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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 352 posts.
The popular video streaming service Netflix posted its largest-ever U.S. profit in 2018—$845 million—on which it didn’t pay a dime in federal or state income taxes. In fact, the company reported a $22 million federal income tax rebate.
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.
A compulsory recycling scheme in South Korea has dramatically cut the amount of food the country throws away. Here's how it works.
Top law enforcement officials in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia told Facebook today that they want backdoor access to all encrypted messages sent on all its platforms. In an open letter, these governments called on Mark Zuckerberg to stop Facebook’s plan to introduce end-to-end...
CORRECTION: This post previously identified the sender of the 550 falsely identified URLs as Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU). The sender was in fact, the French national Internet Referral Unit, using Europol's application, which sends the email from an @europol.europa.eu address. The EU IRU has informed…
San Francisco—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) have reached an agreement with Los Angeles law enforcement agencies under which the police and sheriff’s departments will turn over license plate data they...
There can be no accountability if there is no transparency.
Coil, Mozilla, and Creative Commons have launched Grant for the Web, an ambitious initiative to empower individual creators and galvanize an alternative business model for online content
Audrey Tang prefers precise language. During an interview, Taiwan's minister without portfolio - Tang's name card simply says "digital minister" - makes a swift correction when we mention the term "fake news." The preferred term is "disinformation" because, Tang says, it has a legal definition in Taiwan: "That is to…
Can’t stop checking your phone, even when you’re not expecting any important messages? Blame your brain. A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food. “To the brain, information is…
‘RECOVER!’ came the shout from the back seat of my Tornado GR4 combat jet but it wasn’t necessary - I had already started…
As Google grows throughout the Bay Area, we’re making our biggest investment yet to help with the housing crisis.
An interview with this specialist in human rights, technology and freedom of expression to discuss how today’s societies are advancing to the drumbeat of “digital colonialism”.
What if I told you that on nearly every single website you visit, data about you was transmitted to dozens or even hundreds of companies, all so that the w
The center, believed to be the first and largest of its kind, will use psychedelics to study the mind, identify therapies for diseases such as addiction, PTSD, Alzheimer's
Only the Netherlands has a higher average compulsory payment wedge than the US.
translation: 中国封锁了所有语言版本的维基百科 China recently started blocking all language editions of Wikipedia. Previously, the blocking was limited to the Chinese language edition of Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org), but has now expanded to include all *.wikipedia.org language editions. In this post, we share OONI network measurement…
Productivity inspiration and tactical advice that's actually useful.
If you are a dairy farmer looking for ways to reduce your environmental impact, Hanskamp's CowToilet may be for you. This innovative system is designed to…
We removed seven Pages, three Groups and five Facebook accounts as part of a small network that originated in China and focused on Hong Kong.
August 18, 2019 @ 12:31 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Decipherment , Language and history , Language and literature , Language and politics
Today, Mozilla and Google took action to protect the online security and privacy of individuals in Kazakhstan. Together the companies deployed technical so
Yesterday, a disruption in Google’s network in parts of the United States caused slow performance and elevated error rates on several Google services, including Google Cloud Platform, YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive and others. Because the disruption reduced regional network capacity, the worldwide user impact varied…
Study of thousands of players shows a simple online game works like a 'vaccine', increasing skepticism of fake news by giving people a “weak dose” of the methods behind disinformation.
