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XMPP, a comeback story
Everyone loves a comeback story. Can a 20 year old overlooked technology make a comeback as a completely decentralized, free, and scalable technology for the growing masses of people who value freedom and privacy?
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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Mozilla publishes position paper on the EU Digital Identity Framework
The EU is considering a draft law that has serious ramifications for the website security ecosystem. We have recommendations for how to fix it.
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Portugal proposed law tries to sneak in biometric mass surveillance
Whilst the European Parliament has been fighting bravely for the rights of everyone in the EU to exist freely and with dignity in publicly accessible spaces, the government of Portugal is attempting to push their country in the opposite direction: one of digital authoritarianism. The Portuguese lead organisation in…
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Proposed illegal image detectors on devices are ‘easily fooled’
Proposed algorithms that detect illegal images on devices can be easily fooled with imperceptible changes to images, Imperial research has found.
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It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere
Monetary Policy 3 created a self-reinforcing demand explosion that is getting harder, not easier, for supply to keep up with.
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Shooting an Elephant (1936)
"[…] it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East."
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Six Palestinian organizations hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware
On 19 October 2021, Israeli Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, announced the designation of six leading Palestinian civil society organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as “terrorist organizations” under Israel’s Anti-Terrorism Law 2016. The groups named are Addameer; Al-Haq; Defense for Children …
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Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
The most common method for producing crypto-assets requires enormous amounts of electricity and generates large CO2 emissions. Crypto-asset producers are keen to use more renewable energy, and they are increasing their presence in the Nordic region. Sweden needs the renewable energy targeted by crypto-asset producers…
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Our self imposed scarcity of nice places
Why is it that when a place is [pick one: walkable, bikeable, beautiful, lovable, inviting, human-scale], it so often gets coded as being “gentrified” or “upscale”?
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People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency
People who are both trustworthy and competent are most sought after when forming teams
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Trump’s new social media platform found using Mastodon code
From media reports and individual findings that various people have presented to us, it seems that the new social media platform owned by the former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, so-called Truth Social, is using Mastodon’s source code with various visual adjustments. The platform has not formally…
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The Patriot Act Has Threatened Freedom for 20 Years
In passing the PATRIOT Act, Congress enacted a “solution” to preventing another 9/11-like debacle without having any evidence that a lack of surveillance powers was what allowed Osama bin Laden’s suicide hijackers to succeed in killing nearly 3,000 Americans.
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Live Not by Lies (1974)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's immortal 1974 essay calling for civic courage.
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Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air (Revised, Community Edition)
A community edition of David MacKay's book — the original text, opened up so it can be updated.
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Unified Patent Court is more expensive and an SME killer
Brussels, 31 october 2021 — FFII says the proposed Unified Patent Court is an SME killer with its super-expensive court fees of 20.000EUR. No small company will be able to defend itself if it is accused of violating a patent, the proposed UPC court fees will deny access to justice for small companies, the cost […]
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Death by Bureaucracy
I’ve been an anti-death penalty activist for 10 years. In this time, I’ve tried my best to observe and document the application of capital punishment in Singapore, and to support the families of death row inmates as they navigate the system. When people ask me about this
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U.S. house prices are rising exponentially faster than income
Across the U.S., home prices have outpaced income. Our data reveals how the American dream of homeownership is becoming a nightmare.
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The Internet Archive transforms access to books in a digital world
In honor of Open Access Week, and particularly this year’s theme of structural equity, we wanted to highlight a project from the Internet Archive that is doing extraordinary work promoting access to knowledge. The bad news: that project is also under legal threat. The good news: the Archive, with...
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Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California
Signal still knows nothing about you, but inexplicably the government continues to ask.
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Drug decriminalisation in Portugal: setting the record straight.
This briefing updates our 2016 report on Portugal's groundbreaking reforms, and marks the 20th anniversary of their introduction.
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Poor parents receiving universal payments increase spending on kids
When given cash with no strings attached, low- and middle-income parents increased their spending on their children, according to a WSU study of Alaska Permanent Fund payments.
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Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction
Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) is a condition in which sexual function does not return to normal after the use of SSRIs and related antidepressants.
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