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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 490 posts.
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Who is Facebook's mysterious “Lan Tim 2”?
Facebook has an interesting feature. It will let you see which companies have associated your off-Facebook activity with your Facebook account. If you visit: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ you'll see what companies are snitching on you to Facebook. Alice St⭕️llmeyer@StollmeyerEU#AirBnB shares your…
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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next
If you follow Gamefromscratch on Twitter, you may have already seen this tweet I put out last night about a blackmail demand that was made against our YouTube channel:First off, I really want to give a gigantic shout out to all of the people that helped get the message out, the tweets, retweets and even [...]
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Resignation Letter
It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.
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Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked
Privacy regulations such as the GDPR say that you need to seek permission from your website visitors before tracking them. Most GDPR consent banner implementations are deliberately engineered to be…
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Modeling a Wealth Tax
A wealth tax will usually have a threshold at which it starts. How much difference would a high threshold make? To model that, we need to make some assumptions about the initial value of your stock and the growth rate. Suppose your stock is initially worth $2 million, and the company's trajectory is as follows: the…
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Twitter still hasn't unlocked the New York Post's account
Then one must ask, why is the New York Post's Twitter account still locked?
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An alternative argument for why women leave STEM
Everyone knows that you’re not supposed to start your argument with ‘everyone knows,’ but in this case, I think we ought to make an…
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John Conway
I was greatly saddened to learn that John Conway died yesterday from COVID-19, aged 82. My own mathematical areas of expertise are somewhat far from Conway’s; I have played for instance with …
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The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10
To reach its potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite — that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down a blind alley.
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Apple's 15% Deflection Tactic
Apple's App Store Small Business Program announcement is a deflection away from the deeper issues of freedom that plague not just the iOS app store, but app stores in general.
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De-escalating social media conflict
Designing humility and forgiveness into social media products
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Just Too Efficient
On a Spring 2019 walk in Beijing I saw two street sweepers at a sunny corner. They were beat-up looking and grizzled but probably younger than me. They’d paused work to smoke and talk. One told a story; the other’s eyes widened and then he laughed so hard he had to bend over, leaning on his broom. I suspect their jobs…
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Why is Apple acting like an asshole?
Today Apple announced at their media event that the final public release of iOS 14 ships tomorrow, which came as quite a shock to all third-party developers.
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HP Instant Ink is “ink as a service”
HP never stopped innovating. From its origins in the 1930s as a leading electronics manufacturer to its role in the birth of PCs and performance servers, it has always demonstrated incredible ingenuity.
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Facebook: Free as in Bullshit
This whole ad reads more like an ad *for* Apple’s privacy initiatives than against.
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The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers
The personal site of Chris Hacken — entrepreneur and operator who founded and sold Loop Internet. Essays and a podcast on building internet infrastructure, companies, and other hard things.
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Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back
TL;DR: MAPS.ME got bought by a payments company and completely rewritten, I want it back. I will rebuild the original app and bring it back. Sign up for this email list to get the original version back. Or subscribe to this Telegram channel. On December 20th, 2020, version 2.0 of the MAPS.ME app got pushed to the…
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Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data
Reading a book on a Kindle sends Amazon a lot of data about reading habits. How fast pages are turned, font sizes and views, and device details.
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Discord is not an acceptable choice for free software projects
It’s simple: free software projects should not use Discord. (This goes equally for any sort of public interest group.) Here’s why. TL;DR: Standardizing on…
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The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
Silicon Valley couldn't have designed a better way to further radicalize Trump voters
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What are the mysterious light sources on light pollution maps?
I got my first telescope in 2017, in time for the Great American Eclipse. I started paying attention to the concept of light pollution, including finding detailed maps of what places had high or lo…