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Society, Policy & Culture

The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 318 posts.

2017
153

The threat from within

Former Provost John Etchemendy, in a recent speech before the Stanford Board of Trustees, outlined challenges higher education is facing in the coming years. Following is an excerpt from that talk.

155

Twitter, but for Math, with Toots

Hooray, it’s yet another social network for you to join! I’m skeptical about new social media, but I’ve been seeing enough posts about mathstodon.xyz that I finally caved and got an account. Mathstodon is the math(s) “instance” of mastodon , a new open-source, decentralized microblogging social network. It’s a lot…

159

Stop the Border Surveillance Bills

UPDATE: EFF also opposes H.R. 3548. Like S. 1757, it would expand border surveillance with biometric, drone, and ALPR technologies. The bill, styled the Border Security for America Act, was introduced by Rep. McCaul in July. EFF opposes a new federal bill that would dramatically expand dragnet...

163

Study: carpooling apps could reduce traffic 3x in NYC

Traffic is not just a nuisance for drivers: it’s also a public-health hazard and bad news for the economy. Transportation studies put the annual cost of congestion at $160 billion , which includes 7 billion hours of time lost to sitting in traffic and an extra 3 billion gallons of fuel burned. One way to improve…

172

Hacker News Highlights: January 2017

Here are some of our favorite recent posts on Hacker News. Quantum computers ready to leap out of the lab in 2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317716] A handful of quantum computing researchers bump into each other. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13317716] A large slab of ice is breaking off an…