4891
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
4892
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 …
4893
The Melancholy of Subculture Society (2019)
Internet links small groups, helping dissolve big groups; good, bad? But a bit sad.
4894
4895
American trains need more than railfan nostalgia
A review of "Amtrak, America's Railroad"
4896
4897
4898
4899
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…
4900
When Radiohead sampled Paul Lansky (2000)
The English rock band Radiohead uses a sample from my very first computer piece, mild und leise , (this is an mp3 file) on one of the tracks on their CD, Kid A . (Yes, they very graciously asked permission, and I gave it. ) In fact, I really like what they did with the sample; it is quite imaginative and inventive…
4901
The promise and paradox of decentralization
Plus! Valuation Arbitrage; Labor Liquidity; Pricing Power; Diff Jobs
4902
How credit cards make money
Credit cards make money through net interest, interchange, fees, and marketing contributions.
4903
4904
Fuck.com (1997)
Since then the Internet has grown by literally hundreds of thousands of percentage points, people have been busted big time for online obscenity - folks at InterNIC have become more cautious.
4905
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”?
4906
4907
4908
Stop spending so much time being trolled by billionaire corps
As a kid, my parents would open the television set, and we would get to watch whatever the state television decided we would watch. It was a push model. Some experts pick the content you need and they deliver it to you. You have little say in the matter. There was one newspaper in my … Continue reading Stop spending…
4909
4910
People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency
People who are both trustworthy and competent are most sought after when forming teams
4911
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…
4912
Culture shock
Looking at the United States as an Indian, two months in.
4913
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.
4914
It's hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is
The DMCA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1998. It has a weird history. Its inception came from Bruce Lehmann, Microsoft's chief copyright enforcer, whom Clinton tapped to serve as his Copyright Czar. This was back in the "Information Superhighway" days, when Al Gore was holding hearings on the demilitarization…
4915
Live Not by Lies (1974)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's immortal 1974 essay calling for civic courage.
4916
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.
4917
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 […]
4918
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
4919
Reasons for Speaking Out on Sex and Gender Issues (2020)
Warning: The below content is not appropriate for children. Please check with an adult before you read this page. To go back to the children’s page, please click here. This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded […]
4920