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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 268 posts.
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Police Must Respect the Right of Citizens to Record Them
“I’m asking all the citizens of North Charleston to continue taping.” That is what Councilwoman Dorothy Williams said in response to the shooting death of Walter Scott. She and others recognize that the story would have been very different without the video showing that a white police officer shot...
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Why Dole owns container ships
Dole operates the largest refrigerated fleet, or reeferships, in the world. Here's why it makes sense for a major importer to operate its own ships.
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Why Mitch McConnell Cannot Be Allowed to Decide the Fate of the Patriot Act
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear this week that, while the Senate is rapidly approaching recess, the Senate “will stay in [session] until a deal is struck to extend” the Patriot Act. McConnell has also introduced legislation for both long-term and short-term reauthorization...
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California’s DNA Law Violates Privacy Protections Guaranteed by State
San Francisco—Californians who’ve merely been arrested and not charged, much less convicted of a crime, have a right to privacy when it comes to their genetic material, EFF said in an amicus brief filed Nov. 13 with the state’s highest court. EFF is urging the California Supreme Court to hold that...
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This is what a Tor Supporter looks like: Laura Poitras
The first thing that Laura Poitras has to say about Tor is that she couldn’t have made...
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EFF Asks Patent Office to Focus on Protecting Public from Bad Patents
This week, together with Public Knowledge and Engine, EFF submitted written comments to the Patent Office regarding its Patent Quality Initiative. We urge the Patent Office to ensure that this program actually reduces the number of invalid patents being issued. Its quality efforts should serve the...
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Sleeping Through a Revolution
Letter to the Millenials 2
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Wi-Fi and LTE in Unlicensed Spectrum Bands
by Nihar Jindal, Hardware Engineer, Access & Energy In the 20 years since the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) first made spectr...
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Study: Teen Cannabis Users Have Poor Long-Term Memory in Adulthood
A new study shows that teenagers who had previously been heavy users of marijuana performed worse on long-term memory tests than those who never used cannabis, and they had abnormally shaped hippocampuses.
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Richard Prince, the world’s highest-grossing “photographer”
How to make hundreds of millions of dollars by taking pictures of other people's pictures.
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Wikipedia is significantly amplifying the impact of Open Access publications
When you edit Wikipedia to include a claim, you are required to substantiate that edit by referencing a reliable source. According to a recent study, the single biggest predictor of a journal’s appearance in Wikipedia is its impact factor. One of the exciting findings, writes Eamon Duede, is that it appears Wikipedia…
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Elite scientists are more likely to have a hobby in the arts and crafts
Highly-accomplished scientists are more likely to have an artsy hobby than the average scientist. And Nobel prize winners are even more likely.
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Remembering the Case that Established Code as Speech
One of EFF's first major legal victories was Bernstein v. Department of Justice, a landmark case that resulted in establishing code as speech and changed United States export regulations on encryption software, paving the way for international e-commerce. We represented Daniel J. Bernstein, a...
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By 2029 no computer or “machine intelligence” will have passed the Turing Test
will go to The Electronic Frontier Foundation if Kapor wins, or The Kurzweil Foundation if Kurzweil wins.
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The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians (1997)
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
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Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians
The difficulties associated with proving and addressing gender discrimination in hiring processes have presented policymakers with a major challenge over the past few decades. In an attempt to overcome gender-biased hiring, a vast majority of symphony orchestras revised their hiring practices from the 1950s. Many…
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40% of Millennials OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities
That's compared with 27% of Gen Xers and 24% of Boomers who say the same.
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Average Household Electricity Consumption - 2026
We used data from EIA to get up-to-date average household electricity consumption. We compiled statistics to compare to other countries.
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Wage suppression in 10 charts
Wages for typical workers lag far behind productivity growth. It hasn't always been this way and does not have to be this way. These 10 charts outline the historical context of workers’ wage trajectories, and what can be done to fix the gaping disparities.
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Update on Digital Rights Management and Firefox
A year ago, we announced the start of efforts to implement support for a component in Firefox that would allow content wrapped in Digital Rights Management
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Chapter 1: Beliefs About Sharia
According to the survey findings, most Muslims believe sharia is the revealed word of God rather than a body of law developed by men based on the word of God.…
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Who makes minimum wage?
Perhaps surprisingly, not very many people earn minimum wage, and they make up a smaller share of the workforce than they used to.