original [0] and its 2022 rewrite [1]. Qntm is great and their latest book, There Is No Antimemetics Division, recently was on HN as well [2].

[0] https://qntm.org/responsibility

[1] https://qntm.org/responsibilit

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660853


qntm has a wonderfully strange mind.

"in the wrong hands"

that's fucking funny


The way what they discover can predict but only some amount into the future reminds of how context works in ai

There's literally an ad for Amazon's Alexa devices that features not just the gist of your example, but that specific cause of death (which is itself predated by a murderous digital intelligence doing the same thing in AMC's Pantheon series).

Guys I thought it was the fire next time.


Thanks for the recommendation, the premise of the show sounds great!

"... That's not cheating. That's being smart."

Not sure if that's intentional, but the entire landing page gets replaced with an error if WebGL is not available:

> Something went wrong!

> Error creating WebGL context.


Not intentional! Thank you for pointing that out. I'll get a fallback in place within the next 24 hours.

For reference, this is the application: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.bamnetw...

8 trackers, 49 permissions. Whatever reason they gave for requiring the application, evidently they couldn't resist selling out their users in the end. Disgusting.


Of course this is the actual reason they are forcing you to use the app. They dont give a crap about scalping.

>Google AdMob

They can't resist squeezing every bit out


I am not a high-rep user and I am still very much relieved that they got rid of the horrible redesigned website.

uBlacklist is a great extension to avoid slopfarms like this: https://ublacklist.github.io/docs

Is there a reason this user-hostile mess is preferred over an X.509 certificate (besides big tech lobbying)?

Slovenia hands out certificates for online government services, including document signing, and it seems to be going fine, with the added benefit that Google can't take away my access.


In the end it's mostly x509 certificates, an ETSI pADES PDF signature for example contains the signing x509 certificate (ETSI specifies extension OID's to the x509 certificates to contain personal numbers, country, etc).

The big question is how to let users properly handle their certificates so they won't get abused into being useless.

If I understood it correctly, the German current Ausweissapp seems to require NFC to read it from your personal id card together with a PIN code you got with the card, it's not entirely user-friendly since aligning the card with your phone seems to be prickly.

Swedish BankID handles it internally in their app (unlocked via PIN's) but they don't have a good way to use it to sign things (It all relies on the infrastructure even if they give out signature documents it's not compatible with pADES).

There's a new govt sponsored one that I assume will piggyback on the personal cards/passes that are readable via NFC.

Norway and Denmark iirc supports proper signatures but I don't think the certificates are under user control (someone correct me if I'm wrong here).

Now these things are mostly issues for document signatures, authentication is often handled via other flows.

What I skimmed from the article, it seems to be more in line with Swedish BankID and is actually fairly smooth for end users even if less secure than what they have now with Ausweissapp.


Most people wouldn't know what to do with a certificate, so governments build some stuff on top (like an official mobile app) which makes auth easier. It's usually just certificates underneath (not exposed to the user).

Eidas tries to harmonize these implementations across EU member states.


eIDAS is about making the electronic IDs emitted by the different EU governments intercompatible, so you can use a Slovenian certificate to authenticate into the German tax system, if you want to.

You've so far made 3 completely nonsensical top level comments across different posts. Are you a bot or am I missing something?

Dang needs a raise - or a team of helpers.

dang is the bartender of a nazi bar

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar


Definitely a bot

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