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The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better
It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
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New Mexico is the second state to ban qualified immunity
SANTA FE, NM (April 7, 2021) – Today, New Mexico became the second state in the nation to abolish qualified immunity when Governor Lujan Grisham signed the New Mexico Civil Rights Act into law. In addition to eliminating qualified immunity, this historic legislation will allow New Mexicans – including the wrongfully…
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Sweden gives employees unpaid time off to be entrepreneurs (2019)
The world of work has entered a period of unprecedented change. In the era of AI and automation, workers have to stay flexible. In Sweden, that flexibility has been commonplace for 20 years. What could the rest of the world learn from it?
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AI outperforms law professors in Stanford Law study
A groundbreaking study led by Stanford Law School Professor Julian Nyarko reveals that law professors overwhelmingly prefer AI-generated answers to st
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Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
I'm one of the founders at Corelatus. Our niche is telecom hardware for the E1/T1 and SDH/SONET interfaces. I work with layer 2 signalling, i.e SS7 MTP-2, ATM and frame relay, and the Erlang control system for our embedded hardware.
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The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s
Globally, electricity generation per person has grown by more than 50% this century.
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Study identifies weaknesses in how AI systems are evaluated
Largest systematic review of AI benchmarks highlights need for clearer definitions and stronger scientific standards.
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A walking tour of surveillance infrastructure in Seattle (2020)
coveillance.org
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FSE meets the FBI
I have for you a bizarre tale of scrapers, feds, data poisoning, Torswats, and everyone's favorite fedi instance. It veers technical, because I suspect it will be of interest to other people running servers with UGC (i.e., every fedi instance), and also because the mechanics of how I figured out what I figured out…
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Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning
We regret that this event has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office.
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Bots, so many bots
Is Product Hunt worth it? Dive into the data to find out.
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Benzene detected in many sunscreen products
Learn how Valisure’s work in pharmaceutical quality and transparency was recognized in the U.S. Senate Aging Committee report, highlighting their collaboration with the Department of Defense and commitment to innovation.
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When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
Last week, the open-core team chat platform Mattermost announced that “Mattermost Cloud Free will no longer be offered after July 26, 2023.” This likely came as an unpleasant surprise to users on that plan, as less than a month before, Mattermost’s pricing page featured the promise that the Cloud Free …
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RIAA Abuses DMCA to Take Down Popular Tool for Downloading Online Videos
"youtube-dl" is a popular free software tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other user-uploaded video platforms. GitHub recently took down youtube-dl’s code repository at the behest of the Recording Industry Association of America, potentially stopping many thousands of users, and other...
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Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse
We will always view censorship as a last resort, because we believe open discourse is better for writers and better for society.
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Class action against Oracle’s worldwide surveillance machine
Oracle claims to have amassed dossiers on 5 billion people, and generates $42.4 billion in annual revenue. ICCL's Dr Johnny Ryan is a lead plaintiff in a new U.S. class action to stop its global surveillance machine.
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Isolation, anxiety, and depression in the remote workplace
Productivity inspiration and tactical advice that's actually useful.
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Hacker News Highlights, August to November 2018
Here are some of our favorite Hacker News comments from August to November. If you see something cool like this, email us at hn@ycombinator.com [mailto:hn@ycombinator.com] so we can add it to the next list. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listening to The Shipping…
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Lessons learned from a failing local mall
The closing of the mall’s anchor store exposes how fragile the community’s business model is, providing an opening to shift approach.
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What We Learned From 40 Female YC Founders
We’re excited to launch Female Founder Stories [http://www.femalefounderstories.com/], a collection of interviews with 40 of Y Combinator’s female alumnae. We asked them about things like how they got started, their experience at Y Combinator, their experience as female founders, and what they wish they’d known when…
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Given Choice, Patients Will Choose Cannabis Over Prescribed Opioids
Chronic pain sufferers and those taking mental health meds would rather turn to cannabis instead of their prescribed opioid medication, according to new research by the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria.
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We Only Have Hours Left to Stop the NSA Expansion Bill
According to reports published Tuesday evening by Politico, a group of surveillance hawks in the House of Representatives is trying to ram through a bill that would extend mass surveillance by the National Security Agency. We expect a vote to happen on the House floor as early as tomorrow, which...
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FreeBSD turns 21
FreeBSD is a rapidly developing operating system. Keeping up on the latest developments can be a chore! To keep on top of things, check this page periodically. News is also announced on the freebsd-announce mailing list and the RSS feed .
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Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying
UPDATE (1/15/14): Computing Using Educators, Inc, has added its name to the list. This brings the total to 87. Today, a bipartisan coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American...
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How to Force Facebook into Handing Over their Secret Tracking Data
According to European data protection law every individual has the right to get a copy of all personal data a company holds about him (right to access). This law is applicable to Facebook too. Every user with a residence outside of the US and Canada has a contract with “Facebook Ireland Limited”, based in Dublin…
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AI uses less water than the public thinks
By Jay Lund . . . Artificial intelligence (AI) will affect many economic and natural resource sectors as these new technologies develop and mature. We are in the early years of this process. Like most new things, AI has become an object of small and great hopes and fears – from hopes for saving and