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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 453 posts.
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EFF: forced disclosure of encryption password violates 5th Amendment
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court in Colorado today to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing in an amicus brief that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination...
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Treating Students as Gifted Yields Impressive Academic Results, Study Finds
Schools that seek to help students who are underrepresented in advanced programs should treat them as gifted young scholars, an approach that can result in many of them actually performing at a gifted level within a few years, according to a U.S. Dept. of Education study of a North Carolina program.
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Facebook's Three New Products
Learn about Meta: our mission, principles, leadership, who owns the company, apps (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads) and products like Quest.
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The 'intellectual property' oxymoron
“ If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the…
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Wizards of bullshit: How Forbes turned $6.5 million into $20 billion
Forbes is reporting that Facebook’s Zuckerberg is now richer than the Google’s Sergey and Larry. How did that happen? By using the most naive form of financial extrapolation and calling it fact. Here’s how the financial alchemy works: GSV Capital spent $6.5 million to buy 225,0…
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Quirksmode is seeking to raise € 2,500 in donations
I have no idea if this is going to work. I’ve never tried it before. But if I never try I’ll never know, so here it goes. And I’ll give you fair warning: there’s a blackmail aspect to all of this.
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The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme
Krugman spells out the Paradox of Thrift: when the interest rate goes to zero — like the past five years — cuts in spending reduce
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Sam Altman will clean your house for $5
That’s right, the CEO of Loopt will personally clean your house for $5. But only if 1,000 people sign up. Only, I haven’t told him about the deal yet. He may not agree, but I’m us…
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Tech journalists who make no sense
I’m sure all fields have terrible reporting, but the shit that’s coming out of the tech world must be eligible for some sort of cake. Taste this slice of delicious nonsense that made the Forbes site today in Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: We’ve Moved Past The Cloud: Salesforce.com remai…
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The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated raid
UPDATE: The server has been returned. Please read.
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Kind of Screwed
TL;DR version: Last year, I was threatened with a lawsuit over the pixel art album cover for Kind of Bloop. Despite my firm belief that I was legally in the right, I settled out of court to cut my losses. This ordeal was very nerve-wracking for me and my family, and I’ve had trouble writing […]
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EFF and Bitcoin
EFF's position on Bitcoin donations in 2011. For an update, see https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/eff-will-accept-bitcoins-support-digital-liberty and https://www.eff.org/pages/other-ways-give-and-donor-support.
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The “walled garden” becomes a prison for reality
A British tabloid revealed today that Apple has filed for a patent on a system for disabling the video camera on an iPhone or iPad when its user attempts to film a concert or other interdicted live event. This is a much more threatening development than most may realize.
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MIT professor's hack to recruit students
The Library Innovation Lab is growing knowledge and community by bringing library principles to technological frontiers.
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The Clock in the Mountain
A work crane at the Clock site in western Texas. There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the … Continue reading →
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When hard books disappear
[Translations: Japanese] Hard books are on their way to extinction. Biologists maintain a concept call a “type specimen.” Every species of living organism has many individuals of noticeable variety. There are millions of Robins in America, for instance, all of … Continue reading →
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Connecticut Killed Affiliate Marketing with Amazon.com
Connecticut killed affliate marketing with Amazon.com I just opened my amazon account and read this: Account Closed This account is closed and will not generate referrals. Access to this site is for historical purposes only. When I checked my email, I had this letter from Amazon.com: Hello, For well over a decade, the…
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Why we are unlikely to ever leave the solar system.
Fill this in yourself.
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Meanwhile, just East of Silicon Valley, in Tupelo Mississippi...
I did an unvacation in Tupelo, Mississippi this past week. An unvacation is my new M.O., in which I travel to someplace fun but don’t take significant time off while there. My old friends Henderson and Rebecca live in Tupelo, and it was a really special opportunity to spend some time with them. One of the many great…