511
The Software Revolution
In human history, there have been three great technological revolutions and many smaller ones. The three great ones are the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the one we are...
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 580 posts.
512
Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and Software License FAQ
A: To answer common questions about the Debian Free Software Guidelines and how we judge whether some piece of software is free.
513
More than 39M Americans Only Have Access to One Wired Broadband Provider
Since 2010 the US government has spent $3.3B on broadband infrastructure yet 39 Million Americans only have access to 1 wired broadband provider. See the worst states and learn more about your state.
514
Which topics get the upvote on Hacker News?
Hacker News is a popular social news website, mostly covering technology and startup topics. It relies on user submissions and moderation, where each submitted story can be upvoted and commented by users, which in term determines whether the story reaches the front page and how long it stays there.
515
Memrefuting
(in which I bring this blog back to the “safe, uncontroversial” territory of arguing with people who think they can solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time) A few people have aske…
516
China
The most important story of 2014 that most people ignored was the Chinese economy overtaking the US economy. (This is using the purchasing power parity metric, which incorporates differences in...
517
Enough's enough: Contract teaching at a Canadian University
Contract teaching at a Canadian University
518
A Few Global Cultural Treasures We Will Lose for 20 Years Under the TPP
What do Japan's Blue Sky Library, Malaysia's answer to John Wayne, and the first recorded composer from New Zealand, all have in common? They could all disappear from their countries' public domain for the next 20 years, if the current agreement on copyright term extension in the Trans-Pacific...
519
EFF Files FOIA Suit Over U.S. Marshals’ Cell-Tracking Spy Planes
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to shine light on the U.S. Marshals Service's (USMS) use of small aircraft mounted with controversial cell-phone tracking systems. The Wall Street Journal revealed last year that the...
520
EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
EFF defends rights in the digital world. But what about when the digital world enables violations of human rights? We think that’s important, too. That’s why we filed an amicus brief in In Re: South African Apartheid, a case that seeks to hold IBM's headquarters in New York responsible for...
521
An Exemption to the DMCA Would Let Game Fans Keep Abandoned Games Running
When you buy a video game, you expect to be able to play it for as long as you want. You expect be able to play it with your kids many years from now if you want (well, maybe not Grand Theft Auto). And you would hope that museums and media historians could preserve the games that were so important...
522
523
524
Things to Love About Reddit’s First Transparency Report
Here’s something that merits a lot of reddit gold. On Thursday, reddit published its first-ever transparency report covering all of 2014. It’s a summary of all the legal requests to take down content from the site as well as all government attempts to access reddit’s user data. Lots of companies...
525
YouTube Ditches Flash, and It Hardly Matters
Last week, Google announced that its Youtube service would default to using HTML5 video instead of Flash. Once upon a time, this would have been cause for celebration: after all, Flash is a proprietary technology owned by one company, a frequent source of critical vulnerabilities that expose...
526
527
528
Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over
What party, you ask? The one with the mosh pit at LaSalle and Jackson in Chicago. The one held in the building that’s in the background image of this page.
529
Negotiators Lose Last Chance to Salvage the TPP by Caving on Copyright Extension
New reports indicate that Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators have agreed to language that would bind its 12 signatory nations to extend copyright terms to match the United States' already excessive length of copyright. This provision expands the reach of the controversial US Sonny Bono...
530
531
532
533
534
535
Get your loved ones off Facebook
I originally wrote this for my friends and family in 2015, to explain why the latest Facebook privacy policy is really harmful. It’s since been read b
536
537
Cultivated Disinterest in Professional Sports
Like many of my friends, I have treated professional sports with cultivated indifference. But a year and a half ago, I decided to become a football fan. Several years ago, I was at a talk by Michae…
538
539
EFF Wins Battle Over Secret Legal Opinions on Government Spying
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won its four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over secret legal interpretations of a controversial section of the Patriot Act, including legal analysis of law enforcement and intelligence agency access to census records. The U.S....
540
