Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 2,108 posts.
A 18-year-old Tennessee man who helped set in motion a fraudulent distress call to police that led to the death of a 60-year-old grandfather in 2020 was sentenced to 60 months in prison today.
In 1999, America Online's volunteer chat room monitors sued the company for back wages. Do today's hot Internet companies risk the same fate?
Ever transferred assets between brokerages? Impressive, terrifying machinations happened in the background. No cats were harmed.
Mortgages are popularly thought of as loans, but to understand the industry, it's better to model them as complex manufactured products.
Examining the history of Android explains why the European Commission may be right to fine Google for its actions around Android, even as the reasoning feels off.
There is a classic thought experiment in the field of artificial intelligence which is often used to explain how an AI might inadvertently cause the destruction of humanity as a by-product of tryin…
First a round of thanks for the many people in industry and government who provided valuable links, background and insights! I could not have done this without your help! If you spot any mistakes, or have suggestions, please do contact me on bert@hubertnet.nl The EU’s new Cyber Resilience Act is admirable in its goal…
The gloves were off on Tuesday as the US Government explicitly argued that all journalists are liable to prosecution under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing classified information, citing the Rosen case. Counsel for the US government also argued that the famous Pentagon Papers supreme court judgement on the New…
Hey, remember that awesome Hello City Planner video about how the Government is going to have to come and confiscate your ice cream cones? I thought the best thing about it was that it was actually created by the SF Planning Department, but I was wrong. It gets better: it turns out, it's a true story!! Before Ice…
The Minnesota board that regulates engineering licenses is abusing their power in order to stifle the free speech of Charles Marohn and retaliate against the Strong Towns movement for their advocacy on transportation, infrastructure, and engineering reform. Strong Towns has filed suit in federal cou
VideoLAN’s URL from which users download the VLC Media Player appears to have been banned by the DoT in India since March 2021. This was done without any prior notice, or affording VideoLAN an opportunity of hearing, which is contrary to the Indian law.
Every few months or so, somebody asks on social media why a particular DVLA digital service is turned off over night. Rather than answering it every time, I’ve decided to write this post, so I can point people at it in future. It’s a great case study to show why making government services digitally native can be quite…
Low-cost micro-units, often called single-room occupancies, or SROs, were once a reliable form of housing for the United States’ poorest residents of, and newcomers to, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other major U.S. cities.
Why do we have to learn everything the hard way?
There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro -monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the…
As the New York Times posts yet another breathless story about Stuxnet, I’m surprised that no one has pointed out its obvious deficiencies. Everyone seems to be hyperventilating about its pur…
In previous posts I said that the extent to which "Fund people" works will depend on the distribution of scientific talent. Think about the following …
How a series of simple computer errors sabotaged a state-of-the-art medical wonder.
There’s a scene toward the end of the book Contact by Carl Sagan, where the protagonist Ellie Arroway finds a Message embedded deep in the digits of PI. The Message is perhaps an artifact of …
A lot of more modern financial infrastructure follows the paths blazed by checks, at least in the U.S.
There are two aspects surrounding Apple’s patent litigation against HTC that demand further consideration. First, the severe problems with the U.S. patent system as a whole, particularly regarding software patents. Second, the strategic implications of Apple’s decision to file suit.
Context: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…
Stanford Center for Internet and Society2023119 points147 commentscited by 3Society, Policy & Culture details
Recently, Wired reported on documents leaked in May from the Council of the European Union’s ongoing deliberations over the draft Child Sex Abuse Regulation. The proposal is controversial because, as presently written, it would require online service providers to proactively scan their services – including users’…
