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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 423 posts.
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We need to do the math, even on “small” projects
It’s easy for “maintaining” our public investments to become “upgrading” our public investments. Especially when there is money available. And especially when that money is borrowed.
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As Qualified Immunity Takes Center Stage, More Delay from SCOTUS
I fear I may have become trapped in a time loop, in which every week I am doomed to write the same blog post about how the Supreme Court has delayed consideration of its qualified immunity docket. Back in April , I noted that the Court had scheduled thirteen different qualified immunity cases for its May 15th…
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Asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over YouTube-dl takedown demand
We learned on Friday that GitHub removed youtube-dl's primary collaboration forum and code repository from their site, which had been hosted at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl. The action was in response to a DMCA Section 512 notice that the RIAA sent demanding removal of youtube-dl, which was released and…
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MIT and Harvard file suit against new ICE regulations
MIT and Harvard have filed a lawsuit in response to the ICE and the DHS announcement that international students on F-1 visas will not be permitted to take a full online course load this fall while studying in the United States.
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Open Letter from Facebook Content Moderators
Full text of the letter from 200 Facebook content moderators.
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Internet Archive responds to publishers’ lawsuit
Yesterday, the Internet Archive filed our response to the lawsuit brought by four commercial publishers to end the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the digital equivalent of traditional library lending. CDL is a respectful and secure way to bring the breadth of our library collections to digital learners…
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Media Owned by Wealthy Are Quick to Tell You Wealth Taxes Are a Bad Idea
Corporate media—whose owners are overwhelmingly from the class that would be paying a wealth tax—are returning to throw cold water on the idea.
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Israeli startup claims Covid-19 likely originated in a lab, willing to bet on it
Rootclaim helps people understand complex issues by combining the power of crowdsourced information with the mathematical validity of statistics.
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Twitter, Reddit support challenge of visa applicant social media requirement
WASHINGTON – Twitter, Reddit, and Internet Association filed an amicus brief late yesterday in support of a lawsuit filed last year by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP on behalf of plaintiffs Doc Society and International…
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What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)
The sophisticated "scientific concept" with the greatest potential to enhance human understanding may be argued to come not from the halls of academe, but rather from the unlikely research environment of professional wrestling.
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Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library
Last Tuesday we launched a National Emergency Library—1.4M digitized books available to users without a waitlist—in response to the rolling wave of school and library closures that remain in place to date. We’ve received dozens of messages of thanks from teachers and school librarians, who can now help their students…
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Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people every year (2017)
These tiny insects kill more than 1,000,000 people every year
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Invasive, secretive “bossware” tracking workers
COVID-19 has pushed millions of people to work from home, and a flock of companies offering software for tracking workers has swooped in to pitch their products to employers across the country.The services often sound relatively innocuous. Some vendors bill their tools as “automatic time tracking”...
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China blocks Wikimedia Foundation’s accreditation to WIPO
China yesterday blocked the Wikimedia Foundation’s application for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations (UN) organization that develops international treaties on copyright, IP, trademarks, patents and related issues. As a result of the block, the Foundation’s…
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Apple crushes one-man repair shop in Norway’s Supreme Court
Norwegian small business owner and repairer Henrik Huseby lost his legal battle against $1 trillion company Apple in Norway’s Supreme Court.
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Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior
In a new paper, Yale SOM’s Fiona Scott Morton writes that the company took control of the social media industry by misleading consumers and buying up rivals.
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Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern
John Villasenor warns about the vulnerabilities of businesses and schools using one videoconferencing platform during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Formal GDPR complaint against Google’s internal data free-for-all
Brave filed a GDPR complaint v Google for infringing the GDPR “purpose limitation” principle. Enforcement would be tantamount to a functional separation of Google’s business.
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Ireland donates contact tracing app to Linux Foundation
Nearform is an independent team of engineers, designers and strategists. We build digital capability and software solutions for ambitious enterprises seeking sustained business impact. We love what we do.
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Amazon establishes new Counterfeit Crimes Unit
The global team will investigate crimes and bring legal action against counterfeiters to protect our customers and brands.
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My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
Brewster Kahle shares his thoughts about how libraries have been bringing older books to digital learners and the lawsuit trying to stop it.
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