The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 663 posts.
Over the years, many have tried to bring us web annotations. On 23 February 2017, things took a giant leap forward when the W3C, the standards body for the web, standardized annotation. Yesterday, on February 23, things took a giant leap forward when the W3C, the standards body for the Web, standardized annotation…
I wrote this in 2012, when CloudFlare (an almost awkwardly popular CDN) introduced a bug into websites they hosted using some of their "advanced features" via injected JavaScript that managed to not just break the website but lock up entire web browers by tickling a scheduler starvation bug in WebCore. This issue was…
CHAPTER from SKIN IN THE GAME
The terrorist attacks of September 11have revived proposals for a national identity card system as a way to verify the identity of airline passengers and prevent terrorists from entering the country. For example, the Chairman and CEO of Oracle Corp., Larry Ellison, recently called for the creation of a national ID…
The US Copyright Office sought comments in its ongoing study of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 512 safe harbor study. They are generally looking to find out how well the notice and takedown system is working for everyone—Internet platforms and users, as well as creators and copyright holders. We…
personal ramblings, noone cares about
News reports tell us that Customs and Border Patrol has become more aggressive about checking social media accounts at the border. In doing this, the United States joins a growing list of countries that recognized the value of these accounts, and the unique data mining opportunity that a border crossing provides.
Former Provost John Etchemendy, in a recent speech before the Stanford Board of Trustees, outlined challenges higher education is facing in the coming years. Following is an excerpt from that talk.
After the election, I decided to talk to 100 Trump voters from around the country. I went to the middle of the country, the middle of the state, and talked to many online. This was a...
18 Feb, 2017 Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto outlines his vision for a centralised global colony ruled by the Silicon Valley oligarchy. I say we must do the exact opposite and create a world with individual sovereignty and a healthy commons.
Facebook has long had too much power, but Mark Zuckerberg’s expressed willingness to use said power for political ends means it’s time to consider countermeasures.
Over the years we’ve heard from Google News users that our efforts to label stories ranging from local to satire to user-generated have helped expand their view of what …
Famous Ted Chiang SF short story ‘Story Of Your Life’ is usually misinterpreted as, like the movie version 𝐴𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑙, being about time-travel/precognition; I explain it is instead an exploration of xenopsychology and a psychology of timeless physics.
Uber is what you get when you take Silicon Valley’s most toxic values, add billions of dollars in venture capital, and spice it with…
On August 25, 1835 the <i>New York Sun</i> announced the discovery of life on the moon. It explained that the discovery had been made by the famous British astronomer Sir John Herschel, who had invented a new telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle. Over the course of the next week the <i>Sun</i>…
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
In 1923, the father of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, was commissioned by a French industrialist to design some homes for workers in his factory near Bordeaux. Le Corbusier duly delivered brigh…
This is an short story on how ICANN acts like mafia and has taken my site Nomad List hostage for 2 days now. Here’s how my site used to look: Here’s how it has…
On February 14, 2017 the bill for the new Intelligence and Security Services Act was passed by the Dutch lower house. Despite being met with serious opposition from experts, regulators, civil society, political parties and citizens, the revised bill passed virtually unchanged from the proposal submi
This is a map showing where all of the characters originated in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. I know Greece is small by today’s standards, but it was surprising
At City Observatory, we try to stick to a wonky, data-driven approach to all things urban. But numbers don’t mean much without a framework to explain them, and so today we want to quickly talk about one of those rhetorical frameworks: specifically, how we talk about driving.
After exhausting our legal options, Riseup recently chose to comply with two sealed warrants from the FBI, rather than facing contempt of court (which would have resulted in jail time for Riseup birds and/or termination of the Riseup organization). The first concerned the public contact address for an international…
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