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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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Hey programmers, we need to talk
This article is now in Russian! Hey guys. Thanks for coming to this meeting on such short notice. There’s coffee in the back. Did somebody spot the token recruiter yet? And show him the door?…
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Field Notes: Highlights from Huawei
Editor’s note: Since we closely follow China and the global nature of tech in general, among other topics related to innovation, here are highlights from a two-hour interview that Ren Zhengfei, the founder and CEO of Huawei (the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and second largest…
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YC and Founders Pledge
Many of our founders ask us about how they can donate part of their equity or post exit proceeds, and now we have an answer:Founders Pledge [https://founderspledge.com/]. With Founders Pledge, founders can sign a pledge to donate some portion of their personal equity and then figure out the recipients for the donation…
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My Take on FBI's “Alternative” Method
FBI acknowledged today that there “appears” to be an alternative way into Farook’s iPhone 5c – something that experts have been shouting for weeks now; in fact, we’ve been saying there are several viable methods. Before I get into which method I think is being used here, here are some possibilities of other viable…
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I hate you Microsoft
The rare moment when I need to open a powerpoint document is here. As usual, I have my institutional account logged into their “services”, because my university pays microslop something in the ballpark of hundreds of thousands of euros in contracts with this large software provider.
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Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria? (2012)
Explore research at Microsoft, a site featuring the impact of research along with publications, products, downloads, and research careers.
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Out of the Darkness: How two psychologists and CIA devised torture program
How two psychologists teamed up with the CIA to devise a torture program and experiment on human beings.
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Facebook and PGP
Facebook just announced support for PGP, an encrypted email standard, for email from them to you. It’s an interesting move on many levels, albeit one that raises some interesting questions. The answers, and Facebook’s possible follow-on moves, are even more interesting.
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Americans Disapprove of Government Surveillance Programs
More Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the government program that obtained telephone call logs and Internet communication records. Americans are split on whether leaker Edward Snowden did the right or wrong thing.
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They may just be chat bubbles, but they’re our chat bubbles
Atlassian and Slack have forged a new strategic partnership.
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Social Media Analysis Toolkit: Open-Source Tool for Tracking Disinformation
The Social Media Analysis Toolkit (SMAT) — co-created by Mozilla Fellow Emmi Bevensee — provides a free, open, and intuitive way to scrutinize what’s tr…
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International Day Against DRM
EVENT TODAY: We're taking this day to educate people about the threats of DRM and the current policy challenges we face around DRM. We just completed a live video discussion at 10:00 AM PDT / 1:00 PM EDT to learn more about these fights and what we can do to take back our rights to control over the...
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Identify a Facebook user by his phone number despite privacy settings set
The goal of this blog is to share write-ups about bugs i have found in Facebook and reported to them under the Facebook bug bounty program.
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Google Will Survive SESTA – Startups Might Not
There was a shocking moment in this week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). Prof. Eric Goldman had just pointed out that members of Congress should consider how the bill might affect hundreds of small Internet startups, not just giant companies...
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Portugal proposed law tries to sneak in biometric mass surveillance
Whilst the European Parliament has been fighting bravely for the rights of everyone in the EU to exist freely and with dignity in publicly accessible spaces, the government of Portugal is attempting to push their country in the opposite direction: one of digital authoritarianism. The Portuguese lead organisation in…
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Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection of Americans’ Telephone Records
Los Angeles — Human Rights Watch, a nonpartisan organization that fights human rights abuses across the globe, filed suit against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration late Tuesday for illegally collecting records of its telephone calls to certain foreign countries as part of yet another...
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H1Bs will start costing $100k/yr
Trump imposed a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, raising costs for employers and reshaping U.S. hiring. Learn what it means for you.
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Is old music killing new music?
All the growth in the music business now comes from old songs—with consumption of new music actually shrinking. How did we get here, and is there a way back?
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Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
Ethan Marcotte's book, "You Deserve a Tech Union," provides a mix of practical guidelines and steps that tech workers can take to form a union.
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The grid isn’t ready for 300M EVs by 2030
Electric vehicle (EV) owners tend to leave their cars charging overnight, putting pressure on the grid. This habit must change, Stanford researchers say.
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The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low
Divorce in America has been falling fast in recent years, and it just hit a record low in 2019. For every 1,000 marriages in the last year, only 14.9 ended in divorce, according to the newly released American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau. This is the lowest rate we have seen in 50 years. It is even…
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Expanding Fact Checking at Google
Over the years we’ve heard from Google News users that our efforts to label stories ranging from local to satire to user-generated have helped expand their view of what …
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MSU Vice President of research & innovation Steve Hsu has been forced to resign
President Stanley asked me this afternoon for my resignation. I do not agree with his decision, as serious issues of academic freedom and fr...
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Gemini is Solutionism
While I don’t care too much about ideas and projects that I believe to be dead ends or maybe even doomed to fail eventually, a recent interaction on Superhighway84 got me to write down a few thoughts on why I believe Project Gemini is a really bad idea.
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Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria
The Rosatom historical website has an entire section devoted to "Atomic Fun" — jokes and stories from the Soviet nuclear program. It's... something.
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How Many Tracks Do Train Stations Need?
A brief discussion on Reddit about my post criticizing Penn Station expansion plans led me to write a very long comment, which I’d like to hoist to a full post explaining how big an urban tra…