2281
The Effects of Noise on Health (2022)
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
2282
DOJ says presidents should be able to sell secrets on eBay
Plus: Recent deaths intensify need to make private prisons subject to FOIA
2283
Price of a bot army revealed across online platforms
The first global index tracking real-time prices for buying fake account verifications on 500+ online platforms in every country has been launched by a team at the University of Cambridge.
2284
Patents are out of control, and they’re hurting innovation (2017)
The government issues thousands of new patents every week — each one a new regulation — with little to no oversight or review.
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On being targeted by the NSA
As quoted in the original article on Das Erste: We've been thinking of state surveillance for...
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The House Intelligence Committee's Surveillance 'Reform' Bill Is a Farce
Two bills reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are headed to the House floor. Meanwhile, FBI agents have used Section 702 databases to conduct millions of invasive searches for Americans’ communications, including those of protesters, racial justice activists, 19,000 donors to a…
2288
For First Time, Half of Americans Favor Defending Taiwan If China Invades
2021 Chicago Council Survey data show a majority of Americans support a range of US policies towards Taiwan: recognition as an independent country, inclusion in international organizations, and a US-Taiwan free trade agreement.
2289
People don’t want to commute; they just don’t want to miss out
We recently met with GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij to talk all about how they scaled a multi-billion dollar company with beyond 800 employees, fully remotely.
2290
Zen Magnets: 6 Years of Battle End in Victory
“We will not settle for any sort of stop-sale of magnets that are perfectly safe when not misused… We vow to continue this [legal] battle until our very last drop of cash-flow blood”, promised in August 2014 , forecasting 95% chance of a glorious honorable death of insolvency on the legal battlefield.
2291
Mozilla Is Crowdsourcing Research into YouTube Recommendations
Mozilla has built a browser add-on that transforms YouTube users into YouTube watchdogs YouTube recommendations can be delightful, but they can also be…
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How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?
Asking nicely, and asking a lot of people.
2294
An Epidemic of Wage Theft Is Costing Workers Hundreds of Millions a Year (2014)
Millions of Americans struggle to get by on low wages, often without any benefits such as paid sick leave, a pension, or even health insurance. Their difficult lives are made immeasurably harder when they do the work they have been hired to do, but their employers refuse to pay, pay for some hours but not…
2295
The value of Tor and anonymous contributions to Wikipedia
According to a recently published research paper co-authored by researchers from Drexel, NYU, and the University of Washington, Tor users make high-quality contributions to Wikipedia. And, when they are blocked, as doctoral candidate Chau Tran, the lead author describes, "the collateral damage in the form of…
2296
My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement
TMJ is/was a punk-pop band of some minor renown. Some of that renown was due to their music, which included semi-hits such as “Crush Story,” “Donna Everywhere,” and “That’s a Lie” — a cover of the LL Cool J tune that featured the man himself in the music video, which actually got played quite a bit during daylight…
2297
Appeals court upholds right to post public laws online
SAN FRANCISCO—Technical standards like fire and electrical codes developed by private organizations but incorporated into public law can be freely disseminated without any liability for copyright infringement, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Tuesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S...
2298
The Government Is Keeping a U.S. Citizen Secretly Locked Up Without Charges
For nearly two months, the U.S. military has been detaining an American citizen at a secret jail in Iraq, denying him access to a lawyer and even refusing to release his name. The Trump administration is calling the citizen an “enemy combatant,” claiming he was fighting for ISIS in Syria, but it has not presented any…
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In 1961 a Gallup poll showed only 33% of Americans in favor of moon landing
Today marks the 54th anniversary of the moon landing. In retrospect it has almost unanimous support and adoration in the US: pleasing the left as an example of the power of public funding and the right as a triumph of the capitalist west against the
2302
Obama Encryption Policy Rejects Laws Mandating Backdoors
Obama’s position on encryption is now public, as reported by the Washington Post. According to Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Peterson of the Post, Obama “will not —for now—call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement.” Instead, the Post reports, the “administration...
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TACF is no longer supporting development of D58 American chestnut trees
In December 2023, The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) withdrew its support for SUNY-ESF’s Darling transgenic chestnut project. Since then, we’ve received questions about the decision and what’s next for the Darling line. We appreciate those questions because they indicate a deep interest in our mission and reflect…
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NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing
They want to shut down our right to be heard in the first place.
2306
Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy
A Stanford computer scientist says Internet voting would be "a complete disaster."
2307
China is the manufacturing superpower
The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined. China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. This column uses the recently released 2023 update…
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The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore
Björn Brembs argues that learned societies should lead developments on federated social media platforms, such as Mastodon.
2309
A critique of Safari's influence on the web
There's been a lot of discussion recently about how "Safari is the new IE" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I don't want to rehash the basics of that, but I have seen some...
2310
The illegal city of Somerville
Zoning is complicated. It’s complicated on its own, with even small towns having dozens of pages of regulations and acronyms and often-inscrutable diagrams; and it’s complicated as a policy issue, with economists and lawyers and researchers bandying about regression lines and all sorts of claims about the micro and…