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A False Economy Powered by Ads and Lies
Tech companies like Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet continue to post record profits despite a slew of controversies and bad press.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 913 posts.
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Assange Hearing Day 2
This afternoon Julian’s Spanish lawyer, Baltasar Garzon, left court to return to Madrid. On the way out he naturally stopped to shake hands with his client, proffering his fingers through the narrow slit in the bulletproof glass cage. Assange half stood to take his lawyer’s hand. The two security guards in the cage…
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We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech
To keep below two degrees, we'll need to dramatically reduce current emissions and simultaneously remove 10-15 gigatons of CO2/yr from the atmosphere by 2050. Read on for what that means, why, and how we might do it.
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Brave Browser and the Wayback Machine: Working Together
The Web just got a little bit more reliable. Available today, starting with version 1.4 of its desktop browser, Brave has added a 404 detection system, with an automated Wayback Machine lookup process to its desktop browser. By default, it now offers users one-click access to archived versions of Web pages that might…
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RFC: Let's Disrupt Dating Apps
This is a new series I’m going to start doing, much in the same spirit as YC’s Request for Startups . RFC doesn’t mean “ Request for Comments ” — although comments are of course welcome — but rather “Request for Co-founder.” RFC posts will be deep-dives on products and problems I find interesting or that I’m…
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Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now
by Jody Lanard and Peter M. Sandman NOTE FROM IAN: The expert risk communication team of Lanard and Sandman has given me permission to post their very well-considered reply to my question of them just
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Inrupt, Tim Berners-Lee's Solid, and Me
For decades, I have been talking about the importance of individual privacy. For almost as long, I have been using the metaphor of digital feudalism to describe how large companies have become central control points for our data. And for maybe half a decade, I have been talking about the world-sized robot that is the…
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Discord is not an acceptable choice for free software projects
It’s simple: free software projects should not use Discord. (This goes equally for any sort of public interest group.) Here’s why. TL;DR: Standardizing on…
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What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?
Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
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Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
This is a translation/guest post by Riku Merikoski. The original can be found here (in Finnish). All mistakes due to translation are my fault. On Monday 10th February 2020 something historical hap…
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Adversarial Interoperability
“Interoperability” is the act of making a new product or service work with an existing product or service: modern civilization depends on the standards and practices that allow you to put any dish into a dishwasher or any USB charger into any car’s cigarette lighter.But interoperability is just the...
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The Problem with Palm Oil
Useful investigation for those who want to better understand the debates around palm oil production and the symptoms of a much larger problem.
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Sweden gives employees unpaid time off to be entrepreneurs (2019)
The world of work has entered a period of unprecedented change. In the era of AI and automation, workers have to stay flexible. In Sweden, that flexibility has been commonplace for 20 years. What could the rest of the world learn from it?
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More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
The Green Deal for Europe should, among other elements, reduce aviation (which is harmful to the climate) and promote alternatives. The activist network Back-on-Track has pointed out five areas of priority, where improvements are needed to get cross-border long-distance trains in shape to provide alternatives to…
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Usenet – Let's Return to Public Spaces
Usenet was what the Web is missing nowadays: a genuinely public space, with unclear ownership
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Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
WHO is continuously monitoring and responding to this pandemic. This questions and answers page will be updated as more is known about COVID-19, how it spreads and how it is affecting people worldwide. For more information, regularly check the WHO coronavirus pages. https://www.who.int/covid-19
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Important women in CS who aren't Grace Hopper (2018)
I’m tired of hearing about Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton, and Ada Lovelace. Can’t we think of someone else for once? I went ahead and compiled a bunch of really important women according to some fairly arbitrary rules: There’s a specific thing you can point to and say “That. That’s their contribution.” This leaves…
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The coming IP war over facts derived from books
Facts are friends not food
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N26 will be leaving the UK
We want to take this opportunity to thank all our UK customers for believing in our vision to build the bank the world loves to use.
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Turtleocracy
A collaborative AI workspace, built on your company context. Build and orchestrate agents right alongside your team's projects, meetings, and connected apps.
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The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”
The drive-to version of a walkable main street, surrounded by parking lots, is like a Western movie set made of fake building facades: all hat and no cattle.
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Costco Capitalism
Can consumers at Costco really have their free sample and eat it too?
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The Disneyfication of a University
BY DANE KENNEDY The George Washington University faculty and staff ain’t got no culture. Or worse, we’ve got a negative culture. This was the verdict of the Disney Institute, which the president of…
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Tracking systems of TV streaming devices
Watching you watch: the tracking ecosystem of over-the-top TV streaming devices, Moghaddam et al., CCS’19 The results from this paper are all too predictable: channels on Over-The-Top (OTT) s…
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Model built by researchers suggests coronavirus outbreak began in November
The coronavirus epidemic started one month earlier than is commonly reported and has yet to be brought under control, a new disease-transmission model created by University of Toronto researchers suggests. Using open access data that are updated daily, the model replicates epidemiological scenarios and allows…
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Will Spotify Ruin Podcasting?
Hi, Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly.