My goodness, for a website full of techincal individuals a lot of you are falling for the appeal to nature fallacy hard. Also, it looks like no one here knows how to defer to experts. I don't know much about food safety standards, chemical compositions, additives, etc. so I've talked with people who are experts instead. And from what I have gotten, most people are freaking out because they lack an understanding of what is really safe or not. People believe that since a certain scary sounding chemical was added that the food is now less safe when that's not the case.
Appeal to nature isn't a fallacy, it is a rhetorical device and can be a completely logical razor.
The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past. If we want a yellow food dye should we:
A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...
B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.
Who the hell would take B? Unless we believe that our studies are infallible, all encompassing and perfectly established and executed the first will always be a better option. Time and time again we see that things previously thought safe are not but I would argue it is far far rarer to see that on the more naturally derived side of food.
>derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years
This one stands out to me because, as they say, “the dose makes the poison”. Taking some trace element from something “natural” and highly concentrating it is basically as novel as something new. Consuming a gram of something over a lifetime is different than consuming a gram of something every day.
Also, eating something for hundreds of thousands of years only means that most people will live several decades while eating it. It doesn’t mean people won’t be killed by it. It doesn’t mean people wont get cancer from it in 30-40 years. Killing 1% of the people that eat something would be a perfectly acceptable evolutionary loss, depending on the amount of nutrition and calories provided.
That’s why it is an appeal to nature fallacy. Because it says absolutely nothing about population level long term health effects.
> doesn’t mean people won’t be killed by it. It doesn’t mean people wont get cancer from it in 30-40 years. Killing 1% of the people that eat something would be a perfectly acceptable evolutionary loss
But it would be an evolutionary loss, unlike a synthetic compound that has been equally as well studied scientifically - this odds on would make the natural compound safer to consume… not sure why this is so complicated to understand
> The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past.
Okay, where in the evolutionary past did we eat Doritos colored with annatto?
> A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...
A lot of things we have historically eaten are carcinogenic. Natural flavoring for root beer is flavored with sarsaparilla root. Fun fact, it contains safrole, a known carcinogen.
Carrots, bananas, parsley, black pepper, clove, anise contain alkenylbenzene compounds which cause cancer in rodents.
Furoanocoumarins in parsnips, celery root, grapefruit, etc, can cause skin burns and prevent many drugs from working (or make them work too fast).
Cassava, sorghum, stone fruits, bamboo shoots and almonds contain cyanogenic glycosides which turn into cyanide when eaten.
Undercooked beans contain lectins, and 4-5 kidney beans are enough to cause somachache, vomiting and diarrhea.
Nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants) contain solanine which is toxic.
Various fruits like pineapples have raphides which are sharp spikes made of oxalic acid. If you eat particularly aggressive ones they can even cause bleeding.
The pawpaw fruit that has been eaten for generations contains annonacin, a neurotoxin.
People have been eating (prepared) mushrooms like gyromitra that have gyromitrin (metabolized to monomethylhydrazine, rocket fuel, a neurotoxin) for generations too. It can actually cause ALS over time.
Castor beans contain ricin.
The difference is apparently God doesn't have to publish this information on an ingredients list.
> B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.
"A couple studies" is wildly disingenuous. A quick search will tell you as much.
> The appeal is to have a diet more in line with our evolutionary past.
Our evolutionary past is full of death and disease from what we ate. Humans have been drinking alcohol for centuries and there is strong scientific consensus that it causes cancer. Just because it's what humans have been doing doesn't mean it is safe and we should continue it.
> A) derive it from something humans have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years and that a couple studies have confirmed is probably safe...
> B) derive it from petroleum (as current US yellow food dye is) that a couple studies say is probably safe.
You say "derive it from petroleum" like they pump it directly from the well into your food. Petroleum is composed of hydrocarbons, it's very useful and is used in a lot of different applications. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it is dangerous.
If it's a fallacy then it's one I plan to keep falling for because it's useful.
No one inhales six apples in a sitting but I sure have eaten 200g of chocolate in an hour before.
It's useful to go for more "natural" foods because they aren't designed to make me eat as much of it as possible. Even if fruit loops were as healthy as an apple the apple still wins because the fruit loops are deliberately engineered to encourage you to eat more of them.
> It's useful to go for more "natural" foods because they aren't designed to make me eat as much of it as possible.
I'm not saying that fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other foods you get from nature aren't healthy, of course they are. The fallacy is to say that because it's natural it's inherently better then an artificial or synthetic counterpart. Instead of worrying about if the food dye in your fruit loops uses red bell peppers or is synthetically extracted from petroleum, how about we worry about people consuming too much ultra-processed, high calorie, and low nutrional foods. That will make a greater impact on the general populations health here in America. Banning additives and food dyes won't stop people from eating 2000 calories of fried oreos.
I think an important note is that regulatory agencies in other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects.
I mentioned this in another comment, but as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two. Much easier to eat foods made of whole ingredients where I lived in Europe - even many prepackaged foods that we’d buy at the grocery store.
I came across this link yesterday[1] on a health-focused HN thread[2]. The study split a group of overweight people up into low-carb and low-fat diets, to see which produced better weight loss. The group that lost the most weight was actually neither - it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods.
> other countries have cracked down on some of those scary-sounding chemicals, due to them being unnecessary for food with no real benefit for the person eating it, and possible evidence of negative affects
Just because another country bans something does not make that thing harmful. Politicians banning food products and additives with no real scientific evidence is not unusual. They bend to public will, they are politicians after all. Also, studies that show "possible evidence of negative affects" in mice ingested at higher dosages then a human would ever eat or drink does not show they are harmful in humans. Humans are not mice after all.
> as someone who has lived for multiple years in the US and Europe, it is a drastic difference in food quality between the two
This is purely subjective, I've been to Europe and the Middle East, both have great food. But food in America is no worse in quality. The main difference is when I visited those area's I mostly ate out, at nicer restaurants where food would of course feel/taste/look better then the average meal at home or from fast food. But when eating at friends homes, the food quality (vegetables, fruits, meats) was no different than what I could get here in America.
> it was just whoever ended up eating less processed foods and more whole foods
I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes.
> I'm not arguing that we don't eat more ultra-processed foods. We do eat too many highly refined foods with little nutritional value. My argument is against blaming food additives, dyes, GMOs, HFCS, etc... Eating more whole foods, vegetables, and fruits would make you healthier, but that's due to the nutritional value, fiber, feeling more full for longer leading to reduced caloric intake, etc... Not because you got rid of food dyes.
But the prevalence of the above ingredients serves to increase consumption of processed foods relative to whole foods, both by increasing “addictiveness” aka how much people eat, and by decreasing its cost. HFCS is the best example of this, having heightened addictive properties via increased satiety suppression and dopamine response compared to other sugars, while being heavily subsidized to the point that final prices see a 15% reduction. As a result, HFCS is added to many products it has no business being in, because it increases sales (and so consumption, of processed foods).
Have you considered that those experts might have perverse incentives? It’s not a secret that the very regulators whose job it is to make sure we don’t eat poison are the same people who sell the food. But sure feel free to “trust the experts”, I’ll be over here doing my best to not eat things made out of coal tar (even if someone in a lab coat says it’s okie dokie).
Every single thing in our society has perverse incentives. Every single person who ever sells you something has incentive to sell you as little as possible for as much money as possible. Every single employer has incentive to pay you as little as possible for as much labor as possible. But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play.
People who worked their entire life in an industry and became experts on it, then become regulators for the same industry, have incentives to favor their industry, sure. But who else should be regulating the industry if not the expert in that industry? If you get someone who is not an insider, wouldn't they just fail at regulating, because they have no idea how it works? Also, the people who put someone in that position, isn't there a chain of accountability there? There are many people working side by side with the "evil person trying to enrich themselves". Bad acts come out. Incentives tend to balance each other out. It's not wrong that part of a regulator's job is to find a balance as to not destroy an industry while regulating it.
> But that's not how things end up happening, because other forces are at play.
Is it really not how things end up happening? We must be living in two different realities. The greater the power, the higher the likelihood it becomes corrupted. With such a high incentive to give into corruption, you can’t just hand-wave it away with “but I’m sure it gets balanced out by something”. Your local family doctor might be a good enough person to help you get better without expensive drugs, but the head of a large institution? Fat chance.
That feeling you just expressed of higher trust to your local doctor than to a head of a large institution: it came from having a pretty good idea what your local doctor does, and no idea what a head of an institution does. The growing problem with cynicism in our society is not because there's evidence of corruption, it's because nobody knows how anything works, but everybody gets fed "look at these bad incentives" by pundits (especially alternative media ones) all day. Everything is complex. Just because it is doesn't make it nefarious.
An institution's whole point is to be a system where you don't have to trust individuals. It's a way to deal with complex nature of our reality. People should really learn what institutions are, how they function, what accountability mechanisms they contain, instead of blaming them based on conjecture. "Look, this bad thing happened. And this person has this bad incentive. Now we know the whole story." We don't.
No not really, trust in my local doctor comes from having a personal relationship with him and trusting his character enough to trust his word. There are things that are going to be beyond my understanding, but if I can trust his character enough to believe he’d rather see me healthy even at the expense of a bigger paycheck, then I’ll do it. How people place that same trust in faceless institutions is beyond me. Again - what forces exist to prevent them from being corrupted? Absolutely the growing cynicism in institutions is because of evidence of corruption. We gave them undeserved trust, they abused it, and now we see the effect of that.
I think relying on your judgement of character to determine trust is a decent tactic in personal life and interactions, but it doesn't work at scale.
People place trust in faceless institutions all the time. That's why you sit in a box that produces about 50 explosions per second when you drive a car. I don't think you would've gained much by being comfortable with the character of your car designer. If you think building cars is complex, laws and regulations are just as complex. And it takes teams of lawyers, hundreds of pages of documents, and a lot of data to figure out what makes sense. But it's easy to armchair-judge all of that as "just some faceless institution".
> what forces exist to prevent them from being corrupted?
Why are you right now not stealing from your work, or vulnerable people around you? Why are you not trying to screw over everybody you meet? Those forces and more. There's a lot of scrutiny built into most institutions.
> the growing cynicism in institutions is because of evidence of corruption
I don't think we use the word "evidence" the same way. Having perverse incentives is not evidence.
Someone you have a personal relationship with and that you trust your character never crossed you? Never fucked you over? Never pulled a fast one? Never lied? You’re either gullible or incredibly lucky.
Oh come off it. The United States has the highest rate of obesity in the WORLD (excluding some small Pacific islands). The US also has some of the most overengineered food. It doesn't take much to see the connection.
We are well past the point of carefully reasoning about food. It is time to start killing off additives first and asking questions later. "Freaking out" is the reasonable stance when everything in the grocery store is poison.
You are blaming the wrong thing though. America isn't obese because of red dye 40 or food additives, it's obese because Americans eat too much ultra processed foods that are high in calories and low in nutritional value. Along with minimal exercise and walking.
Banning red dye 40 isn't going to solve anything, companies are just going to find another food dye, natural or synthetic. There needs to be major changes in the average American diet to incorporate more whole foods, fiber, vegetables, fruits, etc... Once that is done then take a harder look at the dyes and additives.
People eat maraschino cherries on ice cream sundaes in many countries where people claim the dye is banned, yet the cherries still contain the die. Maybe you should reevaluate your position.
The issue isn't that it's a health risk directly, it's just the result of some very reasonable principals. The "Delaney Clause" in the Food Additives Amendment of 1958 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act is why it's getting banned. If something is known to cause cancer in animals, and it isn't necessary for the production of the food, then it shouldn't be included.
This is simply an application of the Precautionary Principle to things already associated with harm. Since we can't know all the goods or harms that can come from a substance, if something is known to cause potential harm and it's unnecessary, then we shouldn't consume it. The human body is an absurdly complex multi-variate system, and throwing a bunch of unnecessary random shit at it not a great idea in general, but is generally reasonable when we don't know whether it's producing harms or benefits or neither. However, when we know these additives can produce harms, and it is wildly impractical to do repeated, controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes on humans, all at various levels of exposure. So, since the substances are entirely unnecessary we might as well just avoid them unless they are essential to creating products.
As a benzene-handling professional for decades who never intends to cease entering environments subject to exposure, I've never considered intentionally ingesting non-food ingredients or contamination to be the least bit safe. Especially dyes and pesticides, if you study the chemistry of these you can see that very good characterization and identification of complex, unique, undesired impurities has not really been very comprehensive at all. Beside the possibility that the dye molecule itself may be the most toxic component anyway.
With industrial hazards there is at least one layer of PPE, and I can do anything I see fit to further mitigate exposure in any way.
I don't even know which dye is in things like Flamin Hot pop culture materials, but they sure look fake to me. And if the only PPE between me and the potentially-hazardous substance is the bag that the Cheetos come in, I'm always going to be highly dismayed when the integrity of the PPE is compromised for any reason :)
As non-food ingredients have proliferated over the decades, all I can say is why even bother?
Give me a break, they couldn't have used very good strawberries if they had to make them pink artificially.
I am a lifelong science dude myself, studied dyes quite a bit and even synthesized some in the lab. So on this I trust the judgment of young mothers who are avoiding junk food for their kids more so than other scientists who propose that dyes are completely harmless for some reason.
I also talked with people who are experts, and they assured me banning Red Dye 3, among other things, is necessary and it will improve population health in the long term.
Great, but I can actually back it up. That's the difference here. I can point you to experts who agree with what I am saying and who I have chatted with.
If you are actually interested then Dr. Jessica Knurick. She is accessible on different social media platforms and has a website where you can contact her.
Or, maybe some of us have lived experience where artificial food dyes have detrimental effects to our children. I don't need science to tell me what my own two eyes and lived experience says. Do I really need a double blind study to tell me that when one of my kids eats food laced with these dyes, he's crazy for a week, but when he eats candy w/o these dyes, he just is a normal kid with a sugar rush?
My sibling comment goes into more detail, but claiming that anyone who has a lived experience is stupid (aka, falling for a logical fallacy) is just accelerating the distrust of "authority" at a time when we need it most.
> Do I really need a double blind study to tell me that when one of my kids eats food laced with these dyes, he's crazy for a week, but when he eats candy w/o these dyes, he just is a normal kid with a sugar rush?
TBH this sounds like exactly the kind of things double blind studies are invented for.
But even if there were none that showed a link, I should just continue to feed my child something that would cause adverse reactions?
What’s crazy to me is … we are talking about a totally unnecessary food additive. It’s not like I’m arguing against some critical public health intervention to prevent a deadly virus. It’s a dye to make food turn a color.
Someone with one (1) anecdote is not an authority and shouldn't be trusted like one. Eroding trust in authorities by equating actual experts with somebody who has a half baked opinion based on an anecdote seems like the real issue to me.
Going around and assuming every opinion is based on objective reality instead of subjective experience filtered through human perception with all it's quirks is not a good way to arrive at truth.
I'm not asking to be treated or trusted like an authority. I'm just asking not to treat people, when sharing a lived experience shared with others (making this n>1), is told that their experience is "half baked". My lived experience is by definition my objective reality.
Arguing with me that I could not possibly have experienced a cause and effect because some people didn't hold enough large enough placebo controlled double blind studies (I say this because double blind studies have studied this exact phenomenon, and triggered the retraction of some of these dyes in other countries) is just insulting after a while.
We know so little about nutrition and how different individuals process different nutrients that the scientific consensus on healthy food habits, weight loss, etc have shifted dramatically over the years. We are facing an obesity epidemic in the US. A little humility would be nice in the face of what clearly is not working for the majority of the population.
I mean, it's just food dye for God's sake, what's the "scientific" argument that foods must contain artificial colors?
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm against unnecessary additives too. But you surely agree that anecdotes are bad source to inform your understanding on a subject where countless actual experts are available.
What can the actual experts tell me about my child's reaction to the food dye? One of my children has an adverse reaction to the dyes, my other children do not. What is the expert going to tell me? How does one get access to one of these experts? What about the studies that do show a link between behavior issues and artificial dyes? Are those studies not to be trusted?
Edit: curious about your first sentence: what makes you against unnecessary food additives? Is it a double blind study? If so, can you name it or an expert opinion on the matter that you trust?
Lots of parents probably follow similar lines of thinking about the effect of sugar on their kids' behaviour, and I think it's worth deferring to experts on that.
I'm not telling you to personally change your belief. What I was trying to say is that you're propping up the value of your individual opinion as if it should rival experts to the reader.
> [...] claiming that anyone who has a lived experience is stupid (aka, falling for a logical fallacy) is just accelerating the distrust of "authority" at a time when we need it most.
I'm saying that you making a mountain out of a belief does directly translate to a distrust in experts, in a way that telling somebody they might just be wrong/it was a coincidence/whatever couldn't do.
At the end of the day most people just see what the want or expect to see, when there isn't a strong enough correlation in another direction. That's why, a reader, one should not value any anecdote too highly.
> curious about your first sentence: what makes you against unnecessary food additives? Is it a double blind study?
The question reads like a gotcha, but I'll answer anyway: The fact that there aren't enough studies about many such ingredients, and that I don't have time to check which are definitely vs. lack data.
> My lived experience is by definition my objective reality.
Just glossing over your complete misuse of objective here btw. There is nothing objective about your subjective* "lived realiy".
*Definition of subjective: 1. Dependent on or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world. / 2. Based on a given person's experience, understanding, and feelings; personal or individual.
I don't know whether that's literally true, but I can certainly tell you that there is no point in banning stuff nobody in the EU is thinking of using anyway. US companies are way more "adventurous" with their additives, which makes regulation here even more important.
Quinoline yellow (E104), Azorubine/Carmoisine (E122), Ponceau 4R (E124), Patent blue V (E131), Green S (E142), Brilliant Black BN (E151), Vegetable Carbon (E153), Amaranth (E123), Brown FK (E154), Brown HT (E155) and now Red Dye No 3 (E127)
Approved in US, but not in EU:
Orange B**, Citrus Red No. 2 and FD&C Green No. 3.
There are in fact several food dyes in the EU that are "banned" in the US.
Using the word "banned" though is misleading. Most things are not approved because no one has petitioned for approval, not because they were found harmful. This happens more in Europe than the US though because the US has GRAS.
And to clarify, since it appears to not be well known even in the US, that GRAS = Generally Recognized As Safe[0], which isn't necessarily all that safe given the "testing" required to meet that "standard."
Its not just that. Different ideas on how to regulate.
To add something to food in the EU, you need to prove FIRST it causes no harm. It follows the precautionary principle.
In the US, the FDA allows "similar compounds" rapid approval, allowing for the expansion of what's allowed without testing.
Here is the probably not too bad chatGPT summary
United States: Risk-Benefit Approach
General Approach:
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) operates under a risk-benefit analysis framework. This means additives can be approved if the benefits (e.g., preserving food, enhancing flavor) outweigh the potential risks when used as intended.
In some cases, manufacturers can self-certify an additive as "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS) without requiring FDA pre-approval. This system relies heavily on the manufacturer's responsibility and scientific consensus among qualified experts.
Approval Process:
Data Submission: Manufacturers submit safety data for new additives, but the level of evidence required can vary. For GRAS substances, companies may use existing studies or published research instead of conducting new, comprehensive tests.
Rapid Approvals: The GRAS system allows additives to be introduced more quickly, provided there is no immediate evidence of harm. This has led to criticism that some substances enter the market without sufficient independent oversight.
The differing approaches to food additive regulation in the EU and the US stem from distinct legal frameworks, principles, and processes for evaluating food safety. Here's a breakdown of how it works:
European Union: Precautionary Principle
General Approach:
The EU adheres to the Precautionary Principle, which means a substance must be proven safe before it is approved for use.
Manufacturers or entities seeking approval for a food additive must provide comprehensive scientific evidence to demonstrate that the additive is harmless to humans.
Approval Process:
Scientific Evaluation: The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) conducts a detailed risk assessment. Applicants must submit robust toxicological and safety data, including studies on metabolism, potential toxic effects, and exposure assessments.
Re-Evaluation: Even after approval, all additives are subject to periodic re-evaluation to ensure ongoing safety as new scientific evidence emerges.
As someone who works in cybersecurity and works closely with our developers, a lot of them tend to inherently trust third-party code with no auditing of the supply chain. I am always fighting that while yes, we don't need to reinvent the wheel and libraries/packages are important, our organzation and developers need to be aware of what we are bringing into our network and our codebase.
As someone who also works in cybersecurity, we use Rust extensively and are sunsetting all of our C code. We use third-party dependencies judiciously and never deploy anything without auditing it. It's great that Rust facilitates this convenient ecosystem, and it's to Rust's benefit, not Rust's detriment, that the ecosystem exists.
Many orgs want to save costs while using open software. In a world after xz incident they are now in very difficult place. It is all about whom do one trusts. As someone who works in such costs aware business as gamedev I think Rust has unique chance to capture trust market. If major Rust organization sponsors will donate information about even a fraction of what they had audited that can create safe heaven for smaller orgs and startups. Even large orgs that still have history of audits for decades and long list of C/C++/C#/Java projects they trust might buy in. Because it is not reasonable to expect that they can keep up with each open project updates.
> We use third-party dependencies judiciously and never deploy anything without auditing it.
This is how I think it should be of course. Like I said, I'm not against the use of third-party code or dependencies, I'm against using them without performing any audit of that code.
Tbh, I think this is way more subjective then you're making it out to be. I subjectively would not want to use a WM for most of these points.
> - If you want to have two web pages side-by-side, you don't need a web browser that can handle split panes. Just have each web page in its own window and use your window manager to put them side-by-side. Tiling window managers will do this automatically.
I feel Edge does this better then any browser or WM. As a user, I don't want to see the browser's window border, or UI duplicated. Edge has a very easy and friendly split view does exactly what I would expect.
> - If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.
I'm sorry, but I am not going to add every article I may want to read later as a bookmark or add to my history. If I added it as a bookmark and read it, I'll have to remove it as a bookmark next. That's already more steps then just opening it in a background tab by middle clicking my mouse and closing the tab after reading it. My bookmarks are for items that I want to keep, not one time uses.
> - If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces. You can even name workspaces according to projects or tasks, and assign windows to them automatically.
Nope. I have different profiles for my browser to seperate accounts, cookies, history, settings, etc... I don't think a WM could do this like using a browser could. In Edge I can just open the browser in my work profile and my Google work account is logged in with my Slack as a pinned tab versus using my personal profile and having my personal Google account logged in with YT Music as a pinned tab. This is a critical feature to me.
Yup, that 100 tab comment had me instantly clocking them as an i3 (or similar) user. There's just something about those types of window managers that has them convinced it's some kind of panacea for every problem. We already have tabs and we already have bookmarks: if bookmarks were an easier way to queue things up to look at later than tabs, most people would already be doing that, and yet tabs prevail. There must therefore be something about tabs that people find more useful and or more convenient than bookmarks.
The "just use bookmarks, bro" mindset comes from their foregone conclusion that windows are good, tabs are bad, therefore anything that favours tabs is also bad and should be done differently if you insist on doing it at all. Just let people have tabs.
> There must therefore be something about tabs that people find more useful and or more convenient than bookmarks.
I suspect it really is as simple as 'tabs are always visible'. Hidden behind a menu, it's easy to forget bookmarks exist unless you really buy into that way of working and open your bookmarks menu frequently. Tabs are the 'default' alternative. However, I do think most browser bookmarking could be improved immeasurably — start by having a proper bookmark manager, similar to something like Pinboard.
I diff'd the chrome extension against the github repo and they are basically the same, outside of a few lines in the README.md missing and the manifest.json containing an update URL key to "https://clients2.google.com/service/update2/crx".
This almost happened to my S/O. Luckily I had setup NextDNS to block newly registered domains along with a list of uncommon TLDs so the site got blocked.
> Luckily I had setup NextDNS to block newly registered domains along with a list of uncommon TLDs so the site got blocked.
I go further: I generate tens of thousands of variants of all the "sensitive" websites we use (like banks and brokers).
All the "levenshtein edit distance = 1" and some of the LED = 2. All variation of TLDs, etc.
I blocklist most TLDs (now that most are facetious): the entire TLD. I blocklist many countries both at the TLD level and by blocking their entire IP blocks (using ipsets).
For example for "keytradebank.be", I generate stuff like:
I don't care that most make no sense: I generate so many that those who could fool my wife are caught by my generator.
I then force the browser to use the "corporate" DNS settings: where DoH/DoT is forbidden from the browser to the LAN DNS. I can still use DoH/DoT after that if I feel like it.
So any DNS request passes through the local DNS resolver (the firewall ensures that too).
My firewall also takes care of rejecting any DNS attempt to an internationalized domain names (by inspecting packets on port 53 and dropping any that contains "xn--"). I don't care a yota about the legit (for some definition of legit): "pile of poo heart" websites.
My local DNS resolver has 600 000 entries blocked I think, something like that.
I then also use a DNS resolver blocking known malware/porn sites (CloudFlare's 1.1.1.3 for example).
So copycat phishing sites have to dodge my blocklist, the usual blocklists (which I also put in my DNS), then 1.1.1.3's blocklist.
P.S: some people go further and block everything by default, then whitelist the sites they use. But it's a bit annoying to do with all the CDNs that have to be whitelisted etc.
Guess it depends on your definition of a mono-repo vs multi-repo. I'd consider what we have as a mono.
We have one repo which is our main web application (user dashboard, landing page, etc..), our API, and our scheduled tasks. With how much code is shared between these services it just makes sense to keep them together.
We then have separate repo's for other services that aren't critical or apart of what was mentioned above.
