331
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 894 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible?
Some people enter the technology industry to build newer, more exciting kinds of technology as quickly as possible. My keynote will savage these people and will burn important professional bridges, likely forcing me to join a monastery or another penance-focused organization. In my keynote, I will explain why the…
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Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)
Knight First Amendment Institute2021646 points374 commentscited by 10Society, Policy & Culture details
After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically—now it seems that almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of…
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Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming – It’s Time for That to Change
Now, that’s not because most Stack Overflow contributors are hostile jerks. The majority of them are generous and kind. Sure, a few are… just generous, I guess? But our active users regularly express their frustration that we haven’t done more to make outsiders feel more welcome. The real problem isn’t the community …
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The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better
It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.
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Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers (2022)
Not an artistic judgement. Just a technical one.
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How we’re responding to The NYT’s data demands in order to protect user privacy
OpenAI is fighting a court order at the demands of The New York Times and plaintiffs, which involves retention of consumer ChatGPT and API user data indefinitely. Learn how we’re working to uphold user privacy, address legal requirements, and stay true to our data protection commitments.
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Austrian DSB: EU-US Data Transfers to Google Analytics Illegal
In a groundbreaking decision, the Austrian Data Protection Authority has decided on a model case by noyb that the continuous use of Google Analytics violates the GDPR.
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An Epidemic of Wage Theft Is Costing Workers Hundreds of Millions a Year (2014)
Millions of Americans struggle to get by on low wages, often without any benefits such as paid sick leave, a pension, or even health insurance. Their difficult lives are made immeasurably harder when they do the work they have been hired to do, but their employers refuse to pay, pay for some hours but not…
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America's Growth Ponzi Scheme
The American pattern of development creates the illusion of wealth. Today we are in the process of seeing that illusion destroyed…and with it the prosperity we have come to take for granted.
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Smoking around the world
Tobacco smoking is one of the world’s largest health problems today.
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Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019
Revenue of $4.1 billion, growing 37% year-over-year or 39% on a constant currency basis Rides Adjusted EBITDA of $742 million, with continued margin expansion Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) today announced financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2019. Financial Highlights for…
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U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time
For the first time in Gallup's polling history, less than half of U.S. adults report belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque.
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Why some businesses aren't allowed on Stripe
We’re building business infrastructure. As with other kinds of infrastructure (like hosting or electricity), we'd like to make it available to as broad a set of users as possible.
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Emissions of richest 1 percent more than double the emissions of poorest 50%
The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth.
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Matrix' answer to Moxie: On privacy versus freedom
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
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The world’s most-surveilled cities
We've gathered data on CCTV cameras in use in 120 major cities across the globe to determine which cities have the most surveillance cameras per person.
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“Pay or Okay” on tech news site heise.de illegal, decides German DPA
The Data Protection Authority of Lower Saxony (LfD) decided that the “Pay or Okay” solution used by heise.de was unlawful
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Nature's Decline Unprecedented; Species Extinction Rates Accelerating (2019)
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals - Time for Global Action for People and Planet
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Pulitzer Finalist: Staff of BuzzFeed News
For a stunning probe across two continents that proved that operatives with apparent ties to Vladimir Putin have engaged in a targeted killing campaign against his perceived enemies on British and American soil.
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Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians
The difficulties associated with proving and addressing gender discrimination in hiring processes have presented policymakers with a major challenge over the past few decades. In an attempt to overcome gender-biased hiring, a vast majority of symphony orchestras revised their hiring practices from the 1950s. Many…
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Key findings about how Americans view artificial intelligence
Drawing on five years of Pew Research Center surveys, here are 13 findings about how Americans use and view AI, and where they see promise and risk.
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Fast Facts on Homeschooling
There were about 3.408 million homeschool students in 2024-2025 in grades K-12 in the United States. This is up from 2.5 million in spring 2019 [note 1]. The 3.408 million is an estimated 6.262% of the school-age population. The homeschool population had been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past…
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Participation Inequality: The 90-9-1 Rule for Social Features
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
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A number of countries have decoupled economic growth from energy use, even if we take offshored production into account
Energy use is declining in some countries, despite economic growth.
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Masking lack of evidence with politics
The increasing polarised and politicised views 1 on whether to wear masks in public during the current COVID-19 crisis hides a bitter truth on the state of contemporary research and the value we pose on clinical evidence to guide our decisions.
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The Growth Ponzi Scheme: A Crash Course
Ponzi schemes fail because they are built on illusions: there is no there there. So what happens when an entire continent of towns and cities is caught up in a kind of Growth Ponzi Scheme? We are finding out.