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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 210 posts.
WhatsApp Co-Founder Donates $1M to FreeBSD Foundation
The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce it has received a $1,000,000 donation from Jan Koum, CEO and Co-Founder of WhatsApp. This ma...
Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC
[http://instagram.com/p/qPXemCGEse/?modal=true] Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, SW Washington D.C. 20554 July 14, 2014 Re: Open Internet Remand, GN Docket 14-28 Dear Chairman Wheeler and Commissioners Clyburn, Rosenworcel, Pai, and O’Rielly: Y Combinator is Silicon Valley’s premier early stage…
EFF in Court to Argue NSA Collection from Internet Backbone Is Unconstitutional
Oakland - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will argue on Friday before a federal court that the National Security Agency (NSA) is violating the Fourth Amendment by copying and searching data that it collects by tapping into the Internet backbone. The hearing on a motion for partial summary...
Sam Altman for President
I’m delighted to announce that Sam Altman has agreed to become president of Y Combinator starting next batch. I’ll continue to do office hours with startups, but Sam is going to lead YC. Why the change? Because YC needs to grow, and I’m not the best person to grow it. Sam is what YC needs at this stage in its…
I’m Terrified of My New TV
From facial recognition to personal data collection, this thing is downright scary -- and so are the implications.
X to close
The origins of the use of [x] in UI design.
Meet the People Taking over Hacker News
I did several different things while I was working on Hacker News, and these will now be taken over by different people. Kevin Hale (HN id kevin) will be in charge of design. I don’t think he plans to change much about the appearance of the site, but users will be happy to hear he has a plan to make it work better on…
Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a brief with the Supreme Court of the United States today, arguing on behalf of 77 computer scientists that the justices should review a disastrous appellate court decision finding that application programming interfaces (APIs) are...
China collecting Apple iCloud data
Fighting censorship with technology since 2011. We use AI to monitor censorship and expand free speech worldwide.
2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths that block progress for the poor
Annual letters from the Gates Foundation.
Chaos Computer Club files criminal complaint against the German Government
On Monday, the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and the International League for Human Rights (ILMR), have filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Prosecutor General's office. The complaint is...
Introducing EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month
Here at EFF, we see a lot of stupid patents. There was the patent on “scan to email.” And the patent on “bilateral and multilateral decision making.” There are so many stupid patents that Mark Cuban endowed a chair at EFF dedicated to eliminating them. We wish we could catalog them all, but with...
US Sought Permission to Change Historical Record of a Public Court Proceeding
A few weeks ago we fought a battle for transparency in our flagship NSA spying case, Jewel v. NSA. But, ironically, we weren't able to tell you anything about it until now. On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on...
Russia Blocks Access to Major Independent News Sites
Russia's government has escalated its use of its Internet censorship law to target news sites, bloggers, and politicians under the slimmest excuse of preventing unauthorized protests and enforcing house arrest regulations. Today, the country's ISPs have received orders to block a list of major news...
What We Learned From 40 Female YC Founders
We’re excited to launch Female Founder Stories [http://www.femalefounderstories.com/], a collection of interviews with 40 of Y Combinator’s female alumnae. We asked them about things like how they got started, their experience at Y Combinator, their experience as female founders, and what they wish they’d known when…
FreeBSD turns 21
FreeBSD is a rapidly developing operating system. Keeping up on the latest developments can be a chore! To keep on top of things, check this page periodically. News is also announced on the freebsd-announce mailing list and the RSS feed .
The Man Who Smuggles Trader Joe’s into Canada
Michael "Pirate Joe" Hallatt and his unmarked white van are Canada's number-one supplier of Trader Joe's items. And, so far, Trader Joe's hasn't been able to stop him.
Partnering with Mozilla
Mozilla announced that the Tor Project and the Center for Democracy & Technology will be part of...
Commencement address by Bill and Melinda Gates
News, research, and insights from Stanford University.