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But Rich People Live Here, So We Can't Be Going Broke
If your growth strategy only works as long as wealthy people live in your town, your growth strategy is deeply fragile.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook
Just over half of Facebook users have adjusted privacy settings in the past year. Around four-in-ten have taken a break from checking for several weeks or more.
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An effort to bring computer science to all US high schools
Amazon employees accelerate effort to bring computer science to all U.S. high schools.
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New Evidence That Lead Exposure Increases Crime (2017)
Jennifer Doleac reviews recent research that found exposure to lead poisoning led to higher crime rates.
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Can Beethoven send takedown requests?
Imagine you are a teacher at a public school, and you want to use a free recording of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in your classroom. As an author of music textbooks and a music theory professor, I am always looking for creative ways to develop teaching materials as Open Educational Resources (oer-musik.de), so that…
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F-35 Program Cutting Corners to “Complete” Development
Officials Altering Paperwork Instead of Pursuing Actual Fixes
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Our World in Data
Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.
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Australia’s Proposed Surveillance Laws Will Break the Trust Tech Depends On
In the last few years, we’ve discovered just how much trust — whether we like it or not — we have all been obliged to place in modern technology. Third-party software, of unknown composition and security, runs on everything around us: from the phones we carry around, to the smart devices with...
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The NSA Continues to Violate Americans' Internet Privacy Rights
A federal court will be scrutinizing one of the National Security Agency’s worst spying programs on Monday. The case has the potential to restore crucial privacy protections for the millions of Americans who use the internet to communicate with family, friends, and others overseas.
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How Facebook, Apple and Microsoft Are Contributing to OpenStreetMap
Multinational organisations are collaborating in the open on OpenStreetMap
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Supreme Court Should Say No to Patents That Take Old Ideas Away from the Public
There is room to debate what makes an invention patentable, but one thing should be uncontroversial: patentable inventions should actually be new. That’s what EFF and the R Street Institute told the Supreme Court this week in an amicus brief urging it to grant certiorari and reverse the Federal...
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Don’t Shoot Messenger
Update (September 28, 2018): Reuters reports that the court has denied the government's request to force Facebook to assist with the wiretap.Late last week, Reuters reported that Facebook is being asked to “break the encryption” in its Messenger application to assist the Justice Department in...
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For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades
Despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today's real average wage in the U.S. has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And most of what wage gains there have been have flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
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Court has confirmed coordinated raids of Zwiebelfreunde in Germany were illegal
Update July 10th: Last week Monday, prosecution stated that they will keep our things for further analysis, even after explicitly confirming to journalists that they are aware that our only connection to Riseup is the collection of donations. This includes items belonging to our partners, and other third parties like…
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Google Data Collection research
While the public has been focused on the ongoing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google has largely avoided public scrutiny about its data collection practices despite having the ability to collect far more personal data about consumers across a variety of touchpoints. In the new report “Google Data…
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Telling the Truth About Defects in Technology Should Never Be Illegal
Congress has never made a law saying, "Corporations should get to decide who gets to publish truthful information about defects in their products,"— and the First Amendment wouldn't allow such a law — but that hasn't stopped corporations from conjuring one out of thin air, and then defending it as...
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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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Taking on a Patent Troll: Caveat Troglodytarum
This is the definitive guide to video encoding. Learn everything you need to know about encoding, transcoding, compression & video codecs all in one place.
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TLS 1.3 Is an Opportunity for Amazon, Google and Microsoft to End Censorship
A new standard for cryptography is on the horizon, called Transport Level Security 1.3 (TLS 1.3). TLS 1.3 is a major update to cryptography, and
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Google Needs to Come Clean About Its Chinese Plans
Eight years after Google initially took a stand against Internet censorship by exiting the Chinese search market, we are disappointed to learn the company has been secretly re-considering an extended collaboration with the massive censorship and surveillance-wielding state. According to an...
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Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System
Folks who do systems analysis have a great belief in “leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.
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Smoking around the world
Tobacco smoking is one of the world’s largest health problems today.
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Nearly Half of Americans Are Lonely
Social isolation can be as unhealthy as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and loneliness affects nearly half of Americans—but few organizations are addressing this critical psychosocial risk factor. Here are three strategies, shared by leading organizations, to address the epidemic.
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Wikipedia bans agenda-driven editor, but punishes the messenger too
A look at a Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign to discredit anti-war campaigners and journalists