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Sane Thinking About Mental Health Problems
Epistemic status: exhortatory and personal, but pretty confidently my true belief CW: suicide mention When I was a teenager, I was depressed. And the way I thought mental illness worked, the way I…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 658 posts.
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The Music Industry Shouldn't Be Able to Cut Off Your Internet Access
EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Center for Democracy and Technology Urge The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to Protect Internet Subscribers in BMG v. Cox. No one should have to fear losing their Internet connection because of unfounded accusations. But some rights holders want...
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Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier
In 2012, I signed the Cost of Knowledge pledge, and stopped reviewing for, and publishing in, all Elsevier journals. In the four years since, I’ve adhered closely to this policy; with a coupl…
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Great Problems: An Epidemic of Rent-Seeking
America follows the path of late Rome: Fortunes no longer arise from creating new wealth, but via exploiting privileged relations with the state.
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In Defense of Inclusionism
Iron Law of Bureaucracy: the downwards deletionism spiral discourages contribution and is how Wikipedia will die.
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Against Intellectual Property
Would a libertarian society recognize patents as legitimate? What about copyright? In Against Intellectual Property, Stephan Kinsella, a patent attorney of many
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Reflecting on the Right to be Forgotten
The right to be forgotten can sometimes seem complex, and discussions about jurisdiction online certainly are complicated. But should the balance between the right to fr…
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Law Enforcement Uses Border Search Exception as Fourth Amendment Loophole
In recent months, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have sought access to private data on the cell phones of two journalists. Such incidents are offensive because they threaten the independence of the press and pose specific risks to confidential sources. This government overreach also...
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Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps
The military seized her photographs, quietly depositing them in the National Archives, where they remained mostly unseen and unpublished until 2006.
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Belarus finally bans Tor
Country: Belarus Probed ISPs: Beltelecom (AS 6697) Censorship method: TCP injections We have recently heard of network anomalies in Belarus. Tor has been finally blocked in December 2016, although it had been explicitly declared that Tor should be blocked since February 2015. An anonymous cypherpunk has helped to…
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U.S. Supreme Court Curbs Excessive Design Patent Damages
The Supreme Court issued an important ruling today in the long-running patent battle between Apple and Samsung. The appeal involved some of Apple’s infamous design patents on rounded corners. The Federal Circuit had ruled that Apple was entitled to all of Samsung’s profits from the infringing...
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Ships Buried Under San Francisco
UpOut, profesyonel ses sistemleri, LED ekran teknolojileri, konferans ve konser çözümleri ile dış cephe aydınlatma projelerinde global standartlarda hizmet sunar
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An Ode to Linux Desktop Users Everywhere
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. The package makers, the man page writers. The rounded windows in Qt mixed with the less rounded windows of GTK. The ones who literally see things differently because of missing proprietary fonts. They’re not fond of rules, installation wizards, …
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The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
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So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
It is with deep regret that I announce the closure of Whitechapel Bell Foundry , the world’s most famous bell foundry and Britain’s oldest manufacturing company. Below you can read my interview with Alan Hughes, the last in a line of bell founders stretching back to 1420, who will retire next year at sixty-eight years…
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Who Lives with Their Parents?
All the data on young adults who live at home with their parents. What do they major in? How old are they? And how much money do they make?
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Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative
Education in Victoria is succeeding in some areas, but failing in many others – we have new school buildings, but they are overflowing and the school rolls climbing so quickly that teachers a…
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Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Private
The history of libraries is one of loss. The Library of Alexandria is best known for its disappearance. Libraries like ours are susceptible to different fault lines: Earthquakes, Legal regimes, Institutional failure. So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in…
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Thought as a Technology
Have you ever felt awe and delight upon first experiencing a computer interface? An interface that surprised you with its strangeness, with a sense of entering an alien world?
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Magnet Ban Cleared
It seems like just the other day that magnet spheres were regulated more restrictively than cars, cigarettes or alcohol in the US. A week ago there was no acceptable warning, no acceptable age, no sales restriction nor waiver that allowed production of magnets like Zen Magnets, Buckyballs, Neoballs, Magnicube or…
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Wrong signal
In recent months, privacy and civil rights activists have increasingly recommended the use of Signal [1] , an instant messenger app developed by Open Whisper Systems (OWS). After Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in particular, many tweets recommended using hard disk encryption and the ostensibly…
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