1201
Where do the children play?
On the need for a world without us
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1202
The internet is no longer a safe haven
A couple of days ago, the small server hosting this website was temporarily knocked out by scraping …
1203
Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit
offensive security & software engineering
1204
When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
I try not to write anything even vaguely political on this blog because we have a variety of views on a variety of subjects and no one is ...
1205
Mag Wealth (2024)
Mag World: an intuitive sense of scale, using orders of magnitude
1206
Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today
Some time ago, we were contacted by a group fighting against online CSAM, demanding that AdGuard DNS blocks the Archive.today website. This was only the beginning of a much larger story…
1207
Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet
Bitchat is a new messaging app that allows users to chat securely with or without internet access. Download it today via the App Store or Google Play store to begin communicating safely, even when connectivity disappears. Why Bitchat is needed Palestinians are dependent on Israel for their access to electricity,
1208
Being poor vs. being broke
The more I speak about being poor, the more I realize how fundamentally other folks misunderstand what it means to be poor versus being broke.
1209
Mullvad VPN present And Then? (Chat Control is back on the menu)
Chat Control is back on the menu. To highlight the corruption behind the proposal, Mullvad VPN now presents "And Then?"
1210
Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of…
1211
The Monks in the Casino
A brief theory of young men, "the loneliness crisis," and life in the 21st century
1212
How many video games include a marriage proposal? At least one
Also: World League Basketball
1213
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1215
Chat Control 2.0 through the back door
Just before a decisive meeting in Brussels, digital rights expert and former Member of the European Parliament Dr. Patrick Breyer is sounding the alarm. Using a "deceptive sleight of hand," a mandatory and expanded Chat Control is being pushed through the back door, in a form even more intrusive tha
1216
You will own nothing and be (un)happy
Hi! I'm a raccoon, and this is my trash can :] It's full of my thoughts about the mess of being human. No human is perfect, including me, and that's why we are so fascinating.
1217
Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall
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1218
The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
Last week the Department of War finally killed the last vestiges of Robert McNamara’s 1962 Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). The DoW has pivoted from optimizing cost and performa…
1219
I hate screenshots of text
Why do people take screenshots of text?
1220
The Future of Fact-Checking Is Lies, I Guess
Last weekend I was trying to pull together sources for an essay and kept finding “fact check” pages from factually.co . For instance, a Kagi search for “pepper ball Chicago pastor” returned this Factually article as the second result:
1221
How cops can get your private online data
Can the cops get your online data? In short, yes. There are a variety of US federal and state laws which give law enforcement powers to obtain information that you provided to online services. But, there are steps you as a user and/or as a service provider can take to improve online privacy.Law...
1222
LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
ChatGPT and LLMs amplify both insight and illusion. They are not knowledge engines, but confidence engines shaping how we think and learn.
1223
Time to start de-Appling
I ‘ve done such a thorough job of de-Googling that I forgot to show up for a meeting with someone, because I hadn’t checked my Google calendar in ages. (No, they were not amused.) In my defense, I proceeded to explain to them that having de-Googled, I was also in the process of de-Appling, which is a special bonus…
1224
1225
IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act
A follow up to The Ofcom Files. Some notes on Ofcom’s strategy to date. As many of you know, I represent the U.S. website 4chan, pro bono, in its U.S. federal lawsuit against the UK…
1226
I Want You to Understand Chicago
Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his…
1227
Study identifies weaknesses in how AI systems are evaluated
Largest systematic review of AI benchmarks highlights need for clearer definitions and stronger scientific standards.
1228
Apple's "notarisation" – blocking software freedom of developers and users
The EU’s Digital Markets Act is supposed to shake up the power of tech giants by giving developers and users more choice. Apple’s “notarisation” of mobile ...
1229
AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service
On January 6th, 1995 two bank robbers in Pittsburgh confused law enforcement by not making any attempts to conceal their faces but instead brazenly looking at security cameras as if they were invisible. The reason is that they actually thought they were.
1230
VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025
The FSFE and LUGBZ have recognized VLC president and core developer with this European award for his long-term dedication to the project. What began as a s...