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
Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation
This page is no longer available. Order to comply or sanctions issued by the CNIL may be made public. In this case, a time limit shall be specified in the decision. Once this time period has expired, the organisations that have been given formal notice or sanctioned are no longer identified in the public decision. For…
Surveilance bill rushed through Australian parliament in 24 hours
New Australian surveillance bill enables police to hack your device, collect or delete your data, and take over your social media accounts.
GDPR enforcer rules that IAB Europe’s consent popups are unlawful
EU data protection authorities find that the consent popups that plagued Europeans for years are illegal. All data collected through them must be deleted. This decision impacts Google’s, Amazon’s and Microsoft’s online advertising businesses.
Google: Open Letter to Australians
g.co/Australia-Letter
How University Students Use Claude
AI systems are no longer just specialized research tools: they’re everyday academic companions. As AIs integrate more deeply into educational environments, we need to consider important questions about learning, assessment, and skill development. Until now, most discussions have relied on surveys and controlled…
Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Private
The history of libraries is one of loss. The Library of Alexandria is best known for its disappearance. Libraries like ours are susceptible to different fault lines: Earthquakes, Legal regimes, Institutional failure. So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in…
Dude, where’s my stuff
The global supply chain mess will require increased vaccination and acquired immunity, semiconductor capacity expansion and the end of extraordinary housing/labor supports to resolve. A close look at some very anomalous charts on shipping, semiconductors, inventories, labor shortages, foreclosures and mortality.
Microsoft’s new small print – how your personal data is abused
Microsoft has renewed its Privacy Policy and Service Agreement. The new services agreement goes into effect on 1 August 2015, only a couple of days after the launch of the Windows 10 operating system on 29 July. The new “privacy dashboard” is presented to give the users a possibility to control their data related to…
Why We Disagree with The New York Times
In the early days of mobile, we built a set of APIs that enabled other companies to recreate the Facebook experience. This is very different from the public APIs used by third-party developers.
What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)
The sophisticated "scientific concept" with the greatest potential to enhance human understanding may be argued to come not from the halls of academe, but rather from the unlikely research environment of professional wrestling.
Open Euro LLM: Open LLMs for Transparent AI in Europe
A series of foundation models for transparent AI in Europe
CNIL imposes a financial penalty of 50M euros against Google
This page is no longer available. Order to comply or sanctions issued by the CNIL may be made public. In this case, a time limit shall be specified in the decision. Once this time period has expired, the organisations that have been given formal notice or sanctioned are no longer identified in the public decision. For…
Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox
UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of t
Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern
The Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) is an independent group of experts that periodically monitors and evaluates the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and assesses if specific mutations and combinations of mutations alter the behaviour of the virus. The TAG-VE was convened on 26 November 2021 to…
A Solarpunk Manifesto
Solarpunk, Permaculture, Sociocracy
A new approach to China: an update
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests
This article was updated on September 3, 2026. For a more comprehensive and up-to-date tally of ALPR abuse, check out IJ’s database of ALPR abuse. […]
What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You
This blog post is a personal account of sexism, harassment, and racism that I and some anonymous members of the computer architecture community have experienced. We are sharing these experiences in…
Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices
The Software Freedom Law Center provides legal representation and other law related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software.
Has GitHub been down more since its acquisition by Microsoft?
Was GitHub down more after Microsoft acquired them? We analyzed their status page and found a 41% increase in disruptions.
AI as Normal Technology
We articulate a vision of artificial intelligence (AI) as normal technology . To view AI as normal is not to understate its impact—even transformative, general-purpose technologies such as electricity and the internet are “normal” in our conception. But it is in contrast to both utopian and dystopian visions of the…
Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress with Mugshots
Amazon’s face surveillance technology is the target of growing opposition nationwide, and today, there are 28 more causes for concern. In a test the ACLU recently conducted of the facial recognition tool, called “Rekognition,” the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people…