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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could allow companies to keep a dead hand of control over their products, even after you buy them. The case, Impression Products v. Lexmark International, is on appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who last year affirmed...
Encryption is one of the most important ways to safeguard data from prying eyes. But what happens when those prying belong to the government? Can they force you to break your own encryption and provide them with the information they want? In a new amicus brief, we explain that the Fifth Amendment...
We are updating our hate speech policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.
Find information for Russian Ruble RUB/USD Quotes provided by CME Group. View Quotes
Mobile app store metrics from NetBlocks confirm the removal of a popular opposition election tracking app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The incident comes as Russia ...
Or, how we lose knowledge and technologies. And what we can do about it.
It’s official. In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed two bills (SB 1052 and SB 1053) that will provide for the creation of free, openly licensed digital textbooks for the 50 most popular lower-division college courses offered by California colleges. The legislation was introduced by Senate President pro Tem…
One of the more heartwarming moments of my journey building NanaGram was totally unexpected. A few months after launching, I built a way for customers to post reviews. These automatically get posted to the home page. Within a couple weeks, two customers sent reviews mentioning how their loved one has dementia and…
The Entertainment Software Association doesn’t want anyone to restore the functionality of older videogames that are no longer supported by their publisher, because, says ESA, this is “hacking,” and all hacking is “associated with piracy.” EFF, along with law student Kendra Albert, is asking the...
It all started with a simple Twitter query from a Baltimore man: “Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?” This was several days after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, and the subsequent riots and protests. Pete Cimbolic, an aviation buff and…
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Whether controlled by an artificial intelligence or a remote human operator, armed police robots and drones pose an unacceptable threat to civilians. The ongoing revolution in the field of robotics requires us to act now to prevent a new era of police violence.
If you can keep your head when all about you
In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that. H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S....
Since the FCC seems to have no problem with this idea, I've (through correspondence) gotten access to the FCC's internal IP block, and throttled all connections from the FCC to 28.8kbps modem speeds on the Neocities.org front site.
An independent nonprofit research lab, whose mission is to enable universal literacy in a humane dynamic medium. This involves inventing a humane form of computing, and developing educational and community-based institutions in which a culture can grow. [more]
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
The American pattern of development creates the illusion of wealth. Today we are in the process of seeing that illusion destroyed…and with it the prosperity we have come to take for granted.
Some recent press stories (1, 2) have discussed archived blog posts of a prominent journalist, Joy Ann Reid, in the Wayback Machine and her claims that some of these posts were “manipulated” by an “unknown, external party”. This past December, Reid's lawyers contacted us, asking to have archives of the blog…
Cybersecurity challenges for iPhone, iPad, and Mac
At approximately 11:30 am EDT, the White House removed a petition about the TSA airport screening procedures from the White House
