I audited the privacy of popular free dev tools, the results are terrifying(www.toolbox-kit.com)

52 pointsby WaitWaitWha7 hours ago11 comments

beart7 hours ago
I love regex101.com, so really happy to see it breaks the mold here.
gmuslera7 hours ago
Using canary URLs in these and other sites may be interesting too.
Hizonner3 hours ago
Why would you use a web site to format JSON, encode/decode base64, take a diff...
These are all things your local computer can do just fine.
hohithere6 hours ago
> Free Dev Tools
And test only online websites (」°ロ°)」
bmenrigh7 hours ago
Can we stop it with "and the results are terrifying", "and you won't believe what I found", "the <x> situation is insane", etc.? The over-hyping of low quality, low effort content is making it hard to find actually interesting or informative things.
- SunshineTheCat7 hours ago
  Yea I was thinking the same thing.
  When you reach for the most exaggerated, over-the-top word possible when describing something relatively mundane, what will you use when you talk about something that actually is "terrifying?"
  - thfuran6 hours ago
    “The most terrifying thing you’ve ever heard”. You can even stick with that one as long as your subjects are monotonically scary.
- cheschire7 hours ago
  Find a better and more accessible solution than clickbait.
  Please, do it.
  - arcfour7 hours ago
    "Privacy concerns found in audit of popular dev tools" (or something along those lines) would work without feeling sensationalized.
    cheschire5 hours ago
    Yes this one time. I’m speaking generally in response to the general plea.
    thfuran2 hours ago
    I’m not sure what you mean. Not clickbait is the better alternative.
    cheschire2 hours ago
    If that were true, it wouldn’t be such a popular problem. Right? Clearly HN is falling into the same pattern of all the other sites. Engagement hacking blah blah blah.
    ranger_dangeran hour ago
    In this case I'd say the "clickbait" is justified... these results are downright horrific IMO.
  - bmenrigh6 hours ago
    "better", "more accessible"? What the hell are you talking about? Clickbait doesn't make anything better or more accessible.
    Instead, it makes it impossible to pre-select for interesting information. Instead of telling you what something is about, it tells you how you should feel about it. That's not improving accessibility.
    cheschire5 hours ago
    I meant from the author’s perspective. Clickbait is too easy, which is probably why it’s so popular.
    bmenrigh5 hours ago
    Oh completely. But my perspective is that we all should individually punish clickbait by not clicking. More broadly, we should strive to keep HN full of quality tech content rather than clickbait.
speedyapoc7 hours ago
Comment is a bit of an aside, but it's a shame what happened to JSONFormatter.org. The UI was preferable to alternatives for me, it ranked highly in Google so I could just search "JSON formatter" and access it, etc.
Now the site freezes 50% of the time when loading it on my Mac and when it doesn't freeze, there's a 5 second period of waiting before I can paste any input. Not to mention ads taking up 40% of the screen. The classic tech cycle of life.
iberator7 hours ago
That's why real programmers are those who can work offline without the Internet. (just the repositories)
:)
local first.
- LoganDark4 hours ago
  Yeah, I run all my LLMs offline. That way I don't need documentation at all!
  (I jest of course.)
dbacar6 hours ago
Glad that I am using Firefox with:
- uBlock Origin
- cookieAutodelete
- privacy badger
Any additions to my arsenal welcome!
- ozlikethewizard5 hours ago
  Ironfox/Librewolf with just uBlock. The more extensions you have the way easier you are to fingerprint.
deafpolygon6 hours ago
what dev uses public websites to do any kind of work?
- ranger_dangeran hour ago
  I would say a comically large percentage of them do.
ramoz7 hours ago
[flagged]
OsrsNeedsf2P7 hours ago
Decent article. Painful to read the LLM output.