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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
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Today is Earth Overshoot Day – (08/22)
Learn how past Earth Overshoot Days are calculated based on the Ecological Footprint and see how the date has changed over the years.
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Adversarial interoperability: reviving an old weapon to slay today's monopolies
Today, Apple is one of the largest, most profitable companies on Earth, but in the early 2000s, the company was fighting for its life. Microsoft's Windows operating system was ascendant, and Microsoft leveraged its dominance to ensure that every Windows user relied on its Microsoft Office suite (...
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Government Authority Intended for Terrorism is Used for Other Purposes
The Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law...
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25 Civil Liberties Orgs Call for Open Hearings on Section 702 Surveillance
The House Judiciary Committee has plans for a “members only” meeting next week to discuss Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Acts, the law the NSA relies on to operate its notorious PRISM surveillance program and to tap into the backbone of the Internet, also known as “upstream” collection. While we...
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Poor parents receiving universal payments increase spending on kids
When given cash with no strings attached, low- and middle-income parents increased their spending on their children, according to a WSU study of Alaska Permanent Fund payments.
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Americans' life ratings reach record high
An estimated 59.2% of U.S. adults rate their lives well enough to be categorized as "thriving" exceeding the previous record-high estimate of 57.3% from 2017.
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China's social credit system is both unique and part of a global trend
China's Social Credit System is bad: It's both unique and part of a global trend. This should freak you out.
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PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD
Student performance across OECD countries has continued to decline, reaching the lowest average ever recorded by the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in mathematics and reading. Across the OECD, one in five 15-year-old students is now a low performer in science, mathematics and reading, up…
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Excess weight, obesity more deadly than previously believed
New CU Boulder research finds that overweight populations have a 22% higher mortality risk than those of healthy weight, while obese populations have as much as
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30% of US Workforce Need License to Perform Their Job
Nearly 30 percent of workers in the U.S. need a license to perform their job. It is important to realize that occupational licenses are not mere state-sponsored certificates to signal that workers have completed some level of training; occupational licensing laws forbid people from practicing in their occupation…
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Smoking around the world
Tobacco smoking is one of the world’s largest health problems today.
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How to Paint a Crosswalk
A step-by-step guide to paint a crosswalk and keep your community safe.
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Tor Project Statement on Jacob Appelbaum
Over the past several days, a number of people have made serious, public allegations of sexual...
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Conservation should be allowed to pay its own way on public lands
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auction in February, 2016, for oil and gas drilling rights near Arches National Park was unremarkable. The high bidder, Tempest Exploration Co. LLC, paid $2,500 for the 1,120 acre lease by credit card and began paying annual rental fees. What soon did prove remarkable, though, was…
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Second Circuit allows government to search electronic devices at the border
NEW YORK—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today held that border agents may search travelers’ electronic devices without suspicion. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) submitted an amicus brief in the case, arguing that…
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EFF and Eight Other Privacy Orgs Back Out of NTIA Face Recognition Talks
EFF, along with eight other consumer-focused privacy advocacy organizations, has backed out of the National Telecommunications Information Administration’s multi-stakeholder process to develop a privacy-protective code of conduct for companies using face recognition. After 16 months of active...
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Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement
Rejecting years of settled precedent, a federal court in New York has ruled [PDF] that you could infringe copyright simply by embedding a tweet in a web page. Even worse, the logic of the ruling applies to all in-line linking, not just embedding tweets. If adopted by other courts, this legally and...
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US Government wants DNA and social media from visitors
Yesterday the Trump Administration announced a proposed change in policy for travellers to the U.S. It applies to the powers of data collection by the Customs and Border Police (CBP).
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Land Registry data reveals London’s secret tunnels
This post is by Guy Shrubsole. Updated 16th Dec 2017 with post-script on Birmingham’s secret tunnels. The existence of a secret network of Cold War-era tunnels beneath central London can be …
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The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Defend It
There is nothing more essential to secular humanism than the truth. Secular humanists are the people who looked at thousands of years of received authority ...
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Nuclear energy key to decarbonising Europe, says EESC
The EESC has adopted an opinion pointing out that nuclear energy is an essential component of the clean energy mix which is needed to phase out fossil fuels. The Committee calls on the European Commission to include key regulatory and financial enablers in order to make the planned investment possible, and to enhance…