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The global population pyramid
Global demographic transition signals a shift from young, growing populations to older, stable ones, reshaping societies and economies.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
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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.
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How the .0001% Made Its Money
America’s .0001% is becoming more meritocratic - to an extent.
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Childhood's End: The digital revolution has turned into something else
To those seeking true intelligence, autonomy, and control among machines, the domain of analog computing, not digital computing, is the place to look.
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Firefox Personal Data Promise
Tech companies are using the word “privacy” a lot these days. What do they mean when they say it? To one company, privacy means keeping your informatio
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IPv6 Day Has Started
SANS.edu Internet Storm Center. Today's Top Story: The Classics Return: Vulnerable E-Mail Scripts;
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Playpen: The Story of the FBI’s Unprecedented and Illegal Hacking Operation
In December 2014, the FBI received a tip from a foreign law enforcement agency that a Tor Hidden Service site called “Playpen” was hosting child pornography. That tip would ultimately lead to the largest known hacking operation in U.S. law enforcement history. The Playpen investigation—driven by...
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Web Scraping to Create Open Data
Web Scraping to Create Open Data - Embrace the power of web scraping in generating open data. Contribute to the open data movement.
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A Copyright Vote That Could Change the EU’s Internet
On October 10, EU lawmakers will vote on a dangerous proposal to change copyright law. Mozilla is urging EU citizens to demand better reforms. On Octobe
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WeChat Surveillance Explained
This document provides a summary of the Citizen Lab's WeChat surveillance research findings, as well as questions and answers from the resesearch team.
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Across the Globe, People Increasingly Say Social Media Is Harming Democracy
Most think social media leads to manipulation and division, but they also say it informs people and gives them a voice in politics.
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Our Boss Will Call Your Boss
On February 17, seven Blackwater-like security contractors were arrested in Haiti while driving in unmarked vehicles and transporting illegal weaponry and tactical equipment. They claimed to be on a government mission. Four days later the US “rescued” them. None are expected to face charges. What happened?
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Twitter Steps Down From the Free Speech Party
In 2012, when Twitter announced in a blog post that it was launching a system that would allow the company to take down content on a country-by-country basis—as opposed to taking it down across the entire Twitter network—EFF defended that decision as the least terrible option. After all, when a...
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Stupid Patent of the Month: Selfie Contests
Patents are supposed to be an incentive to invent. Too often, they end up being a way to try to claim “ownership” of what should be basic building blocks of human activity, culture, and knowledge. This is especially true of software patents, an area EFF has been speaking out about for more than 20...
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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…
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Linux Instal Fest Belgrade
Linux Install Fest will be held on December 9, 2025 in the JAG3 classroom of the Faculty of Mathematics, at Jagićeva 5, Belgrade . Entry to the classroom is possible from 6 pm to 9 pm.
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David Holladay, blindness technology pioneer, has died
This week brings sad news for our Duxbury Systems family. Our colleague, David Holladay, passed away in a hospital on Thursday, February 15th, following an accident at home that morning. David was a cancer survivor and valiantly battled multiple medical problems over his last five years.
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Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
San Bruno, California laid out a detailed blueprint for more housing. One developer followed that blueprint. $3 million and 3 years later, the city killed his project anyway.
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A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay
Wade Foster [https://twitter.com/wadefoster] is the CEO of Zapier [https://zapier.com/] (YC S12). Read Zapier’s de-location post here [https://zapier.com/blog/move-away-from-sf-get-remote-job/]. If you are interested in remote work, you can also check out our interview with Gitlab…
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Regarding the Compact
The U.S. Department of Education recently sent MIT and eight other institutions a proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," along with a letter asking that MIT review the document.
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For life expectancy, money matters
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that income is closely correlated with life expectancy, with the richest Americans living as much as 15 years longer than the poorest — and even the poor living longer in wealthy areas.