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1.5 TB of Dark Net Market scrapes
Mirrors of ~89 Tor-Bitcoin darknet markets & forums 2011–2015, and related material.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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Users Rationally Rejecting Security Advice (2009)
This paper, by Cormac Herley at Microsoft Research, sounds like me: Abstract: It is often suggested that users are hopelessly lazy and unmotivated on security questions. They chose weak passwords, ignore security warnings, and are oblivious to certicates errors. We argue that users’ rejection of the security advice…
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The Gig Economy
Warning: This post touches politics. The comments will likely be incendiary and polarizing. Don’t go into the comments if you don’t want to be annoyed or irritated. Many in the tech industry are taking these comments by Hillary Clinton yesterday as an ‘attack on Uber and the tech sector’: Meanwhile, many Americans are…
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The Electric Car
The electric car is going to take over the world. Soon. Let me explain. 75% of US consumers and over 85% of US millennials own smartphones. Perhaps more amazing is that 1/4 of people in the...
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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable from Cthulhu
Hugh Hancock here. Charlie is currently in a space beyond place and time, folded into manifold dimensions that ring like bone-carved bells. Or to put it another way, he's on public transport. So I'm filling in for the day - he'll be back shortly!
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Firefox, you're supposed to be in my pocket, not the other way around
Personal blog of Julien (jvoisin) Voisin
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If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
Since 1851 Amsterdam had a registry that recorded the following innocent pieces of data about the residents: Name, Date of birth, Address, Marital Status, Parents, Profession, Religion, Previous Addresses and Date of Death if deceased. For many years this system served well and was kept meticulously up to date.
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Is Kickstarter covering up a scam? An open letter to CEO Yancey Strickler
Dear Yancey, I love Kickstarter. When I backed my first project in 2012, I was happy and excited to be given the opportunity to support creators with my pledge. Since then, Kickstarter has been an …
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CRISPR Gene Editing
CRISPR is a recently discovered genomic tool that could potentially revolutionize genetic modification and editing, including gene silencing, editing, activating, and other crucial functions. It has made a big splash in the synthetic biology community, and mentions of CRISPR have started cropping up elsewhere in the…
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Why is finance so complex? (2011)
Lisa Pollack at FT Alphaville mulls a question : “Why are we so good at creating complexity in finance?” The answer she comes up with is the “ Flynn Effect “, basically the idea that there is an uptrend in human intelligence. Finance, in this view, gets more complex over time because financiers get smart enough to…
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Minister No More
The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage. Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great…
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The ICANN Public Comments on WHOIS Privacy
ICANN is currently considering a proposal that “domains used for online financial transactions for commercial purpose should be ineligible for [WHOIS] privacy and proxy registrations” [ PDF ]. Given the vagueness around what would count as “commercial purpose” (tip jars? advertising? promoting your Kickstarter?) and…
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De-Obfuscating the Statistics of Mass Shootings
After the horrifying killings at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, President Obama once more had to speak publicly about a mass shooting.
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Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”
My translation of DIE ZEIT’s interview with Thomas Piketty is now hosted by TheWire.in. Read it here.
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This Industry is Fucked
My least favorite topic in the world is 'Women in Tech', so I am going to make this short but I think it's something that needs to be said.
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Greece
Greece is a remarkable country full of wonderful people, but along dimensions of development and governance, the place is plainly pretty fucked up. It has been fucked up that way for a long time, for decades at least . This has never been secret. Anyone who has visited Athens knows it has far more in common with…
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The Vector Space of the Polish Parliament in Pictures
In fact, only of the lower house, the Sejm. During its current term, 460 deputies voted 5545 times since the 8th of November 2011. The Sejm website publishes the individual results of the votes as …
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Energy
I think a lot about how important cheap, safe, and abundant energy is to our future. A lot of problems—economic, environmental, war, poverty, food and water availability, bad side effects of...
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Futarchy: Vote Values, But Bet Beliefs
These policies are not just dumb in retrospect; typically there were people who understood a lot about such policies and who had good reasons to disapprove of them beforehand. It seems hard to imagine such policies being adopted nearly as often if everyone knew what such "experts" knew about their consequences. Thus…
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Greece’s Proposals to End the Crisis
The only antidote to propaganda and malicious ‘leaks’ is transparency. After so much disinformation on my presentation at the Eurogroup of the Greek government’s position, the only response is to post the precise words uttered within. Read them and judge for yourselves whether the Greek government’s proposals…
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I Do Not Agree to Your Terms
Apple introduced their News app at WWDC, and the other day they sent me an e-mail saying they want to include this blog in News.
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Reasons the MI6 Story Is a Lie
The Sunday Times has a story claiming that Snowden’s revelations have caused danger to MI6 and disrupted their operations. Here are five reasons it is a lie. 1) The alleged Downing Street source is quoted directly in italics. Yet the schoolboy mistake is made of confusing officers and agents. MI6 is staffed by…