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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 454 posts.
We used to have a fight about how much the internet would grieve if he died. I was right, but the last word you get in as the still living is a hollow thing, trailing off, as it does, into oblivion. I love Aaron. I loved Aaron. There are no words to can contain love, to cloth it in words is to kill it, to mummify it…
This statement from Bradley Manning was read after hos 35-year sentence was passed by his lawyer, David Coombs. The decisions that I mad...
With further confirmation of the longstanding rumor that the U.S. government (and, we can safely assume, other governments around the world) have been pressuring major Internet firms to provide their "master" SSL keys for government surveillance purposes, we are rapidly approaching a critical technological crossroad.
Just before black friday I was surfing some major retailers sites and on a whim wanted to see how they were using jav...
< Random thoughts of John Murray
Microsoft put up an ad: Windows vs. iPad: Compare tablets - Microsoft Windows. It shows the iPad screen (left) compared with the ASUS VivoTab Smart screen (right). This is not to scale. Microsoft has d
Most of the time, we worry far too much about tail risk. We worry about terrorist attacks and necrotizing fasciitis, but not much about heart disease or car crashes. But in 2011, 17 US citizens...
This blog seeks to expose some of the myths about our present criminal justice system, myths that have risen to prominence again following publication of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) consultation …
In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the…
But the latest revelations scare me. It's one thing to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software; there's a lot of software out there which was written by developers with very little understanding of cryptography or software security, and it shows. If you care about security, we reasoned, stick to software written…
History, background, visiting, ordering, using, & analyzing the drug market Silk Road 1
In which I relate my experience as an NSA employee and impart my thoughts on the policies in place, my former coworkers, and the current cyber war.
It's impossible to argue that San Francisco hasn't changed my life dramatically. When I moved to the Bay Area four years ago, I was an inexperienced kid who was working at a Genius Bar in an Apple Store. I didn't know JavaScript at all—hell, I could barely program and my useless liberal arts degree was doing nothing…
Recently I was going through some old things I had put away for safekeeping, and I found these: In 1993 I interviewed film director Ang Lee before the US premiere of his second movie, “The Wedding …
We’re afraid of risk. It’s a normal part of life, but we’re increasingly unwilling to accept it at any level. So we turn to technology to protect us. The problem is that technological security measures aren’t free. They cost money, of course, but they cost other things as well. They often don’t provide the security…
If we are not careful, the deadly attacks on New York and Washington will lead to far worse secondary damage, if the U.S. Congress adopts "preventive measures" that take away the freedom that America stands for.
[Translations: Japanese] New media technologies often cause an allergic reaction when they first appear. We may find them painful before we find them indispensable. I watched the movie The Hobbit. Twice. First I saw it in its “standard” mode. A … Continue reading →
