Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,149 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
Valid Signal privacy issues shrugged off while patches quietly rolled out
kelly kaoudis: application security, hacking, software engineering blog
Bravo, Apple
Finally, Apple is doing away with those arrogant upstarts who think then can write a few lines in a high level language and call it a program. Their new developer agreement requires:
An Example of Forensic Science at Its Worst: US v. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair
In early 2014, I provided material support in what would end up turning around what was, in their own words, the US Army’s biggest case in a generation, and much to the dismay of the prosecution team that brought me in to assist them. In the process, it seems I also prevented what the evidence pointed to as an…
Hacker Scouts teaches children Linux, robotics, and welding
Track and improve how AI assistants recommend your brand across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude & more.
One of America's most corporate-crime-friendly judges forced to recuse himself
"I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." The now-famous quip from Robert Reich cuts to the bone of corporate personhood. Corporations are people with speech rights. They are heat-shields that absorb liability on behalf of their owners and managers.
My Reddit AMA on the Law of Web Scraping
On Friday, I did a Reddit AMA with the r/WebScrapingInsider subreddit about the law of web scraping. You can see the entire discussion here. I posted an introduction to the AMA, which I am sharing here: __ Hi everyone, and...
Elsevier's profits alone could fund all academic publications as open access
[This post is mostly a rehash of a comment I made on the last one, but I guess more people see posts than comments. Oh, and I will try to post something about sauropod vertebrae Real Soon Now.] &#…
Doing Good in the Addiction Economy
The world is becoming ever-more addictive and distracting, showering us with short-term rewards. But we can still take control of those mechanisms in order to do good in the world, and make ourselv…
Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that "publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy" come...
European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout
In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright...
The Tabs vs. Spaces war is over, and spaces have emerged victorious
The great indentation war is over and it seems like we have a clear winner.
Why is every consumer startup selling me what I already own for 10x the price?
Why would I pay $36 for a pair of underwear?
Farmers always worked from home
Farmers effectively work from home, and in the past majority of the population was farming. What can they teach us about Work-Life Balance?
Yes, experts will lie to you sometimes
Econ gives us an example of when and why this happens.
The iOS option to charge battery to "80% Limit" shouldn't just be for iPhone 15
[There is very lively discussion on Reddit, where it’s trending at #1 both on r/ios and r/apple . There are a bunch of worthy suggestions there on how to improve the feature even more, but one thing’s clear: iPhone users would love to see this come to more devices.]
Banks as collateral damage in a class war
Central Bank obsession with holding down wages has consequences for fin stability
The War on Cash
Corbett Reporteers will be no stranger to the war on cash. I’ve made videos discussing it, conducted interviews about it, written articles examining it and dissected it on the radio .
For police PR flacks, quack lives matter
Police seem to be heroically rescuing baby ducks . . . pretty much everywhere
The Brexit Possibility
Brexit’s downsides are clear; might tech help realize upsides in building something new based on a new world order?