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The road that killed Legend Jenkins was working as designed
When a child is killed on a street like West Hudson Boulevard, it’s not a tragic fluke. It’s the outcome we designed for.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 326 posts.
272
Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting
The following guest post from digital humanities scholar Nichole Misako Nomura is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now. Punch cards are a fascinating binary data storage format that aren’t…
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Mullvad VPN present And Then? (Chat Control is back on the menu)
Chat Control is back on the menu. To highlight the corruption behind the proposal, Mullvad VPN now presents "And Then?"
275
Why do commercial spaces sit vacant?
Instead of letting their commercial buildings sit empty, surely it would be better for landlords to lower the rent and got some use out of the building, right? Wrong. Here’s why.
276
Take It Down Act: A Flawed Attempt to Protect Victims That'll Lead to Censorship
Congress has begun debating the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146), a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of a troubling type of online content: non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. In recent years, concerns have also grown about the use of digital tools to alter or create such images, sometimes...
277
It’s OK to block ads (2015)
Over the past couple of months, the practice of ad blocking has received heightened ethical scrutiny. (1,2,3,4) If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “ad blocking” refers to software—usually web browser plug-ins, but increasingly mobile apps—that stop most ads from appearing when you use websites or apps that would…
278
Flock Now Using AI to Report to Police If Our Movement Patterns Are "Suspicious"
Company crosses a dangerous line by beginning to offer AI suspicion-generation functions
279
New York’s bill banning One-Person Train Operation
Bill Banning One-Person Trains Would Lock NY Transit in the Past
280
Workers at Snopes.com win voluntary recognition
RELEASE: Today the workers of Snopes.com won voluntary recognition of their union, the Snopes Guild. The Guild will now begin the process to develop a contract.
281
You cannot have our user's data
sourcehut is a network of useful open source tools for software project maintainers and collaborators, including git repos, bug tracking, continuous integration, and mailing lists.
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ADHD and monotropism (2023)
Monotropism was formulated as a theory of autism, but as time has gone on it has become clear that many diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) identify strongly with many aspects of the theory.
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EFF to court: The Supreme Court must rein in secondary copyright liability
If the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse a lower court’s ruling, internet service providers (ISPs) could be forced to terminate people’s internet access based on nothing more than mere accusations of copyright infringement. This would threaten innocent users who rely on broadband for essential aspects...
286
Privacy Harm Is Harm
Every day, corporations track our movements through license plate scanners, building detailed profiles of where we go, when we go there, and who we visit. When they do this to us in violation of data privacy laws, we’ve suffered a real harm—period. We shouldn’t need to prove we’ve suffered...
287
Stop Hacklore – An Open Letter
An open letter from current and former CISOs, security leaders, and practitioners asking the public, employers, journalists, and policymakers to retire outdated security advice.
288
Time to End Roundtripping by Big Pharma
U.S. pharma companies should pay rather more of their corporate income tax in the U.S.—and start producing more of their best drugs in the U.S. as well.
289
Dear Mr. Vice President, Please Take Off Your Apple Watch
An Open Letter To JD Vance From A Former CIA Officer On The Counterintelligence Risks Of Smartwatches Mr. Vice President, Congratulations on your ascendancy to the Vice President of the United States of America. While we are an apolitical platform, we wish you nothing but success, the country depends on you. In a rec
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Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)
In many ways, America’s social safety net falls short of those of our liberal democratic peers, yet we have no shortage of policies intended to provide social protections. Why is that, and how can we fix it?
291
Free the Internet: The Tor Project's annual fundraiser
This year we are calling to FREE THE INTERNET. Your donation will help break the chains of censorship and surveillance. If you give now during the campaign, your donation will be matched by our supporters at Power Up Privacy. This means a $25 donation will have a $50 impact.
292
Most users cannot identify AI bias, even in training data
When recognizing faces and emotions, artificial intelligence (AI) can be biased, like classifying white people as happier than people from other racial backgrounds. This happens because the data used to train the AI contained a disproportionate number of happy white faces, leading it to correlate race with emotional…
293
A new Little Prince museum has opened its doors in Switzerland
The Besenval Palace in Solothurn opened the museum « Der Kleine Prinz und seine Welt » dedicated to the Little Prince through the collection of Jean-Marc Probst.
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Teen safety, freedom, and privacy
Explore OpenAI’s approach to balancing teen safety, freedom, and privacy in AI use.
296
The War on the Walkman
The Sony Walkman is now iconic of the 1980s, eliciting nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ of owning music, rather than renting it.
297
Europe needs its own social media platforms to safeguard sovereignty
The EU can support the development of homegrown social media platforms to ensure European Union's digital sovereignty and shield it from foreign interference
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Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal
What patterns do we see in RUM data during the April 28th power outage in Portugal and Spain?
299
Arduino Terms of Service and Privacy Policy update: setting the record straight
We’ve heard some questions and concerns following our recent Terms of Service and Privacy Policy updates. We are thankful our community cares enough to
300
Sand trafficking in Latin America
Criminal mafias are making massive profits from the illegal extraction and sale of sand for construction purposes.