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Don't Fly During Ramadan
A couple of weeks ago, I tried to fly from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles on JetBlue. I was racially profiled, detained, and interrogated for hours.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 454 posts.
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This is a web page
We've become obsessed with fancy designs, responsive layouts, and scripts that do magical things.
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Victory Lap for Ask Patents
There are a lot of people complaining about lousy software patents these days. I say, stop complaining, and start killing them. It took me about fifteen minutes to stop a crappy Microsoft patent fr…
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Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows
Many people in the technology startup community have very high regards for Paul Graham and Y Combinator, the exclusive seed accelerator program in Silicon Valley which has under its belt acclaimed …
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I will not do a tech interview
I am terrible at taking tech interviews. Out of dozens that I’ve done, I may never have passed one. My typical pattern goes like this: A serendipitous contact leads to outstanding phone call with a …
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Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
Adria Richards was an attendee at PyCon, a tech conference, as part of her job as a developer evangelist at Sendgrid, a tech company that manages emails. She took offense to a conversation two men,…
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How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties
The basic formula for Hacker News ranking has been known for years , but questions remained. Does the published code give the real algorithm...
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I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora
I was browsing the web today, as I often do, with my iPhone on the can. (Yeah, ...
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Forgotten Employee (2002)
PART ONE An epiphany was had this morning as I perused SA, sipping Code Red and toying with the notion of stepping outside for my third cigarette in an hour: Nine years and 2 months of my life have been devoted towards the goal of personal advancement within a small yet thriving company. I
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What really happened at PyCon 2013
We are hearing a lot about what happened at PyCon 2013, but most of what is being passed around tells only a tiny part of what really happened. Here’s how PyCon went for me this year: The Ed…
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Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you
TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. "nom nom" . This blog post is not for you.
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Lockdown
Officially, Google killed Reader because “over the years usage has declined”. 1 I believe that statement, especially if API clients weren’t considered “usage”, but I don’t believe that’s the entire reason.
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The Facebook experiment has failed
I am signed into Facebook right now. At a quick glance, the entire list of posts on the first screen are irrelevant to me. If I scrolled down I can find 4 stories I actually care about, from a list …
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Malibu homeowners foiled by $30K Kickstarter campaign
Can you believe it? Malibu homeowners intentionally obscure public beach access areas with fake signs and hidden access. This is not only ridiculously selfish, it is illegal. Enter this...
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Fingerprints are Usernames, not Passwords
As one of the maintainers of eCryptfs , and a long time Thinkpad owner, I have been asked many times to add support to eCryptfs for Th...
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Xerox scanners and photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents
Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents Please see the “condensed time line” section (the next one) for a time line of how the Xerox saga unfolded. It for example depicts that I did not push the thing to the public right away, but gave Xerox a lot of time before I did so. <iframe…
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NASA paywalls first papers arising from Curiosity rover – I am setting them free
a blog about genomes, DNA, evolution, open science, baseball and other important things
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The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
When was the last time you needed to buy a new PC? Two years ago? Three years ago? The last PC I built was in 2009. I had to upgrade because I pushed the previous one I built to the limit and that was
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Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks
Well over a year ago, the Free Software and Linux Communities came together for a focused cause. To save my life. For those that d...
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