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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 4,917 posts.
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Software Freedom Conservancy: New Strategy for GPL Enforcement
Software Freedom Conservancy, the only organization actively engaged in General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance work for Linux, announces today a new strategy toward improving compliance and the freedom of users of devices that contain Linux-based systems. The new work has received an initial grant…
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Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s
There was a marked acceleration in deforestation in the 20th century. But, global deforestation peaked in the 1980s. Since then, it has slowed.
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Slow software for a burning world
This page has moved to https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/slow-software-for-a-burning-world/ .
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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.
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Proposed UN cybercrime treaty has evolved into an expansive surveillance tool
EFF has joined forces with 110 NGOs today in a joint statement delivered to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee, clearly outlining civil society non-negotiable redlines for the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty, and asserting that states should reject the proposed treaty if these essential changes are...
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Fog Revealed: A guided tour of how cops can browse your location data
In Part 1 of our series on Fog Data Science, we saw how when you give some apps permission to view your location, it can end up being packaged and sold to numerous other companies. Fog Data Science is one of those companies, and it has created a sleek search engine called Fog Reveal that allows cops to browse through…
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Court Opinion Finding NSA Surveillance Unconstitutional to be released
Update: In response to EFF's FOIA lawsuit, the government has released the 2011 FISA court opinion ruling some NSA surveillance unconstitutional. For over a year, EFF has been fighting the government in federal court to force the public release of an 86-page opinion of the secret Foreign...
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Startup Won't Give in to Motivational Health Messaging's $35k Patent Demand
Trying to succeed as a startup is hard enough. Getting a frivolous patent infringement demand letter in the mail can make it a whole lot harder. The experience of San Francisco-based Motiv is the latest example of how patent trolls impose painful costs on small startups and stifle innovation. Motiv...
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Self-driving cars will "cruise" to avoid paying to park
If you think traffic in city centers is bad now, just wait until self-driving cars emerge on the scene, cruising around to avoid paying hefty downtown parking fees.
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Starlink militarization and its impact on global strategic stability (2023)
In this piece, two researchers from PLA-affiliated National University of Defense Technology argue that Starlink will negatively impact global stability, in light of its clear military applications, increased risks of accidents and collisions in space, and SpaceX's close relationship with the U.S. military. The…
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Why parking minimums almost destroyed my town and how we repealed them (2017)
Plus 5 tips for repealing parking minimums in your community.
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Data-Free Disneyland
(Note: This is the companion post to my article at Public Books about evading data detection at Disneyland. For the…
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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…
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America's Cyber Defense Agency Is Burning Down and Nobody's Coming to Put It Out
CISA lost a third of its staff and its acting leader uploaded sensitive docs to public ChatGPT, while China sits inside U.S. critical infrastructure.
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New standards for a faster and more private Internet
Cloudflare's customers can now take advantage of Zstandard (zstd) compression, offering 42% faster compression than Brotli and 11.3% more efficiency than GZIP. We're further optimizing performance for our customers with HTTP/3 prioritization and BBR congestion control, and enhancing privacy through Encrypted Client…
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Making the web fun again (2013)
Ever since I visited my first web site (via a slow modem to a library BBS running a text-based web browser), I have been ceaselessly pondering the nature of ...
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Launching the Electronic Frontier Alliance
We're excited to announce the formation of a new grassroots network, the Electronic Frontier Alliance. Bringing together community and campus organizations across the U.S., the Alliance will serve as an increasingly vital hub for activism and organizing addressing a spectrum of civil liberties and...
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Adding Client-Side Scanning Breaks End-to-End Encryption
Recent attacks on encryption have diverged. On the one hand, we’ve seen Attorney General William Barr call for “lawful access” to encrypted communications, using arguments that have barely changed since the 1990’s. But we’ve also seen suggestions from a different set of actors for more purportedly...
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Django Community Survey
Posted by Tim Graham on May 7, 2015