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Terrorism is not about terror
Terrorists act irrationally from a rational activism perspective, and groups act in ways most consistent with terrorism being about social status and belonging
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 580 posts.
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In China, Your Credit Score Is Affected by Your Political Opinions
China's social score system is full of rumor and speculation. We clear up the misconceptions and explain how the credit system really works.
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Losing Sight
Léonie Watson's personal website. Writing about the web, accessibility, and other things.
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DARE: The Anti-Drug Program That Never Actually Worked
Studies showed early on that kids who went through DARE weren't any less likely to do drugs. Why did schools keep using it?
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Haunted by Data
This is the text version of a talk I gave on October 1, 2015, at the Strata+Hadoop World conference in New York City. The video version is here (20 mins).
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World map of the difference between solar and clock time
A better map of the difference between solar and standard time, and some trivia
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The sky's gone dark
Back to: Brief hiatus | Forward to: Tanks! Why tank stories make great tech myths
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France's Government Aims to Give Itself Carte Blanche to Spy on the World
The United States makes an improper division between surveillance conducted on residents of the United States and the surveillance that is conducted with almost no restraint upon the rest of the world. This double standard has proved poisonous to the rights of Americans and non-Americans alike. In...
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Study: Some car models consuming around 50% more fuel than official results
New cars, including the Mercedes A, C and E class, BMW 5 series and Peugeot 308, are now swallowing around 50% more fuel than their lab test results, new…
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Two HN Announcements
The HN community feels like it owns HN, and we like it that way. HN has become an important institution in the tech community, and though it was initially developed for YC founders it’s clearly evolved into much more than that. We’ve always felt that the best way for HN to benefit YC is simply for it to maximally…
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Senator Wants to Make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Even Easier to Abuse
This summer, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced an amendment to the flawed Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) that would make it even worse, by expanding the broken Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). EFF has proposed common sense changes to this federal anti-hacking law, many of which were...
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The Case of Richard Glossip
September 2015 I used to think the debate about capital punishment was a matter of abstract questions like when it is permissible to kill someone. In practice it isn't. In practice the problem...
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Airbnb and San Francisco
Airbnb has recently been attacked by San Francisco politicians for driving up the price of housing in the city. San Francisco has tried, and will continue to try, to ban Airbnb in various ways....
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Sex, Circuits and Deep House
Cari with the Institute Blinky Badge at Burning Man 2015. Photo credit: Nagutron.
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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!
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Chris Poole
Back in 2011, USV invested in Chris Poole’s startup Canvas. I worked closely with Chris on that investment and they built something great called DrawQuest. But it did not turn into a sustainable business and eventually Chris shut it down. All through this time, Chris ran and managed 4chan, a service he built and…
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Fukushima
When I visited Chernobyl 7 years ago, I didn’t think that a similar disaster could take place anywhere ever again, and certainly not in Japan.
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Researchers Could Have Uncovered Volkswagen’s Emissions Cheat If Not for DMCA
Automakers argue that it’s unlawful for independent researchers to look at the code that controls vehicles without the manufacturer’s permission. We’ve explained before how this allows manufacturers to prevent competition in the markets for add-on technologies and repair tools. It also makes it harder for watchdogs to…
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The Linguistics of Writing an Email Like a Boss
Finally, statistical proof that bosses write the darndest emails.
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The Jason Bourne Aesthetic
“The difference between something that can go wrong and something that can’t possibly go wrong is that when something that can’t possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.” –Douglas Adams
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