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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
For decades, I have been talking about the importance of individual privacy. For almost as long, I have been using the metaphor of digital feudalism to describe how large companies have become central control points for our data. And for maybe half a decade, I have been talking about the world-sized robot that is the…
Recently I got an invitation from an organization I respect, to a gathering of senior people, unconference format. Yes, it’s mostly about AI. No, it doesn’t reek of boosterism. My guess is that the discussions would be relatively intelligent and unbeliever contributions would be welcome. I declined, because it’s in…
It's not the normal stories we tell ourselves, but a new analysis
I remember AIDS. I’m older than you probably think I am, and I remember what AIDS in America meant in the eighties, when William F. Buckley suggested all “carriers” be tattooed, a…
Welcome to The Nor, a series of essays by James Bridle commissioned by the Hayward Gallery in 2014/5. In order, the essays are: All Cameras Are Police Cameras , Living in the Electromagnetic Spectrum , and Low Latency , as well as an Epilogue . These are accompanied by photographs and a map , and additional content…
Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States. Assange faces 175 years in a US super-max prison on the basis of claims by Donald Trump’s administ
Machine Learning, Javascript, Python, and DevOps
A recent post received numerous comments asking why I was so concerned about privacy and asking what I have to hide. Here's my reply...
A textbook currency crisis, triggered by a bunch of policy mistakes.
This is my exit interview from social media. Some of these “services” I abandoned years ago. Others I am still struggling to avoid. From experience, I assume that you, reader, will make it impossible for me to remain ignorant of developments WRT: all of this garbage. What all of this garbage has in common is that it…
Why we never thank open source maintainers - Unicooo
If you want to do something terrible with technology, you can't just roll it out on people with money and social capital. They'll complain and your idea will tank. Successful shitty tech rollouts start with people you can abuse with impunity (prisoners, kids, migrants, etc) and then work their way up the privilege…
A Latte a Day Isn’t Going to Ruin Your Retirement If spending $5 a day on fancy coffee puts your retirement at risk, you’ve got bigger problems. Bloomberg, April 3, 2019 Sorry, but no. If a daily latte is the difference between achieving your financial success or suffering devastating failure, then there…Read More
A few months ago I wrote about a WhatsApp backdoor that allowed hackers to access all data on any phone running WhatsApp [1]. Facebook, its parent company, claimed at the time that they had no proof the flaw had ever been used by attackers [2]. Last week it became clear that this backdoor had been exploited to extract…
This is HUGE.
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 …
ATMs are connected to banks by networks which operate little-understood payment rails.
An Explosion of Comments
Trends in alcohol consumption from the middle ages to the modern world tell a story.
