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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
Why does walking feel so intuitive when we’re in a city built before cars, yet as soon as we return home, walking feels like an unpleasant chore that immediately drives us into a car?
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits.The sheriff’s department’s 6,789 abuses made up a majority...
We’re excited to announce that we’re expanding Watsi to provide health coverage! Together, Watsi Crowdfunding and Watsi Coverage will help create a world where everyone has access to care––whether that’s by raising money through crowdfunding or enrolling in health coverage.
In a major decision on Friday, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” Closely following arguments EFF has made in a number of cases, the court found that geofence warrants constitute the sort of “general,...
Average home electricity price from 2020 to 2025: investor-owned utilities +34%, public utilities +19%, co-ops +19%, against +24% inflation. Investor-owned prices rose faster in 38 of 48 states. EIA annual data by state and utility since 2015.
Network data from the NetBlocks internet observatory show that Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and other social and messaging apps have been blocked in Iraq by multiple internet providers as of ...
Chomsky discusses the origins of the classic work of media criticism (co-authored with Edward Herman) Manufacturing Consent, the role of that book’s “propaganda model” today, Google and Facebook, Donald Trump and Russia, fake news and Syria.
Now, that’s not because most Stack Overflow contributors are hostile jerks. The majority of them are generous and kind. Sure, a few are… just generous, I guess? But our active users regularly express their frustration that we haven’t done more to make outsiders feel more welcome. The real problem isn’t the community …
Of nine leisure activities, visiting a library is the one Americans did most frequently in the past year, followed by attending movies and live sporting events.
Today, 43% of U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society, up from 34% in 2022.
The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla's Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
The leaked draft text suggests that the Commission significantly caved in to US’s excessive demands for unfettered information access.
Legal intern Raj Gambhir was the principal author of this post.Update: On April 15, 2026 the FAA rescinded the TFR (FDC 6/4375) and instead issued an advisory (FDC 6/2824), which states: [Drone] operators are advised to avoid flying in proximity to: Department of War (DOW), Department of Energy (...
A stroad is a street/road hybrid. Stroads are dangerous and unproductive, and if we want to build strong towns, we have to eliminate them.
Denver legislators have just passed the first-ever agricultural Right to Repair bill. Today’s landslide 44-16 vote in the House follows successful votes in the Senate last month.
EFF has joined the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and more than 90 other organizations to send a letter urging Apple CEO Tim Cook to stop the company’s plans to weaken privacy and security on Apple’s iPhones and other products. Have you signed the petition?
Boston, Massachusetts—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without warrants at the U.S. border. The plaintiffs in the case are...
This memo contains the thoughts and recountings of events that transpired during and after the release of information about the NSA by Edward Snowden. There are four perspectives: that of someone who was involved with sifting through the information to responsibly inform the public, a security area director of the…
For many years, data brokers have existed in the shadows, exploiting gaps in privacy laws to harvest our information—all for their own profit. They sell our precise movements without our knowledge or meaningful consent to a variety of private and state actors, including law enforcement agencies....
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, The Tech Oversight Project issued the following report on the eve of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in the social media addiction trials. The report analyzes Zuckerberg’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2024 against newly unsealed documents that show Zuckerberg lied
