3001
Alarm overload is undermining safety at sea as crews face thousands of alerts
Analysis of more than 40 million alarm-related events shows most alarms offer little operational value, disrupt rest and push crews toward risky workarounds.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
3002
Brand engagement is plummeting on Facebook
According to a new report from Simply Measured, the total engagement for the top 10 most-followed brands on Facebook has declined 40 percent year-over-year—even as brands have increased the amount of content they're posting by 20.1 percent.
3003
Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment
As warmer temperatures return, Union Pacific is applying an innovative concept to manage heat-related track conditions – part of a broader strategy that helped the railroad deliver its best-ever full-year derailment incident rate in 2025, improving 19% year over year.
3004
The Lakota: A Human Story
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen. Yale University Press, 2019. Hardcover, 544 pages, $35.
3005
European Court Allows Copyright Owners to Demand Open Wifi Networks be Secured
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) recently announced its decision in Sony v McFadden with important consequences for open wireless in the European Union. The court held that providers of open wifi are not liable for copyright violations committed by others, but can be ordered to prevent further...
3006
Wizards of bullshit: How Forbes turned $6.5 million into $20 billion
Forbes is reporting that Facebook’s Zuckerberg is now richer than the Google’s Sergey and Larry. How did that happen? By using the most naive form of financial extrapolation and calling it fact. Here’s how the financial alchemy works: GSV Capital spent $6.5 million to buy 225,0…
3007
A New Era at the Tor Project
Andrew Lewman, our current Executive Director, is leaving The Tor Project to take a position at...
3008
Two More Cases of Third-Party Facebook App Data Exposure
Third-party Facebook apps gather Facebook data about the people who use them. While Facebook struggles to contain these exposures, insecure third-party data practices & misconfigured cloud systems continue to leak Facebook data to the internet. See how UpGuard discovered and secured two such cases.
3009
Senator Wants to Make the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Even Easier to Abuse
This summer, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced an amendment to the flawed Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) that would make it even worse, by expanding the broken Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). EFF has proposed common sense changes to this federal anti-hacking law, many of which were...
3010
Facebook Doubles Down on Misusing Your Phone Number
When we publicly demanded that Facebook stop messing with users’ phone numbers last week, we weren’t expecting the social network to double down quite like this: By default, anyone can use the phone number that a user provides for two-factor authentication (2FA) to find that user’s profile. For...
3011
Long-acting injectable is effective in preventing HIV acquisition in women
The HIV Prevention Trials Network study (HPTN 084) on the safety and efficacy of the long-acting injectable antiretroviral drug cabotegravir (CAB LA), for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in HIV-uninfected women, was stopped early by the trial Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) as results showed CAB LA to be…
3012
House Schedules Vote on Eliminating Consumer Online Privacy Rights Next Week
Majority Leader McCarthy Confirms House to Immediately Act on Behalf of the Cable and Telephone Industry Following the Senate Vote Yesterday, the U.S. Senate by a razor thin margin of 50 to 48 voted to take away the privacy rights of Internet users as a favor to the cable and telephone industry....
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3014
Sneaky Change to the TPP Drastically Extends Criminal Penalties
When the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was first released in November last year, it included provisions dictating the kinds of penalties that should be available in cases of copyright infringement. Amongst those provisions, the following footnote allowed countries some flexibility in...
3015
World military expenditure passes $2T for first time
(Stockholm, 25 April 2022) Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, according to new data on…
3016
3017
The long-awaited Friend Compound laws in California
[X-posted from the Live Near Friends blog]
3018
3019
OK Lenovo, we need to talk
I’ve been wanting to publicly comment on Lenovo’s statement on Linux support for a while, as there’s much to say about it, and my failing attempt at finding a suitable replacement for my venerable T510 gave me an excuse to document …
3020
Awareness at Death
How many cardiac arrest survivors later have a conscious recollection of their death experience—and are their recollections accurate?
3021
Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
University of Oxford IT Services blogs support dissemination of news, updates on research projects, reflection, and musings by IT Services staff for widespread readership.
3022
Dear Tumblr: Banning “Adult Content” Will Harm Sex-Positive Communities
Social media platform Tumblr has announced a ban on so-called “adult content,” a move made, it seems, in reaction to Tumblr’s app being removed from the Apple app store. But while making the app more available is in theory good for Tumblr users, in practice what’s about to happen is mass censorship...
3023
Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” feature
noyb filed a complaint against Mozilla for quietly enabling a supposed “privacy feature” (called Privacy Preserving Attribution) in its Firefox browser which tracks user behaviour on websites.
3024
Some Night-Shift Workers May Have a 300% Higher Risk of Car Crashes
Researchers at the University of Missouri College of Engineering also examined the relationship between vehicle crashes and two other sleep disorders, sleep apnea and insomnia.
3025
Google Cloud files complaint due to Microsoft's anti-competitive licensing
Google Cloud has filed a complaint with the European Commission regarding Microsoft’s anti-competitive licensing practices, which restrict customer choice, stifle innovation, and harm European businesses.
3026
3027
A statement on online course content and accessibility
UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education Cathy Koshland issued a statement today in response to federal findings on the accessibility of online course content and lectures.
3028
The Mueller Report, Searchable and Accessible on the Archive
Last week, the American public finally got its hands on the Mueller report–more than 400 pages, much of the text redacted, detailing the special counsel’s much anticipated findings. Within minutes of that release, many copies of that file were uploaded to the Internet Archive. On Amazon, other outfits were charging…
3029
No-fly list trial: Court awards fees on government attorneys’ bad faith
Fourteen years to the day after she discovered she was on the no-fly list when she was arrested at SFO, and five years after her legal victory in the first trial of a challenge to a government no-fly order (a Pyrrhic victory as she has still been denied a visa to return to the US), Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim won a third…
3030