1021
The Weirdness of Kentucky Route Zero (2016)
In my last post , I took issue with the TV show Mr. Robot for not being weird enough. Although imaginative and compelling, its universe is well-ordered: everything happens for a reason.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,050 posts.
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EFF's response to social media companies' decisions to block Trump’s accounts
Like most people in the United States and around the world, EFF is shocked and disgusted by Wednesday’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. We support all those who are working to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, and we are grateful for the service of policymakers, staffers, and other...
1024
Amazon Co-founder Mackenzie quietly gave over $4B to 384 organizations in 2020
“” is published by MacKenzie Scott.
1025
Woo for Its Own Sake
Software development is a funny profession. It covers people who do stuff ranging from register twiddling in device drivers and OS guts, to people who serve web content, to “big data” s…
1026
Arrests of Hong Kong democrats shows why EU must reject China investment
On 6 January 2021, 53 people were arrested in Hong Kong under the National Security Law, including the organisers and candidates in last July’s democratic primaries where over 600,000 Hong Kongers voted for pro-democracy candidates for the upcoming Legislative Council elections. On the morning of 6
1027
ACLU Statement Opposing the 'Confronting the Threat of Domestic Terrorism Act' (2019)
In this letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, the ACLU urged Members to oppose H.R. 4192, Confronting the Threat of Domestic Terrorism Act. By reifying and broadening domestic terrorism authorities, H.R. 4192 would unnecessarily expand law enforcement authorities to target and discriminate against the very…
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We Don't Sell Ads (2012)
Brian and I spent a combined 20 years at Yahoo!, working hard to keep the site working. And yes, working hard to sell ads, because that's what Yahoo! did. It gathered data and it served pages and it sold ads.
1031
Victory at the High Court against the government’s use of 'general warrants’
Today, the UK High Court has quashed a decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), and ruled that section 5 of the Intelligence Services Act (ISA) 1994 does not permit the issuing of general warrants to authorise property interference and certain forms of computer hacking.
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College campuses are designed at human-scale – cities can be too
Many college campuses are designed to be walkable and human-scaled. But living in a neighborhood like that doesn’t have to end at graduation.
1033
Sealed U.S. Court Records Exposed in SolarWinds Breach
The ongoing breach affecting thousands of organizations that relied on backdoored products by network software firm SolarWinds may have jeopardized the privacy of countless sealed court documents on file with the U.S. federal court system, according to a memo released Wednesday by the Administrative Office (AO) of the…
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Our Response to the Violence in Washington
We're treating these events as an emergency and sharing the actions we're taking.
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What I Use Instead of Google
I made a goal for myself in January 2020 to stop using Google products by the end of the year. That might sound like way too generous a timeline, but…
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GitHub is fully available in Iran
All developers should be free to use GitHub, no matter where they live. At the same time, GitHub respects and abides by US law, which means government sanctions have limited our ability to provide developers in some countries the full range of GitHub services.
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Moral Competence
Doing social-good businesses better
1039
New Defaults
The pandemic and vaccine rollout have highlighted where the West has lost its way; we need new defaults about information, change, and speed.
1040
EFF to FinCEN: Stop Pushing for More Financial Surveillance
Today, EFF submitted comments to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) opposing the agency’s proposal for new regulations of cryptocurrency transactions. As we explain in our comments, financial records can be deeply personal and revealing, containing a...
1041
After spending $57M on Facebook ads, I was kicked off
The purpose of this article is to share my story in hopes of connecting to the right people at Facebook who can help me save my businesses…
1042
Taking FOSDEM online via Matrix
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
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Look Up Unknown Phone Numbers Using Facebook Reset Password
This tutorial is meant to help find clues as to who is calling you when you're receiving calls from an unknown phone number (a number that is displayed on
1045
Long-term survey reveals Chinese government satisfaction
Ash Center research team unveils findings from long-term public opinion survey.
1046
Atlassian Cloud ToS section 3.3(I) prohibits discussing performance issues
The Atlassian Customer Agreement governs our Cloud and Data Center product offerings under a single, simplified contract for all customers.
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What happens when the CCP decides that you need to die
The manner in which a state kills people has major implications for that state's structure
1048
Mealworms can compost styrofoam
Within our living systems, we have been raising several types of mealworms in order to compost polystyrene (styrofoam). We recently came across the study by 2015 Standard University that confirms our suspicions that they are indeed turning styrofoam into usable organic matter! Their notes are not m
1049
The Great Software Stagnation
Software is eating the world. But progress in software technology itself largely stalled around 1996. Here’s what we had then, in chronological order: LISP, Algol, Basic, APL, Unix, C, SQL, O…
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Peer-reviewed papers are getting increasingly boring
The number of researchers and peer-review publications is growing exponentially. It has been estimated that the number of researchers in the world doubles every 16 years and the number of research outputs is increasing even faster. If you accept that published research papers are an accurate measure of our scientific…