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Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s
There was a marked acceleration in deforestation in the 20th century. But, global deforestation peaked in the 1980s. Since then, it has slowed.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,050 posts.
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Mastodon now a non-profit organisation
In June, I was able to officially register Mastodon gGmbH after nearly 8 months of legal work (“gGmbH” means “non-profit limited liability company”). A non-profit limited liability company in Germany is structered and operates similarly to a for-profit limited liability company with a few key differences. The founding…
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Computer simulation helps test land management techniques to help bumblebees
The many threats facing bumblebees can be tested using a “virtual safe space” created by scientists at the University of Exeter.
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Historian suspended by Facebook after sharing document by Goebbels
To: Oversight Board Good day, My name is Igor Petrov, I am an independent historian. The list of my publications, including those for Cambridge University Press, is available at https://independent.academia.edu/IgorPetrov40 On August 6, 2021, whilst conducting archival research and working with…
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The Queen's Duck
Brian Wigginton
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Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
In the middle of a conflict, good analysis is hard to come by. Because adversaries do not telegraph their plans to one another, plans depend greatly on the fact patterns surrounding their execution…
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Where does the plastic in oceans come from?
Which countries and rivers emit the most plastic to the ocean? What does this mean for solutions to tackle plastic pollution?
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Canada's awful new proposals on “harmful” content
Canada's government is poised to pass a "harmful content" regulation. It's a worst-in-class mutation of a dangerous idea that's swept the globe, in which governments demand that hamfisted tech giants remove broad categories of speech – too swiftly for meaningful analysis.
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The uncanny absence of nihilism
Nihilism, like botulism, is not an ideology or conceptual system. It is a stance: an emotionally-charged way of being.
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‘Likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online: study
Yale researchers looked at 12.7 million tweets from over seven thousand Twitter users to test whether users expressed more outrage over time, and if so, why.
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The case against crisis-mongering
We face problems. As have all societies ever.
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AlgorithmWatch shuts down Instagram monitoring after threats from Facebook
Digital platforms play an ever-increasing role in structuring and influencing public debate. Civil society watchdogs, researchers and journalists need to be able to hold them to account. But Facebook is increasingly fighting those who try. It shut down New York University’s Ad Observatory last week, and went after…
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Internet of Snitches
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
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Who Is Being Monitored?
Politicians regularly claim that they need to ban encryption to protect the children. But who is actually being monitored?
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Life Improvements Since the 1990s
A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.
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Strange domain names that developers bought
Not every domain is serious business. Here's a few of the fun ones that we at Stack Overflow owned, as well as those owned by our community.
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Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship
UPDATE: Apple announced it will provide fully encrypted iCloud backups, meeting a longstanding demand by EFF and other privacy-focused organizations, and it has officially dropped its plans to install photo-scanning software on its devices, which would have inspected users’ private photos in iCloud...
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California Megafires Are Solvable
The basics on how we got to now, why it matters for all Americans, and how we can fix it together.
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“Raiders of the Lost Ark” Story Conference Transcript (1978)
G We’ll just talk general ideas, what the concept of it was. Then I’ll get down to going specifically through the story. Then we will actually get to where we can start talking down scenes, in the end I want to end up with a list of scenes. And the way I work generally is I figure a code, a general measuring stick…
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Noyb.eu files 422 formal GDPR complaints on nerve-wrecking “Cookie Banners”
Today we filed 422 + 36 complaints on "cookie banners" with ten European Data Protection Authorities.
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End of the line for Uber?
Uber is a bezzle ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"). Every bezzle ends.
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Bring back hydrogen lifting gas
According to one estimate, there are around 25 blimps worldwide. What will it take to bring back these majestic beasts of the sky?
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Apple wants to redefine what it means to violate your privacy. We mustn’t let it
Violation of privacy by proxy is still violation of privacy.
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