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The Machine Fired Me
It was 7am when my phone rang. Instead of an alarm, it was my recruiter disturbing me from a pleasant dream. It was too early for a phone call or to be caught off guard, so I did not answer. I went to
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 137 posts.
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SJ Games vs. the Secret Service (1990)
On March 1, 1990, the offices of Steve Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy. The initial news stories simply reported that the Secret Service had raided a suspected ring of hackers. Gradually, the true story emerged.
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The facts about a recent counterfeiting case brought by the U.S. government
In the last few days there have been several stories about the sentencing of Eric Lundgren in a case that began in 2012, and we have received a number of questions about this case and our role in it. Although the case was not one that we brought, the questions raised recently have caused us...
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Too Clever by Half
The inevitable result of financial innovation gone awry, which it ALWAYS does, is that it ALWAYS ends up empowering the State. When too clever by half people misplay the meta-game, that’s all the excuse the State needs to come swooping in and crush them, just as they are with Bitcoin today they did with Bear and…
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The Wisdom And/or Madness of Crowds
an interactive guide to human networks
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Privacy not included: Holiday gift list for privacy and security
Privacy Not Included was launched in 2017 to help you understand the privacy risks of tech products that connect to the internet. We are continuing that work in the form of Product Reviews at our magazine Nothing Personal, where our privacy experts do hours of hands-on testing and research on the most popular consumer…
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Big Debt Crises
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares his unique template for how debt crises work.
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Private Prisons in the United States
Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 90,873 people in private prisons in 2022, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
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The American middle class is stable in size, but losing ground financially to upper-income families
While the size of the U.S. middle class remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2016, financial gains for middle-income Americans were modest compared with those of higher-income households.
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Courts: Violating a Website’s Terms of Service Is Not a Crime
Good news out of the Ninth Circuit: the federal court of appeals heeded EFF’s advice and rejected an attempt by Oracle to hold a company criminally liable for accessing Oracle’s website in a manner it didn’t like. The court ruled back in 2012 that merely violating a website’s terms of use is not a...
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Income Inequality (2016)
How is inequality measured, who produces key databases, and what does the data tell us?
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Why everything you have said about the determinants of health expenditure is wrong in one million charts: a response to Noah Smith.
Household income determines health spending, mostly via higher intensity, not prices. US behaviors are consistent with well-measured income in multiple dimensions.
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Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?
Human trafficking leaves no land untouched. In 2013 the U.S. State Department estimated that there are 27 million victims worldwide trafficked for forced labor or commercial sex exploitation. A 201…
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Tracking Firm LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for Customers of All Major U.S. Mobile Carriers Without Consent in Real Time Via Its Web Site
LocationSmart , a U.S. based company that acts as an aggregator of real-time data about the precise location of mobile phone devices, has been leaking this information to anyone via a buggy component of its Web site — without the need for any password or other form of authentication or authorization — KrebsOnSecurity…
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Our World in Data
Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.
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Signal Foundation
Long before we knew that it would be called Signal, we knew what we wanted it to be. Instead of teaching the rest of the world cryptography, we wanted to see if we could develop cryptography that worked for the rest of the world. At the time, the industry consensus was largely that encryption and...
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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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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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Smoking around the world
Tobacco smoking is one of the world’s largest health problems today.
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How much is time wrong around the world? (2014)
Why Spaniards have dinner so late? A map of the difference between solar time and clock time around the world.
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Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia
Some Democrats angling for the 2020 presidential nomination have a big idea: a basic jobs guarantee, where the government promises a job to anybody who wants one. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, E…
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Metacrap
Version 1.1, May 18 2001. Changed section orders for better organization. (Thanks, Raffi). Clarified "metrics" in 2.6 (Thanks, Andy).
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8.3 Who Pays for Schools?: Where California's Public School Funds Come From
Where does the money for public schools in California come from? What is the role of property taxes in education? When did income taxes become the biggest source of school funding? Does the lottery provide a lot of money for schools?
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Presidential Approval Ratings
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?
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What Is Censorship?
RECENT CENSORSHIP NEWS > Prosecution of TV Provider Raises Free Speech Questions (8/24/2006) > Massachusetts Education Department Liable for Unconstitutional Censorship (8/1/2006) > Library Association Supports Lawsuit Against School Board Over Censorship (7/7/2006) > ACLU of Florida Sues to Stop Book Censorship by…
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How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain
Yesterday at the CogX conference, I sat in a room listening to companies pitch their blockchain based startups. Because I hate myself. One in particular caught my attention. On the surface it seems to solve an important economic problem - art forgery and provenance. By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain"…