The Internet Archive is tripling recurring donations this month, and the comments are a masterclass in why that's harder than it sounds.
What the article says
- The Internet Archive is asking for recurring donors this September because any new monthly gift of twenty five dollars or more gets matched two to one.
- Running the Wayback Machine and its collections costs real money for servers, storage, power and cooling, and the Archive builds and maintains all of it itself instead of outsourcing.
- It stores over two hundred petabytes of data and says it stays free with no ads and no selling of user data.
- Most of its support already comes from small recurring donors averaging around twenty five dollars a month.
What HN is saying
- Plenty of people say they just donated or bumped up their monthly amount after seeing the post.
- A recurring complaint is that the site itself is hard to use lately, with frequent errors, timeouts and aggressive rate limiting when people try to actually pull data.
- Several commenters ask who exactly is funding the matching donations, since the Archive never names the source.
- One long thread digs into whether matching gifts are a psychological trick or a real structural need tied to nonprofit tax rules, with no clear consensus.
- A former staffer points out the Archive's foundation reportedly holds hundreds of millions in assets, raising the sharpest pushback that cash may not be the real bottleneck.
- Others suggest the Archive should recruit more volunteers, join platforms like Open Collective, or consider decentralized storage instead of just asking for money.
X sent a cease and desist to kill the last good Twitter frontend. It's back anyway.
What the article says
- X Corp sent cease and desist letters demanding Nitter's instances and code repository be taken down for good.
- After getting legal advice, the maintainer announced the project will keep going, with more details to follow.
- The readme quietly picked up new donation options including GitHub Sponsors, alongside the existing crypto addresses.
- A note now flags that RSS feeds are often switched off on individual instances because people abuse them.
- The legal contact address was updated to also handle DMCA requests, not just general inquiries.
What HN is saying
- Most commenters are relieved the project survives and see it as proof archival and frontend tools are hard to kill legally.
- Several point out lawyers often send cease and desist letters as a show of force, then back off once challenged.
- There's real worry about jurisdiction, since where the maintainer lives could decide whether the legal shield actually holds.
- One thread debates whether tools like Nitter prop X up by easing the pain, rather than pushing people to leave.
- Others swap notes on alternatives, from Mastodon's easy account migration to browser extensions that auto redirect X links.
Gamers Nexus caught LG smart TVs mapping your home network and recording audio even when you thought the mic was off.
What the article says
- Gamers Nexus spent months investigating LG smart TVs and says the findings go well beyond normal ad tracking.
- LG's TVs scan your home network, logging every device's IP address and even your neighbors' if they're in range.
- Even after you disable the microphone in settings, testers found it still recorded, just at a volume too low to notice until amplified.
- LG's own terms admit the TV can listen in and put the burden on you to warn everyone in earshot, guests included.
- The report also covers security holes that let the TVs be turned into covert listening devices.
What HN is saying
- Commenters are stunned that LG's contract makes you responsible for telling houseguests they might be recorded, calling it legally shaky.
- A recurring theme is people gutting their smart TVs: pulling the WiFi chip, blocking them at the router, or using a dumb remote with no mic.
- Several worry that disconnecting isn't enough, since some TVs are said to hop onto open WiFi or share networks with other TVs nearby.
- One thread argues this crosses into wiretapping law, since guests and even neighbors never consented to being recorded.
- A skeptic pushed back, questioning whether the TV really streams raw ambient conversation given how much data that would take, calling for firmer proof.
A 25 year old privacy hosting collective is shutting down after the US labeled it a terrorist group.
What the article says
- Autistici slash Inventati, a nonprofit that has offered free encrypted email and hosting since the early 2000s, is closing everything down.
- The US State Department designated the group a terrorist organization, saying militant groups used its tools to publish claims of responsibility for attacks.
- The collective says fighting the label would put its users and volunteers at legal and personal risk, so it chose to shut down rather than resist.
- They plan to send instructions for backing up blogs, mail, and websites, but warn their infrastructure could vanish without warning before that happens.
What HN is saying
- Many commenters had never heard of the group and spent the thread just asking what happened and demanding sources.
- A big chunk of the debate is whether hosting providers should be blamed for what users publish, with comparisons to Telegram, Signal, and gun makers.
- Some Italians in the thread say the collective's rhetoric over the years made the accusation less shocking to them than to outsiders.
- The sharpest disagreement is over the State Department's actual evidence, some call it a legitimate case, others call the designation politically motivated and thin.
- A few commenters turn it into a broader argument about financial deplatforming, bringing up Bitcoin and PayPal freezing groups like GrapheneOS.
Asahi Linux now runs on M3 Macs, and the comments turn into a real fight about why Apple won't just help.
What the article says
- Asahi Linux now officially supports M3 series Macs, with most things working the same as on M1 and M2.
- Webcam, mic, USB, WiFi, Bluetooth, and hardware video decoding all work, including newer video formats.
- Graphics acceleration and full display controller support are still missing, so do not expect smooth 3D performance.
- Sleep is broken and the HDMI port is disabled because of that same missing display support.
- For now you need to turn on an expert setting in the installer to try it, though the team plans to drop that soon.
What HN is saying
- Many commenters wonder why Apple does not just release documentation, but others explain that platform documentation is far more complex than a simple spec sheet, and Apple has little business reason to help.
- Several people argue Apple deliberately avoids anything copyleft and has no incentive to support a Linux port that will not sell more laptops.
- A recurring complaint is that sleep, HDMI, and Thunderbolt still do not work, which some say is the real barrier to daily use.
- One thread gets heated over a separate community effort trying to speed things along with AI generated drivers, with commenters split on whether that helps or is mostly hype.
- A few longtime users say the project's funding has dropped off and encourage people to support it directly if they want more chips covered.