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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 330 posts.
Online sports betting company DraftKings is using AI to target customers who are most likely to place losing bets and respond to gambling promotions. This kind of targeting is a form of online behavioral advertising, which is when companies personalize the ads they show you based on the data they’...
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.
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Legal intern Raj Gambhir was the principal author of this post.Update: On April 15, 2026 the FAA rescinded the TFR (FDC 6/4375) and instead issued an advisory (FDC 6/2824), which states: [Drone] operators are advised to avoid flying in proximity to: Department of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 (...
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
This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. We call the technique AdFection, and show how it was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru’s spyware. We also uncover Discover-Tech, and show how the company helps mercenary surveillance vendors track and…
As members of NATO, we are committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest. The pre-coordinated Danish exercise ”Arctic Endurance” conducted with Allies, responds to this necessity. It poses no threat to anyone. We stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of…
Court records belong to the public. Yet anyone seeking access to federal court filings through PACER, a government software system that stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, is usually required to pay hefty fees to search for and view documents. PACER’s fees have long acted as a...
Luanti has been removed from Google Play due to a DMCA notice from Tracer.AI. We have filed a counter-notice, but this isn't the first time.
foodwatch laboratory tests reveal the presence of pesticide residues in everyday foods — including substances not approved in the EU.
The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials.
Bill C-22, Canada’s Lawful Access Act, passed the House and is before the Senate. It threatens encryption and expands surveillance. Learn more + sign the petition.
Ignoring EFF’s warnings about the dangers and impossibility of implementing a new mandate for 3D print surveillance software, the California State Assembly has signed off on legislation to do just that. In the process, legislators amended the bill to make it even more confusing, while failing to address the risks to…
Det Centrale Personregister (CPR) har konstateret en alvorlig sikkerhedshændelse. Ved at misbruge en dansk virksomheds lovlige adgang til at søge...
The Secretary of Defense has given an ultimatum to the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an attempt to bully them into making their technology available to the U.S. military without any restrictions for their use. Anthropic should stick by their principles and refuse to allow their...
63% of real-world claims expose disagreement among the five top frontier LLMs. Methodology, breakdowns, and data CSV.
A look at the decline of the labor share of income that occurred post-COVID, comparing its dynamics to declines in earlier periods.
California’s bill, AB 2047, will not only mandate censorware on all 3D printers; it will also criminalize the use of open-source alternatives. Repeating the mistakes of DRM won’t make anyone safer, but it will hurt innovation in the state and risks a slew of new consumer harms ranging from surveillance to platform…
Jakub Pachocki reflects on increasingly capable AI and the challenge of keeping it aligned. He calls for stronger safeguards and international coordination.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2026 was awarded to Navanethem Pillay "for her efforts to promote peace and international law"
Explore 125 baby names that shifted between boys and girls, from Leslie to Ashley. See how each one’s split between boys and girls changed from 1936 to 2025.
On 15 and 16 October 2026, a crawler that said it belonged to Roblox walked through almost every project on Open3DLab, SFMLab and SmutBase, and proceeded to download complete copies of 1,027 files from 712 projects. 145.5 GB of our creators' work, downloaded for what we assume are AI training purposes.
The new class of weight-loss and diabetes drugs are changing not just how much American households are eating, but even precisely what they buy at a supermarket or restaurant.
The United States Army spent the last two decades optimizing sustainment for permissive environments defined by uncontested supply lines, contractor support, and static forward operating bases. As the National Defense […]
ACLU documents how surveillance camera company Flock has lied to local officials about its operations
An open letter from the technology industry, and the launch of Akrites - a coordinated effort to remediate vulnerabilities in the open source software the world runs on.
In the past few months the MetaBrainz team has been fighting a battle against unscrupulous AI companies ignoring common courtesies (such as robots.txt) and scraping the Internet in order to build up their AI models . Rather than downloading our dataset in one complete download, they insist on loading all of…
Open Letter to Google Regarding Mandatory Developer Registration for Third-Party App Distribution
A more circular economy is not only important for the environment. It can also strengthen consumer rights and improve societal resilience. In this report, we show how consumer policy can make circular choices easier, safer and more attractive for consumers.
