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No Need for Retirement When Utopia Is Around the Corner
I’ve mentioned before my interest in the history and development of nuclear weapons . Currently, I’m reading The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War…
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 13,069 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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Less human AI agents, please
Nial – Knowledge work and artificial intelligence.
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Do we need copyright? (2012)
The concept of property is a social construction. Animals, such as cats, can own a piece of food, or a territory, but only as long as they are able to personally maintain a credible threat of violence. And animals can only defend concrete, physical properties, such as an area, a dead bird or a tree. … Continue reading…
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World Cup Daily, Day 25
They just don't care. Qatari World Cup organizers don't even hide their apathy over migrant worker deaths, including the most recent one.
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Statistician calls for audit to address election hacking fears
Double-check needed before Electoral College cements presidential results on Dec. 19
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Suspension of the de minimis administrative exemption for imports $800 or less
The DRUGS Act (‘Domain Reform for Unlawful Drug Sellers Act, H.R. 6352 & S.3399) is legislation that would rob you and millions of Americans of daily medications that keep them healthy and alive. Worse yet, the legislation is backed by Big Pharma front groups.
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Chatbots are not the future
Unfortunately for the countless hapless people I've talked to in the past few months, this was inexorable. Ever since ChatGPT exploded in popularity, my inner designer has been bursting at the seams.
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Interslavic Language
Introduction to Interslavic — Vvod v medžuslovjansky jeazy — Ввод в меджусловјански језык
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On Recent Controversial Events
Update in 2024 : You may have linked to this page because it's heavily quoted by a semi-anonymously published website called the “Stallman Report”. While the author of that document tried to contact me shortly before launching their site, I missed that email for a week or two. (I get a lot of email and as those of you…
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Microsoft Buys GitHub: The Linux Foundation's Reaction
‘In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Good Will.’ Winston S. Churchill This week Microsoft announced that it is purchasing GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. I waited for a few days to write up my thoughts because this is something that deserves some thoughtful reflection. The…
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Why FSF Endorsing PureOS Matters
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
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How many people have Q Clearance?
Ever wonder how many people currently have the enigmatic Q Clearance, the required security clearance for access to nuclear secrets? Well, I found out.
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Vanishing Culture: Preserving Cookbooks
The following guest post from humanities scholar Katie Livingston is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. My Grann’s edition of The Grady County Extension Homemaker Council’s cookbook Down Home Cookin’ is missing its front and back cover. Once…
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Let’s fix up Notre Dame with concrete and steel, but let the sun shine into it
So, here’s a story. On 15 April 2019, when the roofspace over the crossing of Paris Cathedral caught fire, I was in a pub in east London having a burger. My initial reaction was not one of an…
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Snowden's Dead Man's Switch
Edward Snowden has set up a dead man’s switch. He’s distributed encrypted copies of his document trove to various people, and has set up some sort of automatic system to distribute the key, should something happen to him. Dead man’s switches have a long history, both for safety (the machinery automatically stops if…
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Anti-climate action statements get more visibility in news coverage, study finds
Analysis by assistant professor of environment and society and sociology at Brown found that press releases expressing opposition to climate action were twice as likely to receive news coverage as those supporting action.
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Let's discuss the source for the GPLed parts of Tesla cars
It has been many years since we started working with Tesla to help them resolve their ongoing GPL violations. However, Tesla has still not provided the necessary source code for their cars (a benefit of ownership enshrined in the GPL, which Tesla chooses to use) and the incomplete versions of source they have released…
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GitHub Spam
Spam on GitHub is getting out of control and affecting 10,000's of users daily. GitHub is seemly doing nothing about it, here is the proof.
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Why the US federal employee record breach is worse than others
During the week of June 8th, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that the records of all current and past US federal employees had been compromised. That includes standard employment information - address, social security numbers, etc - of over 4 million people ranging from a random forest ranger to US…
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The Chemistry of ‘Yes Minister’ (2017)
More than raw factual errors, I’m interested in how science and scientists are depicted and how it influences peoples’ opinions of science as a process. You can’t see lasers and X…
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