Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 580 posts.
How To Crash A Party
In college I would crash expensive parties (even got to hang with Elton John & Lance Armstrong) with a few tricks I developed. I demonstrate them inside:
Petition the U.S. Government to Force the TSA to Follow the Law
This is important: In July 2011, a federal appeals court ruled that the Transportation Security Administration had to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking on its policy of using “Advanced Imaging Technology” for primary screening at airports. TSA was supposed to publish the policy in the Federal Register, take…
The secret guild of Silicon Valley
A couple of weeks ago, I was drinking beer in San Francisco with friends when someone quipped: “You have too many hipsters, you won’t scale like that. Hire some fat guys who know C++.” It’s funny, but it got me thinking. Who are the “fat guys who know C++”, or as someone else put it, “theContinue reading "the secret…
Inside NASA’s Mysterious Rubber Room
Ever since learning about the Rubber Room and Blast Room deep below launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center I had been hopeful that I would one day get to photograph this mysterious remnant of the A…
It's 2012 and your kids have an iPhone - Do you know where they are? I do.
The strangest thing just happened. I'm sitting here in a hotel in New Zealand ...
What everyone in the SOPA debate is missing: IP is not a fundamental right
Underlying the debate about the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the unstated assumption that intellectual property rights have th...
Vice.com Reveals John McAfee's Location In iPhone Metadata
Some time ago, the website Vice.com posted an article with the somewhat full of themselves title “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers”. In it, they reveal how they have been traveling with John for the better part of the week.
Thank HN: You helped the FreeBSD Foundation raise over $43K in three days
Astute readers of our blog know that The FreeBSD Foundation's annual year-end fundraising drive began last week. Every year over 50% ...
Members of Congress Demand Answers for the Unjust Domain Name Seizures
This morning, a bipartisan group of Representatives, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), sent a pointed letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano protesting the recent spat of domain name seizures—executed on dubious copyright grounds—that have...
How Zappos' User Agreement Failed In Court and Left Zappos Legally Naked
By Eric Goldman In re Zappos.com Inc., Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, 2012 WL 4466660 (D. Nev. Sept. 27, 2012). In January, Zappos (part of $AMZN) announced a massive data security breach affecting 24 million consumers. As typically happens in these...
What being on the front page of Hacker News does for our bottom line
There’s been some speculation that we significantly increased the amount of posts here on SvN in the build up to the launch of the new Basecamp, and in particular that we targeted the front page of Hacker News for those articles. Some people aren’t happy about this. I’d like to…
Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)
Excellent blog post by Valerie Aurora about sexual harassment at the DefCon hackers conference. Aside from the fact that this is utterly reprehensible behavior by the perpetrators involved, this is a real problem for our community. The response of “this is just what hacker culture is, and changing it will destroy…
UK government declines to pardon Alan Turing
There's been a petition to the government and an Early Day Motion asking for Alan Turing to be pardoned. This is something I oppose desp...
How anti-competitive lawsuits by incumbents are killing early stage startups
These days, Southwest Airlines is synonymous with low airfares and solid customer experience. But in the late 1960's when it was founded, the fledgling airline (then Air Southwest) was almost sued...
The Minimum Wage Machine
Minimum Wage Machine (Work in Progress) (2008-2010) Custom electronics, change sorter, wood, plexiglas, motor, misc. hardware, pennies. (approx. 15 x 19 x 72 inches) The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 4.00 seconds, for $9.00 an hour, or NY…
The Sad State of Diabetes Technology in 2012
I've been diabetic for almost two decades. It's tiring, let me tell you. Here's ...