Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 13,072 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology
People are moving away from corporate controlled tech, and making their own. How the designs of cyberdecks are being driven by women. And how medieval guilds, Luddites, and the Arts and Crafts movement are all connected to our current moment.
Everything that is wrong with American capitalism, in one headline
Here it is, in the LA Times: " Comcast, Charter reach $20-billion deal, would swap customers in L.A. " Cable companies Comcast Corp. ...
Why Most Software Engineers Lose Nothing by Unionizing
Should software engineers unionize? I can’t give a simple answer to this. There are advantages and disadvantages to enrolling in a collective bargaining arrangement. If the disadvantages didn…
I just don’t get LinkedIn, do you?
I’ve tried. I’ve tried several times. And every time I try looking at LinkedIn I always end up staring at it and thinking, “What is the point?”
The SIM-less Phone Is Coming. And It Should Scare The Shit Out Of You
The argument over the nano-SIM is a distraction. It's a sleight of hand designed to catch the industry off guard and fool it into doing something really stupid. The SIM is designed to do a number of things; encryption, address storage, hold SMS, etc. Most importantly, it's designed to be swappable. With GSM, you can…
The Tech Industry Doesn't Understand Consent – Opt-Out Is Not Consent
Thanks to Samantha Cole at 404 Media, we are now aware that Automattic plans to sell user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com (which is the host for my blog) for “AI” products. In respon…
Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This
You don’t want to read this, and I take no pleasure in writing it, and no one really wants to hear it right now. But I believe it needs to be said. I join the world in grieving for the dead in Paris. I have grieved for the dead from…
China Shows How Surveillance Leads to Intimidation and Software Censorship
Xinjiang, home of the China's muslim Uighur minority, has long been the world's laboratory for Internet repression. Faced with widespread local unrest, and online debate, China has done everything it can to enforce its vision of the Net in the region, from imprisoning bloggers and online publishers...
What Happens to Donated Cars?
What is so lucrative about car donations?
Schneier on Security: Recording the Police
I’ve written a lot on the “War on Photography,” where normal people are harassed as potential terrorists for taking pictures of things in public. This article is different; it’s about recording the police: Allison’s predicament is an extreme example of a growing and disturbing trend. As citizens increase their…
What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?
On December 17, a 26 year old Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi reached the end of his rope. An unemployed university graduate, Bouazizi had become a seller of fruits and vegetables in the southern Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. When authorities confiscated his wares to punish him for selling without a license…
"Wait, not like that": Free and open access in the age of generative AI
The real threat isn’t AI using open knowledge — it’s AI companies killing the projects that make knowledge free
Assange Hearing Day 10
The gloves were off on Tuesday as the US Government explicitly argued that all journalists are liable to prosecution under the Espionage Act (1917) for publishing classified information, citing the Rosen case. Counsel for the US government also argued that the famous Pentagon Papers supreme court judgement on the New…
Journalists Start Demanding Substack Censor Its Writers
This new political battle does not break down along left v. right lines. This is an information war waged by corporate media to silence any competition or dissent.