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Are We Welcome Entrepreneurs or Unwanted Criminals?
Almost deported in First Class
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 305 posts.
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My Surreal UberX Experience
A VC's perspective on how modern tech platforms like Uber break down communication barriers and enable seamless interactions - even between hearing and deaf users.
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TechCrunch covered Vic Gundotra's departure badly
Mad rantings from a computer guy. My thoughts are my own, and don't represent my current or past employers.
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Elsevier journals – some facts
Update: figures now in from Imperial. See below. Further update: figures in from Nottingham too. Further update: figures now in from Oxford. Final update: figures in from LSE. A little over two yea…
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What I've Learned From Female Founders So Far
On the whole, I got a great response to my request for feedback about how YC could encourage female founders. It's clear there are two separate problems: 1) Some women already starting startups...
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Did North Korea Really Attack Sony?
I am deeply skeptical of the FBI’s announcement on Friday that North Korea was behind last month’s Sony hack. The agency’s evidence is tenuous, and I have a hard time believing it. But I also have trouble believing that the US government would make the accusation this formally if officials didn’t believe it. Clues in…
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Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)
As you may or may not be aware, last year I left TV Tropes (TVT) on unfriendly terms. I may have been banned, but the feeling was certainl...
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An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
Imagine if a chemist told you offhandedly that the Russians had different chemical elements than we did. Here in America, we use elements like lithium and silicon and bismuth. We have figured out l…
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To Protect Legitimate Interests, Seattle Should Cap All Forms of Innovation
In a 9-0 decision Monday, the Seattle City Council voted to cap the number of UberX, Sidecar and Lyft drivers on our streets — to protect the legitimate interests of taxi companies and the revenue they create for our city.
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My Conversation with “Eugene Goostman”
If you haven’t read about it yet, “Eugene Goostman” is a chatbot that’s being heavily promoted by the University of Reading’s Kevin Warwick, for fooling 33% of judges …
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This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup
"You want Tikhon and Arianna on your team. They are A++ hustlers that will walk through walls and put in hundreds hours of work on your toughest problem. There are 43 investors in Simple Contacts, Tikhon and Arianna are my first calls."
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Privacy Protects Bothersome People (2013)
We need to support privacy, not for those of us who have "nothing to hide", but for bothersome people like investigative journalists and activists, without which our democracy would crumble
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Jamming XKeyScore
Back in the day there was talk about "jamming echelon" by adding keywords to email that the echelon system was supposedly looking for. We ca...
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TSA's X-Ray Nude Body Scanners Output 50% More Radiation Than Admitted to by TSA
A few weeks ago, scientific researchers from top universities released a report confirming my 2012 demonstration that anything can be easily smuggled through the TSA’s nude body scanners. Whi…
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Screwed by Square
In addition to making the small bucks as a science fiction writer, I have a day job. I run a game store which hosts events and serves the local community here in Brooklyn, but also sells games and …