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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
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Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months
Flattr improves customer privacy protections by automatically deleting collected data when its no longer needed for its core service.
Politics is bad because we use an 18th century voting system
While it might not seem sexy, this single change could transform politics.
AI winter is well on its way
Deep learning has been at the forefront of the so called AI revolution for quite a few years now, and many people had believed that it is the silver bullet that will take us to
Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)
Why do some English plurals end in "en" instead of "s"?
New Car: An Accessible Minivan
We have a new vehicle, a Honda Odyssey Elite customised for my wheelchair, and for me to drive with hand controls.
Update: The agenda-driven edits of Philip Cross and Wikipedia's response
A look at a Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign to discredit anti-war campaigners and journalists
Things to know about the GDPR, Mozilla and Firefox
Has your email inbox been filling up with privacy policy updates? It seems like every service, app or subscription I’ve signed up for (including more tha
StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migrated to Mix
Sixteen years ago, we started StumbleUpon to help people discover new webpages. The idea was simple: click a button to find a cool webpage…
GDPR Hysteria Part II, Nuts and Bolts, Actionable Advice
Part I of this is here , if you haven’t read it yet please do so before reading this installment, it will help to establish context.
Growing up with AI
By Stefania Druga Graduate Student, Personal Robots Group LEGO Papert Fellow 2018
Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction
The Chinese government has long been suspected of hiring as many as 2,000,000 people to surreptitiously insert huge numbers of pseudonymous and other deceptive writings into the stream of real social media posts, as if they were the genuine opinions of ordinary people. Many academics, and most journalists and…
Tildes – A non-profit community site driven by its users' interests
Online communities are in a precarious and unhealthy state right now. We can do better.
GDPR: Don't Panic
In another week the GDPR , or the General Data Protection Regulation will become enforceable and it appears that unlike any other law to date this particular one has the interesting side effect of causing mass hysteria in the otherwise rational tech sector.
Tracking Firm LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for Customers of All Major U.S. Mobile Carriers Without Consent in Real Time Via Its Web Site
LocationSmart , a U.S. based company that acts as an aggregator of real-time data about the precise location of mobile phone devices, has been leaking this information to anyone via a buggy component of its Web site — without the need for any password or other form of authentication or authorization — KrebsOnSecurity…
LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for All Major U.S. Carriers in Real Time
On May 16th, I found a vulnerability in the LocationSmart website which allowed anyone, with no prior authentication or consent, to obtain the realtime location of any cellphone in the US to within…
Basic Income, Not Basic Jobs: Against Hijacking Utopia
Some Democrats angling for the 2020 presidential nomination have a big idea: a basic jobs guarantee, where the government promises a job to anybody who wants one. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, E…
How many deaths make a disaster newsworthy?
How many deaths make a natural disaster newsworthy?
Statistics, Fast and Slow
Written for and first published in the Financial Times on 13 April 2018. One way to understand China is to look at the statistics. Real income per person has increased nearly tenfold since 1990. Si…