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How the Native American population changed since the last census
The federal government has counted the Native American population in various ways throughout the years. Recent data shows how the demographic is growing.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 347 posts.
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Designed for Rural Living
The impact of Cornell’s purpose-driven research is ever advancing.
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Open call – your field recordings of obsolete sounds wanted
Recordings of disappearing, obscure and obsolete sounds wanted for new global collaborative sound project Obsolete Sounds.
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The end of Roe will bring about a sea change in the encryption debate
With the Supreme Court poised to rip away a constitutional right that’s been the law of the land for nearly half a century by overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s time for the gloves to come off in the encryption debate. For a quarter of a century, it has
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The Mitto AG surveillanve case – or why we must never backdoor encryption
A single employee leaked sensitive data to secret services, potentially also to Russia.
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Nine-year-old kids are launching DDoS attacks against schools
Britain's computer crime cops are targeting youngsters as young as nine years old in an attempt to dissuade them from embarking on a life of cybercrime.
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We must protect our ability to transact privately online (2019)
Without cryptocurrency, a cashless society is a surveillance society
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Picture This: The Periodic Table
Philip Ball on the visual ordering of all the elements known to humankind—and how we might order them differently.
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52% of YouTube videos live in 2010 have been deleted
YouTube is a platform and a community which live off of reuploads. With the privating of old unlisted videos, let's re-examine the relationship between YouTube and reuploading.
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Why does a librarian own MetaFilter?
Jessamyn West is not just one of the web's favorite librarians, but the new owner of Metafilter, an incredibly long-running social network that dates back to a very different Internet. In the first part of our interview with Jessamyn, she tells us just how Metafilter has kept going and stayed healthy since 1999.
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California Considers Doubling Its Taxes
Practically doubling state taxes—even if the burden is partially offset through state-provided health coverage—could send taxpayers racing for the exits.
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TikTok’s Secret Sauce
What made TikTok such a success? A commonly given reason is that the app’s advanced AI is really good at figuring out what you want to watch. Many people say TikTok knows them better than they know themselves. Some users think of the algorithm as a divine force that guides them.
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Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills
Results suggest that pretend play provides similar social benefits to autistic children as it does to neurotypical children.
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Computer Saturation and the Productivity Slowdown
One of the current puzzles in economics is the recent worldwide slowdown in productivity, compared to the late 1990s and early 2000s. This productivity loss is economically large: if productivity growth had stayed at the same level as in 1995-2004, American GDP would have increased by trillions of dollars. In this…
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Minnesota DOT Name-a-Snowplow Contest Announces Results
Announcing the winners of MnDOT’s 2025-26 Name a Snowplow contest!
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Where did all the “reject” buttons come from?
More and more websites have added an option to say “no” to cookies and other tracking- as foreseen by the GDPR. Where did this trend come from?
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EU Regulator: Proposal to force websites to pay telcos puts Internet at risk
Europe’s top telecom regulator dealt a strong blow to Europe’s biggest telecoms in a report released in October, finding “no evidence” to justify the proposal from large broadband companies like Deutsche Telekom and Orange to force websites and apps to pay them. The report comes after European Commission
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No increased risk of brain tumours for mobile phone users, new study finds
Longstanding fears that using mobile phones may increase the risk of developing a brain tumour have been reignited recently by the launch of 5G (fifth generation) mobile wireless technologies. Mobile phones emit radiofrequency waves which, if absorbed by tissues, can cause heating and damage.
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How does the land use of different electricity sources compare?
All energy production takes up land, but which sources use the most land, and which use it most efficiently?
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Brave’s use of direct mailers
As Brave continues to grow, we find many users who haven't heard of us yet, so we try new marketing channels for efficacy, reach, affordability, and privacy.
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CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker
What this report finds: Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1%. In 2021, we project that a CEO at one of the top 350 firms…
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Google now deleting health clinic searches from location history automatically
Editor's note – May 12, 2023Last year, we launched an important update to Location History. We remain committed to improving the experience and making it as helpful…
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U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds
A UCLA–MIT Press paper highlights a lack of data infrastructure and data strategy in U.S. higher education.
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Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking
Donald Shoup, famed author of the most fascinating possible book about parking, can also do comedy. From his recent essay on “The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements“: Everyone wants to park free, and most people consider parking a personal issue, not a policy problem. Rational people quickly become emotional about…