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Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
Today we’re announcing a carbon-intelligent computing platform, which can shift tasks to hours of the day when energy from cleaner power sources is plentiful.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
6422
The Amish health care system
I. Amish people spend only a fifth as much as you do on health care, and their health is fine. What can we learn from them? A reminder: the Amish are a German religious sect who immigrated to colon…
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Ok Google – it's time you discovered cyclists
Dear Google. Here is a humble suggestion from us as cyclists, especially urgent in Corona times. We see how people around the world turn to the bicycle to get to where they are going and at the same time avoid overcrowded busses and trams. Here is where you both can be a part, and improve!…
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A theory of Zoom fatigue
The Convivial Society: Dispatch No. 5
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Who’s behind the “reopen” domain surge?
The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names. The largest number of them were created just hours after President Trump sent a series of all-caps tweets urging citizens to “liberate” themselves from new gun control…
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Concerns with that Stanford antibody study of coronavirus prevalence
I’ve been following your blog for a while and checked in today to see if there was a thread on last week’s big-splash Stanford antibody study (the one with the shocking headline that they got 50 positive results in a “random” sample of 3330 antibody tests, suggesting that nearly 2% of the population has been infected…
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Google Apple Contact Tracing (GACT): a wolf in sheep’s clothes?
I wrote a critical piece about the Google Apple Contact Tracing (GACT) platform a few days ago . This resulted in quite some discussion, which brought some more arguments to the fore, that I would like to address and clarify here. Here I focus on my area of expertise: privacy. My colleague Tamar Sharon wrote an…
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Covid-19’s impact on Tor
Tor, like much of the world, has been caught up in the COVID-19 crisis. Like many other nonprofits and small businesses, the crisis has hit us hard, and we have had to make some difficult decisions. We had to let go of 13 great people who helped make Tor available to millions of people around the world. We will move…
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It’s Time to Build
Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it’s not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it. Many of us would like to pin the cause on one…
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Our Long Bets and Predictions about 02020
Our bets and predictions about 02020, evaluated.
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We've Built Cities We Can't Afford
Kansas City, Missouri, has a serious infrastructure problem. But an emerging conversation is charting a path toward greater strength and financial resilience.
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The Decline of Usability
If you find this text interesting, please consider also reading The Decline of Usability: Revisited or some of my other many ramblings on modern user interfaces.
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It bid high and lost. Should Amazon be allowed a do-over on JEDI?
Today, the Inspector General for the Department of Defense published a report into the DoD’s handling of the JEDI contract. There is a simple explanation for Microsoft’s victory: We were rated equal or superior to Amazon in every evaluation factor. We can all agree that bid-protest cases serve an important function in…
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Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage
"Demoskene is an international community focused on demos, programming, graphics and sound creatively real-time audiovisual performances. [..] Subculture is an empowering and important part of identity for its members."
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A Failure, but Not of Prediction
I. Vox asks What Went Wrong With The Media’s Coronavirus Coverage? They conclude that the media needs to be better at “not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know”. This rai…
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Digital surveillance technologies to fight pandemic must respect human rights
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency that requires a coordinated and large-scale response by governments worldwide. However, States’ efforts to contain the virus must not be...
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ActivityPub Could Be the Future
You’ve heard of stuff like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Make an account on one, and it only works there. You can’t send a DM to your friend on Twitter from Facebook Messenger. You can’t browse your friend’s Instagram feed from Twitter. Each one is closed off
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Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)
Household poverty alone drives cognitive decline in war-displaced children, a study has found — in keeping with research on U.S. children living under hardship.
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John Conway
I was greatly saddened to learn that John Conway died yesterday from COVID-19, aged 82. My own mathematical areas of expertise are somewhat far from Conway’s; I have played for instance with …
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How Congress Manufactured a Postal Crisis
An unprecedented congressional mandate threatens the Postal Service's ability to continue to provide good jobs and universal service.
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FDA grants emergency authorization for first saliva-based coronavirus test
The new saliva collection method, which RUCDR developed in partnership with Spectrum Solutions and Accurate Diagnostic Labs, will allow for broader population screening than the current method of nose and throat swabs.
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Stop the Apple and Google contact tracing platform
Apple and Google released a joint specification that allows both iPhones and Android devices to do contact tracing on a global scale. Even though "privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance", this is a game changing event that has grave consequences. We must stop Apple and Google in their tracks. Or…