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The rise of user-hostile software
On the trend of consumer software designed around developer convenience instead of user needs, from forced accounts to telemetry to privilege creep.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 629 posts.
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NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
The NYT's Taylor Lorenz falsely accuses a tech investor of using a slur after spending months trying to infiltrate and monitor a new app that allows free conversation.
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Early-Retirement Update
I’ve had a difficult time finding a way to create a new entry on a blog that has essentially been dead since 2015. Yet, I have had a persistent feeling that I owe my readers an update.
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Apple’s new abuse prevention system: an antritust/competition point of view
Apple has announced the new client-side content scanning (based on parameters received from the center) to find child sexual abuse materials to be reported to law enforcers.
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The Most Dangerous Censorship
Invisible but present, and far from the eyes of the public
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The Invention of a New Pasta Shape
For the past three years, Dan Pashman of The Sporkful podcast has been on something of a mission: to invent a new pasta shape. All of Pashman’s hard work has pa
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What’s interesting about the Florida water system hack is that we heard about it
Stories about computer security tend to go viral when they bridge the vast divide between geeks and luddites, and this week’s news about a hacker who tried to poison a Florida town’s water supply was understandably front-page material. But for security nerds who’ve been warning about this sort of thing for ages, the…
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Hoax email blast abused poor coding in FBI website
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed today that its fbi.gov domain name and Internet address were used to blast out thousands of fake emails about a cybercrime investigation. According to an interview with the person who claimed responsibility for the hoax, the spam messages were sent by abusing…
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Google’s lawyer accidentally made a sensitive document public
A redacted document showed extremely sensitive information. Google's lawyer accidentally made it public.
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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
Should we stop hate speech? What makes you think we can?
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Apple Will Not Reinstate Epic’s Fortnite Developer Account
Accounts that have never been disabled include the accounts for Rocket League (a game whose Mac support [Epic discontinued in January 2020][rl]), and separately, Unreal Engine. My understanding is that none of those accounts are affected by Apple’s decision not to reinstate the Fortnite developer account.
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Life Improvements Since the 1990s
A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.
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An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles
A miracle occurred this week. Everyone I have talked to about it, myself included, is shocked that it happened. It’s important to Understand what happened.Make sure everyone knows it ha…
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Building a vision of life without work (2015)
The number one question that people ask once you tell them you’re considering early retirement is: What will you do with your time?
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Web3? I have my DAOts
The promise of a decentralized and trustless future is forever just that: a promise, and in the future.
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The Last Message Sent on AIM
In the early 2000s social media sites like Facebook and Twitter weren’t commonplace yet. Even text messages, at ten cents each, were something to be rationed. For many teenagers the primary means of communication outside school was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). So when it was announced in October that they were…
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Dear EU: Please Don't Ruin the Root
I love Europe, and I want to see the European Union succeed. I also love the Internet, and I want to see it thrive as well. And it therefore pains me that it now appears that the European Union might inadvertently be picking an ugly fight with “The Internet”. UPDATE: I am EXCEPTIONALLY happy to report that through…
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How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub
A new article was published in The Chronicle about me running Sci-Hub, a project dedicated to providing free access to academic journals all over the world. Their goal is to present Sci-Hub and its…
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“AI promised to revolutionize radiology but so far its failing”
Geoffrey Hinton is a legendary computer scientist . . . Naturally, people paid attention when Hinton declared in 2016, “We should stop training radiologists now, it’s just completely obvious within five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists.” The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the…
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The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
Early last October my phone rang. On the line was a researcher calling from Today, the BBC’s agenda-setting morning radio programme. She told me that something strange had happened, and she hoped I…
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I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility (2007)
A note from the author This is an older version of this story, from 2007. Here's the latest version, from 2022. Tim already had his bag and overcoat on and his keys in his hand and was about to leave when Diane stopped him at the door. "I just got this thing working....
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What it's like to be cancelled
An honest look at what it looks like to be cancelled, one year after it happened. A hopeful yet realistic message for everyone.
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Little League wants all your information
To sign kids up for our city’s Little League baseball …
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