Privacy policy

Last updated 5 October 2026.

YAVCHN is a reader for Hacker News and Lobsters at yavchn.com. Paul Parks runs it as an individual in Singapore, and he decides what it does with your data. You can reach him about anything on this page at paul@parkscomputing.com.

YAVCHN keeps as little about you as it can. It has no advertising and no analytics, it doesn't track you across other sites, and it doesn't sell your data, and it doesn't share your data with anyone except the services listed below, which it needs in order to work.

If you don't sign in

Without an account, the server keeps nothing that identifies you. Your pins, collections, notes, hidden stories, blocked sites, reading positions and layout are stored in your own browser, and they stay there until you clear the site's data.

The server still sees each request your browser makes, as every web server does. It doesn't keep an access log. To stop any one visitor from overloading the site or the sources it reads, it counts requests by IP address in memory, and it forgets each count after a few minutes.

When you open an article, the server fetches it from the publisher and keeps a copy for 30 days so that the next reader gets it quickly. That copy isn't linked to you or to anyone else.

The server records errors in a log that is limited in size, so old entries are discarded as new ones arrive. An entry can include the address of an article that failed to load, words searched for on Hacker News, an address entered in Find, or a Hacker News or Lobsters user name being looked up. It never includes IP addresses, email addresses or account details.

If you have an account

An account lets you keep the same pins, collections, notes and settings on every device. For each account the server keeps the following.

  • A random account number and the date the account was created.
  • Each way you sign in. For GitHub, that is your GitHub user number, user name and the address of your GitHub picture. For an email link, it is your email address.
  • Your passkeys. The server keeps each passkey's public key, the name you give it, and when it was added and last used. A passkey's private key never leaves your device.
  • Your profile picture, if you have one, either a copy of your GitHub picture or a picture you uploaded.
  • Your pins, collections, notes and blocked sites, and the reading state YAVCHN restores: where you were in each article and discussion, and the Hacker News user name you entered in Replies to me, if you used it.
  • A record of each browser you are signed in to: a scrambled form of its sign-in code, and when the session started and when it ends.

Only you can see any of this. YAVCHN has no public profiles, and your picture is served only to you.

Hidden stories, stories you have opened, collapsed comments and layout stay in each browser, even when you are signed in.

Signing in

Signing in with GitHub asks GitHub only for your public identity: your user number, user name and picture. YAVCHN doesn't ask for access to anything else in your GitHub account, and it doesn't keep the access code GitHub returns.

Signing in with an email link sends your address to Resend, the service that delivers YAVCHN's email. The link works once and expires after 15 minutes, and the server keeps your address with it until then. To stop the sign-in form from being used to flood someone's inbox, the server counts how many links each address and each IP address has asked for in the current hour. It stores those counts against a scrambled form of the address, and deletes them within an hour of the hour ending.

The short-lived records of a sign-in in progress, for GitHub, email and passkeys, are deleted once used, or within an hour of expiring if they are never used.

Cookies and browser storage

YAVCHN sets only the cookies it needs in order to work, and none of them track you.

  • __Host-yavchn-session keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days.
  • __Host-yavchn-flow and __Host-yavchn-ceremony hold a GitHub or passkey sign-in while it is in progress, for at most 10 minutes.
  • yavchn-view and yavchn-reader-placement remember whether you prefer Windowed or Classic view and how new article windows open, for a year.

Everything else YAVCHN remembers is kept in your browser's local storage, which only this site can read.

Services YAVCHN uses

  • Cloudflare carries all traffic between your browser and the server, so it handles every request, including your IP address.
  • GitHub confirms who you are when you sign in with GitHub. The server, not your browser, fetches your GitHub picture.
  • Resend, in the United States, delivers sign-in emails. It receives your email address and the message.
  • Hacker News and Lobsters supply the stories, discussions and profiles. The server asks them for what you look at, search for or look up, and never sends them anything that identifies you.
  • Publishers supply the articles. The server fetches the text without sending anything about you, but pictures inside an article load straight from the publisher's site, so the publisher sees your IP address and that you came from YAVCHN.

Some of these services keep data outside Singapore. YAVCHN uses them under their standard data protection terms, which require them to protect your data to a standard comparable to Singapore's.

How long data is kept

Account data is kept until you delete the account. A session ends 30 days after you sign in, or sooner if you sign out, and the server deletes its record within an hour of it ending. Article copies are kept for 30 days.

Before an upgrade, the server's database may be backed up. A backup is kept for at most 30 days, so an account you delete can remain in a backup until it is removed.

Your choices

  • See and download your data. Export your account data, on the Account page, downloads everything the server keeps about your account, except the passkeys' keys and the sign-in codes of your sessions, which are of no use to you.
  • Correct it. You can change your pins, collections, notes, picture, passkeys and ways of signing in yourself, on the Account page and in the reader.
  • Delete it. Delete the account, on the Account page, removes the account and everything kept with it at once, and signs out every browser. The copies in your own browser stay until you clear the site's data.

For anything else, or to ask what YAVCHN holds about you, write to paul@parkscomputing.com. You'll get an answer within 30 days. If you think YAVCHN has mishandled your data, you can complain to Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission, or to the data protection authority where you live.

Security

All traffic is encrypted. Sign-in codes are stored only in scrambled form, so a copy of the database can't be used to sign in as you. If a breach puts your data at risk, YAVCHN will tell you and the Personal Data Protection Commission as the law requires.

Children

YAVCHN isn't meant for children. Please don't create an account if you are under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. A change that affects how your account data is used will be announced on the site before it takes effect.

The terms of use cover the rest of your use of YAVCHN.

Domain filters

Stories from these domains are hidden from every list. Subdomains match too: blocking substack.com also hides danluu.substack.com.

    New collection

    Delete this collection?

    About YAVCHN

    YAVCHN is a reader for Hacker News and Lobsters, with articles and discussions in separate windows or Classic pages.

    Created by Paul Parks and built with PUDL.

    YAVCHN source code on GitHub

    Privacy policy · Terms of use

    Help

    Keyboard

    j / k
    Move down and up the story list. The arrow keys scroll whatever has focus.
    Enter
    Read the marked story in the article reader.
    ]
    Read the next story in the same article-reader applet. Back returns to the previous story.
    p
    Pin or unpin the marked story, which keeps it in Pinned.
    n / N
    Move to the next or previous top-level comment in the window in front.
    c
    Collapse or expand that comment.
    f
    Hide or show the story list.
    Esc
    Close a menu or this help.
    Access key m
    Go to the menu bar. Most browsers take it with Alt on Windows and Linux, and Safari with Control and Option.
    ?
    Show this help.

    Windows

    Each story opens in a window holding its article above its discussion; drag the bar between them to share the room differently. A window can be moved by its title bar, resized from any edge, snapped to a half or a corner by dragging it there, maximised, or minimised to the bar at the foot of the page. Use Window > New reader window to open an empty reader, or Story > Open in new reader window to open another reader for the current article. Docked readers keep their articles when you select another story from the sidebar. Minimized readers can be restored and reused for their site. A window's Next story link reads on down the list in the same window.

    A link in a comment or an article to another Hacker News or Lobsters thread opens that thread in a window too. A link to a single HN comment opens the comment above its replies.

    While a story's window is in front, the Story and Discussion menus in the menu bar hold its commands: pinning, Next story, sorting, collapsing every thread, jumping to the first new comment. Each window also remembers where you were in its article and discussion, so a reload, or Back to a story that Next took you past, finds your place again. Closing a window forgets it.

    The whole arrangement lives in the address, so a bookmark or a shared link brings it back, and Back undoes the last change. Moving between Hacker News, Lobsters, their lists, Pinned and Find changes only the list, and leaves the windows open.

    The list

    The pin at the start of a row keeps the story in Pinned, and the cross at its end hides it. Pinned can be narrowed by words in the title, site or author, by source, and to the stories you haven't opened yet, and ordered by when you pinned them, by points or by comments; the filters are part of the address, so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Scroll past the end of the list to load more. Domain filters, in the View menu, hide every story from a site.

    Collections are named lists of stories. Story > Add to collection files the story in front into one or more of them, and the Collections feed shows them all or one at a time; the menu that chooses collections also creates, renames, and deletes them. A note is your own text on a story. Choose Add note in a story's toolbar to write one; it saves as you type. Rows with a note carry the note mark, and the Notes feed lists every noted story and searches the text of your notes.

    Browsing view

    View > Windowed and View > Classic select the browsing view and save your default in this browser. Window view reuses a reader for each feed. Classic view opens stories and applets as pages. Open as a page is a one-off action that does not change your saved default. Use the Windowed selector to return an article to a window. Direct page links always open as pages.

    Applets

    The Applets menu in the menu bar holds three tools, each a window of its own. Replies to me takes your Hacker News user name and lists the replies to your last thirty comments and stories, checking again every three minutes while it is open, and marking what is new since you last marked them read. Look up a user opens a profile on Hacker News or Lobsters, with their submissions and recent comments, as a commenter's name in any discussion does; the bar at the top of a profile looks up someone else in the same window, and Back returns to the one before. Who is hiring? filters the posts of HN's monthly hiring threads by the words you type.

    They read only what the sites publish to everyone, so none of them asks for a login, and your user name stays in this browser anonymously and is included in retained applet state when signed in.

    Find

    Find takes any link and lists every time it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters, so you can read each discussion of it.

    About

    YAVCHN never sees your Hacker News or Lobsters login. The discussion is fetched from each site's public API; to vote or reply, follow the link above the discussion, or the arrow beside a comment, to the source's own site. Without a YAVCHN account, your data stays in this browser. When signed in, pins, collections, notes, blocked domains, and retained reading state are stored with your account and synchronized across devices. Hidden stories and layout stay in this browser. The privacy policy has the details.

    Open source: github.com/paulmooreparks/yavchn. Built with PUDL.