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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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You Should Self-Publish
Your experience has been an inspiration to me, Joe, as I've noted on my own blog . I've always believed that self-publishing was the mark of permanent amateurism. Now, I've self-published my own book, Dead Furst . I've sold... next to nothing. But I'm obscure, and patient, and have a lovely Carl Graves cover. So…
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Touching Your Junk: An Ontological Complaint
(I've redrawn it, because, seriously, who does a line diagram as JPEG? Original here .)
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Emotional Rescue
To discount the emotional appeal of Apple’s products is to ignore the entire point of Apple’s products.
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Putin Orders Russian Move to GNU/Linux
This looks huge: Глава правительства Владимир Путин подписал план перехода властных структур и федеральных бюджетников на свободное ПО. Сог...
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Google Engineer bails out student in jail
The whole experience of what happens pre-trial was a real eye-opener. One of the things which I learned was that if one uses a bail bondsman in the US they require a 10% payment which they keep even if you do show up for court. That makes getting out of jail phenomenally expensive.
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Who Writes Wikipedia?
Part 1: Wikimedia at the Crossroads Part 2: Who Writes Wikipedia? Part 3: Who Runs Wikipedia? Part 4: Making More Wikipedians Part 5: Making More Wikipedias Part 6: Code, and Other Laws
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A Censorship-Resistant Web
Imagine someone put a document up at http://pentagonpapers.com/volumes/1.html that a) some people want to read and b) some people want to keep you from reading.
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Schneier on Security: Recording the Police
I’ve written a lot on the “War on Photography,” where normal people are harassed as potential terrorists for taking pictures of things in public. This article is different; it’s about recording the police: Allison’s predicament is an extreme example of a growing and disturbing trend. As citizens increase their…
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Why Facebook never happened in the UK. The case of FitFinder.
Update: FitFinder has been Relaunched as Floxx with Doug Richards as an Investor. Good luck Rich! Back in April this year, I heard of a little UCL based startup (FitFinder) that was gaining ‘Facebookearlydayslike’ traction in some UK Universities. It was a location based public/flirting service. The founder pitch
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A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning
Chelsea Manning enlisted in the United States Army in 2007. Back then, she was known as Bradley Manning and struggled with gender identity disorder. This identity crisis made it difficult for Manning to fit into the military’s masculine and patriarchal environment. Throughout Manning’s career in the military, it was…
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Security in 2020
There’s really no such thing as security in the abstract. Security can only be defined in relation to something else. You’re secure from something or against something. In the next 10 years, the traditional definition of IT security—that it protects you from hackers, criminals, and other bad guys—will undergo a…
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Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles
On December 9, 2010, I was contacted by CreateSpace (Amazon’s Print on Demand service) who publishes my print books. They informed me that m...
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How To Handle Lawyers Threatening You
(No joke. This is actually how I deal with a lawyers. This isn't just theory, this is my experience.) Have you ever seen the movie "Monsters Inc."? It's a cute animated Disney film about Big Scary Monsters. All day long they go through magical doors, each leading into a bedroom of a young child sleeping
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Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies
In 2006, a lone climber attempting the summit of Mount Everest for the third time was, purely by chance, caught in an amateur photograph tak...
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The first serious infowar is now engaged
by John Perry Barlow Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.We have no elected...
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In a weird sneaker-net way we have implemented a human DNS
Joe Lieberman calls Amazon to say they should cut them off. Amazon cuts them off, then says the Lieberman call had nothing to do with it. We have no reason to doubt Amazon. It's consistent with their philosophy of not taking sides in political battles. Still I wish Amazon, who I'm a big fan of, had stood with them…
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Close the Washington Monument
Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there’s no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for…
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