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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,147 posts.
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“This is not the computer for you”
There is a certain kind of computer review that is really a permission slip. It tells you what you’re allowed to want. It locates you in a taxonomy — student, creative, professional, power user — and assigns you a product. It is helpful. It is responsible. It has very little interest in what you might become.
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Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
[Update (12/14/16): Reuters has specified that the rootkit was implemented as a Linux kernel module. Wow.]
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Aaron, 5 years later
I was in the back left seat of a minivan driving from New York City to Atlantic City. We were a little ways down the NJ turnpike. I was playing Zoo Keeper Battle on my newly gifted tablet. My stomach was filled with a pastrami sandwich .
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Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act: Dangerous backdoor surveillance risks remain
The decades-long battle over lawful access entered a new phase yesterday with the introduction of Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. This bill follows the attempt last spring to bury lawful access provisions in Bill C-2, a border measures bill that was the new government’s first piece of substantive legislation. The…
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It’s time to kill the web app
Something is going on. The people are unhappy. The spectre of civil unrest stalks our programming communities.
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Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled
In my recent analysis of YouTube’s information density I included the results from an advanced statistical analysis on the number of videos present on the home page, which projected that around May 2026 there would only be one lonely video on the home screen.
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I'm OK being left behind, thanks
Many years ago, someone tried to get me into cryptocurrencies. "They're the future of money!" they said. I replied saying that I'd rather wait until they were more useful, less volatile, easier to use, and utterly reliable. "You don't want to get left behind, do you?" They countered. That struck me as a bizarre…
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Firefox Was Always Enough
There are many concerns about Mozilla right now, and reason to be concerned. While I am no longer with Mozilla, it’s still a place that supported me for many years; I believe in Mozilla and want the project to succeed.
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First they came for the Iranians
Action Item: If you’re an American academic, please sign the petition against the Immigration Executive Order. (There are already more than eighteen thousand signatories, including Nobel Laur…
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The Decline of Usability
If you find this text interesting, please consider also reading The Decline of Usability: Revisited or some of my other many ramblings on modern user interfaces.
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The window trick of Las Vegas hotels
KIATOTO merupakan situs toto togel 4D resmi & bandar togel terpercaya #1 Indonesia. Menyediakan pasaran lengkap, jaminan bayaran penuh, transaksi cepat, dan layanan 24/7.
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In defense of the Google chef
I'm on the road with very limited internet connectivity so I can't do the homework I normally would before posting this, so it's possible th...
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AI winter is well on its way
Deep learning has been at the forefront of the so called AI revolution for quite a few years now, and many people had believed that it is the silver bullet that will take us to
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Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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The age of average
In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid hired a market research firm to survey the public on what they wanted in a work of art. Across 11 countries they then set about painting a piece that reflected the results. Each piece was intended to be a unique a colla
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The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing
On AI agents, grunt work, and the part of science that isn't replaceable.
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Luigi Mangione's account has been renamed on Stack Overflow
The saga on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange, and how tech always serves the ruling class.
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Do dentists know what they're doing?
After all, they’re just practicing
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Who’s behind the “reopen” domain surge?
The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names. The largest number of them were created just hours after President Trump sent a series of all-caps tweets urging citizens to “liberate” themselves from new gun control…
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Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake
Trying to see the world more clearly
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So I took a corporation to arbitration
I'm Shu. This site is mainly to document long distance running while on a ketogenic diet. Sometimes there are posts about technology.
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A curious phenomenon called 'Etak'
The Map Happenings series on the hugely impactful events that forever changed our world. This week: the story of a little known company called ‘Etak’. I think you’ll find it a fas…
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More on Apple's Trust-Eroding 'F1 the Movie' Wallet Ad
Sending this ad is completely destructive to all the hard work other teams at Apple have done to make Apple Wallet actually private — and, more importantly, *to get users to believe that it’s private*.
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iPhones are hard to use
I once wrote a user manual for a handheld engine-diagnostics module for Daewoo cars. I know “hard to use” when I see it. iPhones are hard to use.
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I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
Identity verification and age verification is an increasinly common policy conversation at the moment, in numerous countries.