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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 295 posts.
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Don’t Shoot Messenger
Update (September 28, 2018): Reuters reports that the court has denied the government's request to force Facebook to assist with the wiretap.Late last week, Reuters reported that Facebook is being asked to “break the encryption” in its Messenger application to assist the Justice Department in...
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The Justice Dept's secret rules for targeting journalists with FISA court orders
The Justice Dept has kept these FISA court rules for targeting journalists secret for years.
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WWF Report Reveals Staggering Extent of Human Impact on Planet
WWF's latest press releases, media contacts, and latest reports.
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What We Learned About the Hemisphere Program After Suing the DEA
As the year draws to a close, so has EFF’s long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Agency about the mass phone surveillance program infamously known as “Hemisphere.” We won our case and freed up tons of records. (So did the Electronic Privacy Information Center...
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Nextcloud introduces social features, joins the fediverse
Today, Nextcloud 15 has been made available. As there is so much new and improved in this release, we have dedicated separate blogs to each main area of improvement. This blog covers a preview of the the brand new Nextcloud Social app, introducing social networking to Nextcloud. Download now! The Mastodon project is…
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Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary
Mastodon was first announced to the public through Hacker News, a link aggregator site for programmers, on October 6, 2016. Now we’re celebrating the 2 year anniversary! 🎉
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FreeBSD Celebrates 25th Anniversary
Join us to celebrate FreeBSD Day! FreeBSD Day, celebrated on June 19, commemorates the launch of the FreeBSD open source operating system and recognizes its pioneering and continued impact on technology. On June 19, 1993, an email thread on an early BSD list proposed project names for a new open source UNIX…
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To Delete Facebook or Not to Delete Facebook? That Is Not the Question
Since the Cambridge Analytica news hit headlines, calls for users to ditch the platform have picked up speed. Whether or not it has a critical impact on the company’s user base or bottom line, the message from #DeleteFacebook is clear: users are fed up. EFF is not here to tell you whether or not to...
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How a Political Engineering Firm Exposed Their Code Base
Political data firm AggregateIQ exposed IT assets that raise questions for society about how technology is being used in recent US political history.
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Wikipedia bans agenda-driven editor, but punishes the messenger too
A look at a Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign to discredit anti-war campaigners and journalists
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“I-Cut-You-Choose” Cake-Cutting Protocol Inspires Solution to Gerrymandering
CMU researchers say getting political parties to equitably draw congressional district boundaries can be as easy as sharing cake.
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Movim – Federated, open-source alternative to Tumblr
Tumblr has decided to ban all NSFW content from its network. Although we understand the reasons…
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SJ Games vs. the Secret Service (1990)
On March 1, 1990, the offices of Steve Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy. The initial news stories simply reported that the Secret Service had raided a suspected ring of hackers. Gradually, the true story emerged.
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Removing Bad Actors on Facebook
We removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior.
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EFF to Texas AG: Epson Tricked Its Customers with a Dangerous Fake Update
If you've ever bought an inkjet printer, you know just how much the manufacturers charge for ink (more than vintage Champagne!) and you may also know that you can avoid those sky-high prices by buying third-party inks, or refilled cartridges, or kits to refill your own cartridges.The major printer...
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UK intelligence agency admits unlawfully spying on Privacy International
Thames House, Offices of MI5. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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Australia’s Proposed Surveillance Laws Will Break the Trust Tech Depends On
In the last few years, we’ve discovered just how much trust — whether we like it or not — we have all been obliged to place in modern technology. Third-party software, of unknown composition and security, runs on everything around us: from the phones we carry around, to the smart devices with...
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Spain will soon overtake Japan in life expectancy rankings
Spain is forecast to topple Japan from the top spot in the longest life expectancy league table by 2040, while the US continues to slip down the rankings.
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Vitamins for convicts could save taxpayers' money
(OMNS Dec 20, 2017) I used to teach college courses in jail. No, not as an inmate. As an adjunct professor.
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Crowdfunding Backer Patented My Project
I never thought about patents much. I just wanted to make stuff and share it with others. Then one day someone else patented my work.