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Artem vs. Predator
I'm not sure what it was. Might have been the Predator movies, might have been something else. Heat vision. The ability to see heat was something I wanted for…
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 354 posts.
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Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley
Why “few successful startup founders grew up desperately poor”
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Kindle Unlimited scammers on Amazon
This is extremely long and probably only of interest to indie authors, but it does impact readers who shop Amazon, so I’m putting it here for anyone.
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Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure
Recently, account takeovers, email hacking, and targeted phishing attacks have been all over the news. Hacks of various politicians, allegedly carried out by Russian hackers, have yielded troves of data. Despite the supposed involvement of state-sponsored agents, some hacks were not reliant on complex zero-day…
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Facebook is the new Excel
If you’re building a SaaS startup, then your biggest competitor isn’t a competitor. It’s Microsoft Excel. That was the mantra a few years ago. Add in Google Docs and it still holds true. Contact lists, mailing lists, accounts, invoicing, mark...
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Deep-Fried Data
This is the text version of a talk I gave on September 27, 2016, at the Collections as Data event at the Library of Congress. [ video ] (21 mins)
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Reasons not to use Uber
Uber donated a million dollars to the corrupter's inaugural celebration. This is the moral equivalent of a bribe.
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Bulgaria Passes a Law Requiring Open Source
Less than two years after my presentation titled “Open source for the government”, and almost exactly one year after I became advisor to…
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Follow the money: Apple vs. the FBI
A lot of people are watching the spectacle of Apple vs. the FBI and the Homeland Security Theatre and rubbing their eyes, wondering why Apple (in the person of CEO Tim Cook) is suddenly the knight in shining armour on the side of consumer privacy and civil rights. Apple, after all, is a goliath-sized corporate…
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Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience
Stevan Harnad’s “Subversive Proposal” came of age last year. I’m now teaching students younger than Stevan’s proposal, and yet, very little has actually changed in these 21 years. On the contrary, one may even make the case that while efforts […] <a class="more-link"…
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Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier
In 2012, I signed the Cost of Knowledge pledge, and stopped reviewing for, and publishing in, all Elsevier journals. In the four years since, I’ve adhered closely to this policy; with a coupl…
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Why are Adults so busy?
As a kid, I'd always wonder what it was about adults that made them so busy. What could they be possibly doing with all their time? After I (kinda) became one, it hit me. There's an alarmingly large list of things adults do that we never quite grasp until we're there.
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Fighting Cancer
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
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Google collects metadata from Android phones
[German]It seems that Google has established a surveillance function for Android phones. They are claiming the right, to collect and store meta data from incoming/outgoing phone calls and SMS from…
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One More Sign World Is Shrinking – eBay Is for Suckers
If you live in an economy where officials are corrupt, contracts are hard to enforce, and trust is scarce, everyday transactions are burdensome and time-consuming. If you don’t want to get scammed,…
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Inappropriate Uses of Google Trends
Alternatively titled ‘Be aware of context, and maybe start using Google AdWords’ Instead
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The TSA Randomizer App Cost $336k
You may have seen the TSA Randomizer on your last flight. A TSA agent holds an iPad. The agent taps the iPad, a large arrow points right or left, and you follow it into a given lane.
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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
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This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley
With only three more years of savings, you can finally afford that two-bedroom condo
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The 2016 Election
I am endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. I've never endorsed a presidential candidate before, but I'm making an exception this year, because this election is exceptional. Donald Trump...
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Guccifer 2.0: DNC's servers hacked by a lone hacker
Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups. I’m very please…
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Have Software Developers Given Up?
Over the last month I've had so many 'fails' from (mostly) large companies that my twitter timeline has started to read like failblog. Have we given up?
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Two years spent spamming spammers back
I created a bot to respond to these types of emails…
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I don’t like computers
AdamW on Linux and more