Matrix' answer to Moxie: On privacy versus freedom
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
Everything is going to hell and nobody seems to care
It’s 2020. Time to look forward to the decade that is upon us. One of my favorite quotes, attributed to Bill Gates, is that people overestimate what will happen in a year and underestimate what will happen in a decade. This is an important decade for mankind. It is a decade in which we will […]
My friend Steve Kane suggested I take a longer view in my pair of year end posts this year: What, no decade end/decade ahead posts? 😕 — Steven Kane (@stevenkane) December 26, 2019 And so I will. Here are the big things that happened in tech, startups, business, and more in the decade that is […]
You may have heard about Bandersnatch , an interactive film released on Netflix as part of the Black Mirror series. I’ve heard about it when it was released, but didn’t get around to watch it until recently, and I was surprised at how deep and thorough the implementation is. The film consists of:
The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” I wonder if he would have said so if his native language wasn’t German. Whether one agrees with it or not (I personally would do so partially!), there’s some modern neuroscience that backs important portions…
The drafters of the Constitution recognized that restricting the government from violating privacy is essential for a free society. That's why the Fourth Amendment exists. The StingRay clearly violates these standards.
Who consumes the most alcohol? How has consumption changed over time? And what are the health impacts?
Linux doesn’t have Photoshop. One common rant I get to hear when I try to help someone to switch to Linux. It is almost 2020 and say what? people still agree with this statement.
It's time to shed light on the technical methods and business practices behind third-party tracking. For journalists, policy makers, and concerned consumers, this paper will demystify the fundamentals of third-party tracking, explain the scope of the problem, and suggest ways for users and legislation to fight back…
A recent judgement makes it a breach of copyright to sell pre-owned eBooks. Do publishers really want to deter everyone from buying eBooks?
Two Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplanes crashed shortly after takeoff, on October 28, 2018 near Jakarta, Indonesia and March 10, 2019, near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The disasters cost the lives of 346 passengers and crew. Black box data recovered from the two planes indicate that bad engineering practices and surprisingly simple…
Hepatitis C has become so widespread that experts are calling on doctors to screen all adults 18 to 79, even those with no known risk factors or symptoms.
USC researchers analyzed thousands of tweets and found that social bots frequently shared false information about cannabis’s health benefits.
You ever notice that there's this funny threshold for getting to the front page on sites like HN? The exact threshold varies depending on how much traffic there is, but, for articles that aren't wildly popular, there's this moment when the article is at N-1 votes. There is, perhaps, a 60% chance that the vote will…
San Francisco proposed a new bus lane on Van Ness in 2001. It opened in 2022 , yielding a project duration of around 7,600 days. “The project has been delayed due to an increase of wet weather since the project started,” said Paul Rose, a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson. The project cost…
Some thoughts about the modern web
Transparency is at the heart of everything we do at Twitter. That’s why we routinely disclose datasets of information operations we can reliably link to state actors.
Welcome, this page is dedicated to the Linux Community's greatest ambassadors, Gentoo users. Like the annoying teenager next door with a 90hp import sporting a 6 foot tall bolt-on wing, Gentoo users are proof that society is best served by roving gangs of armed vigilantes, dishing out swift, cold justice with baseball…
Which countries are net importers and exports of emissions? How much CO2 is ‘offshored’?
Hi, Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly.
The days when the typical foreigner in Japan was a tall Caucasian with a big nose are long gone