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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 515 posts.
ComputerCOP: Dubious 'Internet Safety Software' Police Distributed to Families
[caption]ComputerCOP in Maricopa County, Arizona[/caption] For years, local law enforcement agencies around the country have told parents that installing ComputerCOP software is the “first step” in protecting their children online. Police chiefs, sheriffs, and district attorneys have handed out...
Dear clueless assholes: stop bashing bash and GNU
This is a defense of the most prolific and dedicated public servant that has graced the world in my lifetime. One man has added hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of value to the global economy. This man has worked tirelessly for the benefit of everyone around him. It is impossible…
Why the Facebook Experiment Is Lousy Social Science
Facebook is grappling with its impact on our social and emotional lives — and that’s a good thing. But it has to get the research right. Why Facebook did the experiment, and how to make it better.
M/S Estonia accident radio transcript
Transcript of VHF channel 16 on the night of the Estonia disaster.
Dear Rupert
Last week, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp sent an open letter to the European Commission complaining about Google. We wanted to share our perspe...
Australian Government Scrambles to Authorize Mass Surveillance
This week, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott used recent terrorist threats as the backdrop of a dire warning to Australians that “for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift. There may be more restrictions on some, so that there can be more...
Saint IGNUcius
Stallman is a saint in the Church of Emacs—Saint IGNUcius. I bless your computer, my child! (jpeg 31k, photo by Wouter van Oortmerssen)
Personhood: A Game for Two or More Players
Being a person is not the essence of humanity, only... one of its many masks. — John Gray
Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception
There's a meme, particularly virulent in educated circles, about how advertising works — how it sways and seduces us, coaxing us gently toward a purchase.
Why Is Peter Thiel Pessimistic About Technological Innovation?
Collection of Peter Thiel's evidence that we're economically stagnating and no longer living in a technologically-accelerating civilization.
Warrant Canary Frequently Asked Questions
What is a warrant canary? A warrant canary is a colloquial term for a regularly published statement that a service provider has not received legal process that it would be prohibited from saying it had received. Once a service provider does receive legal process, the speech prohibition goes into...
Security for the people
The latest news from Google on open source releases, major projects, events, and outreach programs for early career developers.
How I Pranked My Roommate with Eerily Targeted Facebook Ads
This is the chronicle of the most epic retaliation and how I pranked my roommate with targeted Facebook Ads to the point of complete paranoia and delusion.
TSA's X-Ray Nude Body Scanners Output 50% More Radiation Than Admitted to by TSA
A few weeks ago, scientific researchers from top universities released a report confirming my 2012 demonstration that anything can be easily smuggled through the TSA’s nude body scanners. Whi…