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Congress should invest in open-source software
Free and open-source software underpins the digital world. Federal funding should prioritize its development and maintenance.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 423 posts.
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Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth
Last week the Internet Archive upped our bandwidth capacity 30%, based on increased usage and increased financial support. Thank you. This is our outbound bandwidth graph that has several stories to tell… A year ago, usage was 30Gbits/sec. At the beginning of this year, we were at 40Gbits/sec, and we were handling it…
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Access to Wikipedia restored in Turkey after more than two and a half years
Today, on Wikipedia’s 19th birthday, the Wikimedia Foundation has received reports that access to Wikipedia in Turkey is actively being restored.* This latest development follows a 26 December 2019 ruling by the Constitutional Court of Turkey that the more than two and a half year block imposed by the Turkish…
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Over 80% of Covid-19 patients in a hospital study have Vitamin D deficiency
Over 80 percent of 200 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Spain have vitamin D deficiency, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
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Explaining copyright broke the YouTube copyright system
Update 5/6/24: A podcast recording of this same panel discussion has also been targeted multiple times on the Spotify platform. The Engelberg Center’s experiences with these are documented here .
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Google’s Search Preference Menu Eliminates DuckDuckGo
Google's search preference menu auction, as we predicted, has resulted in DuckDuckGo being eliminated, making it harder for people to get simple privacy.
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Studio Ghibli releases 400 free-to-use images
今月から、スタジオジブリ作品の場面写真の提供を開始します。 今月からスタジオジブリ全作品の場面写真を順次提供することになりました。今月は、新しい作品を中心に 8作品、合計400枚提供します。 常識の範囲でご自由にお使いください。 思い出のマーニー50枚 かぐや姫の物語50枚 風立ちぬ50枚 コクリ
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Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay
We should look at individuals—not national averages—as the unit of analysis, and ask: Are wages adequate for full-time workers?
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The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)
How do early career researchers (ECRs) use Sci-Hub and why? In this post David Nicholas assesses early career researcher attitudes towards the journal pirating site, finding a strong preference for Sci-Hub amongst French ECRs. He raises the question, will Sci-Hub prove the ultimate disruptor and bring down the…
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No, Cellebrite Cannot “Break Signal Encryption”
Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to. Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to co...
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The EARN IT Act Violates the US Constitution
Since senators introduced the EARN IT Act (S. 3398) in early March, EFF has called attention to the many ways in which the bill would be a disaster for Internet users’ free speech and security. We’ve explained how the EARN IT Act could be used to drastically undermine encryption. Although the bill...
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Who Americans spend their time with, by age
How do people across the world spend their time? How do daily activities differ across countries, and how do these differences matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on time use.
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Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage ‘Zero-Click’ Exploit
Government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera. The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator SNEAKY KESTREL that we…
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James Randi Has Died
We are very sad to say that James Randi passed away yesterday, due to age-related causes. He had an Amazing life. We will miss him. Please respect Deyvi Peña’s privacy during this...
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The EARN IT Act: how to ban end-to-end encryption without banning it
The story so far: In the ‘90s the Internet was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. (with apologies to Douglas Adams)[1] There’s a new bill afoot in Congress called the EARN IT Act. A “discussion draft”
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A one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition
We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. We will continue to allow organizations like Thorn, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Marinus Analytics to use Amazon Rekognition to help rescue human trafficking victims…
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Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
The University of Oxford, in collaboration with AstraZeneca plc, today announces interim trial data from its Phase III trials that show its candidate vaccine, ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019, is effective at preventing COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) and offers a high level of protection.
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Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers
Ring isn't just a product that allows users to surveil their neighbors. The company also uses it to surveil its customers.An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable...
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Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge
August 28, 2020 @ 6:53 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Fillers and pause words , Grammar , Mannerisms , Speech-acts
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In 2019, Americans went more to the library than to the movies on average
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.
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N26 will be leaving the UK
We want to take this opportunity to thank all our UK customers for believing in our vision to build the bank the world loves to use.
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Our data centers now work harder when the sun shines and wind blows
Today we’re announcing a carbon-intelligent computing platform, which can shift tasks to hours of the day when energy from cleaner power sources is plentiful.
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Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year
New report, "U.S. Press Freedom in Crisis: Journalists Under Arrest in 2020," details how more than 117 journalists were arrested across the country in 2020.
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Your Phone Is Your Castle
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
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The Right to Repair could help address a critical shortage in school computers
Buying a refurbished computer can save money and cut waste. It might also be a key strategy in addressing the digital divide