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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
Appeals court denies judicial immunity to judge who personally searched home
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/30/2023 CONTACT: Phillip Suderman, psuderman@ij.org, (850) 376-4110 ARLINGTON, VA.—Today, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in favor of Matthew Gibson […]
Sally Ignore Previous Instructions
Little Bobby Tables has a baby sister. Meet Sally Ignore Previous Instructions.
Free Speech Is in Trouble
Young liberals are abandoning it — and other groups are too comfortable with tit-for-tat hypocrisy
Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness
We are at a critical juncture in AI governance. To mitigate current and future harms from AI systems, we need to embrace openness, transparency, and broad access.
Current thoughts on social media
My view on the state of social media in late 2023
EU Digital Identity framework (eIDAS) another kind of chat control?
The proposed EU Digital Identity framework (eIDAS) aims to meddle with the process around internet certificates and will undermine the independence and security assurances of the basis for website security:
My rude-ass car
I need to vent about the impolite piece of yet-to-become e-waste on wheels that is my rude-ass car . You've heard versions of this story before, nothing is particularly novel in the shock department, enshittification is everywhere, etcetera... but I need the catharsis.
The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers
The massive false positive rate of general AI detectors had a devastating effect on freelance writer Michael Berben: being falsely accused of cheating, he lost his job.
Reasons to fight cashless contagion
Total payments uberfication is a virus, and we need to build resistance to it
What the Goddamn Hell Is Going on in the Tech Industry?
Sweet merciful Jesus, I woke up this morning and my inbox was flooded with horrific stories about how employers treat people. I knew things were fucked, but this was so much worse than I imagined, and that's not even getting into the comments on Hackernews. I am going to dig into some of those emails, but first...
Norwegian ban on Meta behavioral advertising extended to entire EU
Det europeiske personvernrådet har nå bestemt at det norske forbudet mot adferdsbasert markedsføring på Facebook og Instagram skal bli permanent og utvides til å gjelde hele EU/EØS.
Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)
The struggle for distinction
The death of a public intellectual
Is it that time of the year again? A new intellectual minted. The loss of next few evenings watching YouTube, reading substacks? All for that sweet nectar of a novel “hot take”.
A fourth of U.S. health visits now delivered by non-physicians
Health care provided by nurse practitioners and physician assistants expected to rise
The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People
The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death
The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy
Why I've gotten more and more pessimistic about my relationship with Twitter.
Takkyu-bin: Luggage forwarding in Japan
Please don't roll your big bags around town
EU parliament agreement to remove chat control and safeguard secure encryption
This week, the European Parliament's negotiators reached a broad majority agreement on a common position concerning the controversial EU chat control bill. The Commission’s bill proposes bulk scanning and reporting of private messages for allegedly suspicious content by using error-prone algorithms,
Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested
The tropical wood type ipê is popular for building exclusive wooden decks, and in North America and Europe, the demand for the material has increased sharply. Now, a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that more than three-quarters of all ipê from the top producing region in Brazil could have…
What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data
Big Brother meets Big Data
Good times create weak men (2019)
Software abstraction ladder becomes too tall and starts to fall
I face investigation for terrorism
My phone is not being returned to me by police as, astonishingly, I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or for Wikileaks has currently not been made clear. What follows is, unspun and unvarnished, my account of my interview under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism…
Two Kinds of Techno-Optimism
A few things Marc Andreessen forgot to mention
Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets
In a shocking turn of events, several smartphone manufacturers, including industry giant Samsung, have taken a drastic step that has left customers outraged. These companies have remotely disabled phones purchased through gray markets, effectively holding the users’ data hostage until they buy new phones from official…
EU Chat Control Bill Postponed
The EU Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse, first published in May 2022, has become the "most criticized law of all time". Here's how to stop it now!
Cooler screens
Audible even over the squeal of an HVAC blower with a suffering belt, the whine of small, high velocity fans pervades the grocery side of this Walgreens. Were they always this loud? I'm not sure; some of the fans sound distinctly unhealthy. Still, it's a familiar kind of noise to anyone who regularly works around…
Global Encryption Day: Encryption's Critical Role in Safeguarding Human Rights
Today is the third annual Global Encryption Day, a day to highlight why encryption is critical for a safe, private internet.
Adtech surveillance and government surveillance are often the same
In the absence of comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the United States, the targeted advertising industry, fueled by personal information harvested from our cell phone applications, has run roughshod over our privacy. Worse, the boundaries between corporate surveillance and government...