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Why Not to Use Quora
Forget about Quora's security breach. Their ongoing efforts to block access to their content, including a multi-year ban on the Internet Archive, are reason enough to never use them.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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TSA’s Roadmap for Airport Surveillance Moves in a Dangerous Direction
The Transportation Security Administration has set out an alarming vision of pervasive biometric surveillance at airports, which cuts against the right to privacy, the “right to travel,” and the right to anonymous association with others.The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, which included language...
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No funding for uncomfortable results
Latanya Sweeney blew the whistle on how easy supposedly de-identified data could be re-identified. Her results were not well received.
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Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent
The Assistance and Access (A&A) law requires tech companies to help law enforcement agencies break into individuals’ encrypted data.
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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
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Dear Tumblr: Banning “Adult Content” Will Harm Sex-Positive Communities
Social media platform Tumblr has announced a ban on so-called “adult content,” a move made, it seems, in reaction to Tumblr’s app being removed from the Apple app store. But while making the app more available is in theory good for Tumblr users, in practice what’s about to happen is mass censorship...
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Measuring the “Filter Bubble”: How Google is influencing what you click
Does Google show you different search results based on your personal info, even when signed out and in so-called "incognito" mode? We ran a study to find out.
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Why parking minimums almost destroyed my town and how we repealed them (2017)
Plus 5 tips for repealing parking minimums in your community.
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Movim – Federated, open-source alternative to Tumblr
Tumblr has decided to ban all NSFW content from its network. Although we understand the reasons…
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Hacker News Highlights, August to November 2018
Here are some of our favorite Hacker News comments from August to November. If you see something cool like this, email us at hn@ycombinator.com [mailto:hn@ycombinator.com] so we can add it to the next list. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listening to The Shipping…
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The American middle class is stable in size, but losing ground financially to upper-income families
While the size of the U.S. middle class remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2016, financial gains for middle-income Americans were modest compared with those of higher-income households.
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The EU Copyright Directive: What Redditors in Europe Need to Know
Defending equal access to the free and open internet is core to Reddit’s ideals, and something that redditors have told us time and again they hold dear to
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Crowdfunding Backer Patented My Project
I never thought about patents much. I just wanted to make stuff and share it with others. Then one day someone else patented my work.
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Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names – With Examples
40 common false assumptions programmers make about names, debunked with real-world examples from global naming systems and identity practices.
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Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
Openly sharing your work brings more attention to it, which is good, right? The answer, for me though, is often “it’s complicated.” This is what happened when I went to visit a giant tech company, in hopes for collaboration, but later found that they tried to patent some of my research instead!
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De-facto closed source: the case for understandable software
For someone who has been a strong supporter of FOSS for a very long time, watching what has been happening to the various FOSS communities over the past half decade or so is kind of depressing (with some exceptions, of course).
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The Digital Maginot Line
There is a war happening. We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological…
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Hyperliterature
The vast majority of fiction on the web is nonergodic : stories presented as linear text. Yet, in an age where everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket, literature can take on any shape imaginable. In recent years, some pieces have taken advantage of these capabilities—not as a gimmick, but in a way that is…
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FOSS is free as in toilet
I am a bit dissatisfied with the use of the Tragedy of the commons to represent issues with free and open source software development. It is not an abstract resource that can be depleted when overused. It is not magically maintained if left alone.
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Antitrust, the App Store, and Apple
Apple’s case before the Supreme Court is about standing; Apple has a strong case. That, though, doesn’t mean the App Store isn’t a monopoly — and that Apple isn’t increasing…
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GDPR complaints against Google’s deceptive practices to track user location
Based on new research published today by BEUC’s Norwegian member Forbrukerrådet, seven consumer groups are filing complaints against Google with their national data protection authorities.
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One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
The editorial department of well-known Dutch broadcaster RTL News recently asked for my assistance. Multiple tax files of Dutch citizens had been published via www.docplayer.nl and no one could explain – where did these files come from? Who would have thought that my research would lead to the discovery of one of the…
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WWF Report Reveals Staggering Extent of Human Impact on Planet
WWF's latest press releases, media contacts, and latest reports.
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Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
A new type of banking scam involving fake business listings is taking over Google [3 min read]
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What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009)
For most Americans, the only image they have of passenger rail systems, and subways in particular, are Amtrak, the New York Metro, the San Francisco BART, and maybe some of that sorry crap in Chicago.
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Slow Software
What it means for software to be fast, and why most software is not.
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The EU Terrorist Content Regulation – a threat to the ecosystem and user rights
The EU has proposed a new law aimed at terrorist content online. Here we outline how the proposal poses a risk for rights and the internet ecosystem.
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A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities2018105 points186 commentscited by 18Society, Policy & Culture details
Data from a variety of sources contribute to a broad picture of strong growth and shared prosperity during the early postwar period, followed by slower growth and greater inequality since the 1970s. Within these broad trends, however, different data tell slightly different parts of the story, and no single data source…