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I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)
The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 was awarded to Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 663 posts.
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Kids Praised for Being Smart Are More Likely to Cheat
An international team of researchers reports that when children are praised for being smart not only are they quicker to give up in the face of obstacles they are also more likely to be dishonest and cheat. Kids as young as age 3 appear to behave differently when told “You are so smart” vs “You did very well this…
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Reasons not to use Skype (2012)
As of August, 2025, Skype no longer exists as a dis-service for actual use. However, this information about how it was unjust while it operated may still be interesting for comparison with other online dis-services and for understanding the wrongs that they often do to users.
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Australian PM Calls for End-To-End Encryption Ban
"The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia", said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today. He has been rightly mocked for this nonsense claim, that foreshadows moves to require online messaging providers to provide law...
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Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week
Last week, a debate flared up on twitter on working hours in academia and there was the claim that it is irrational to work over 40 hours as output actually goes down. I do not believe this claim. …
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Websites people say have changed their lives
I asked Kottke.org readers if they had ever seen, heard, or read something on the web that literally changed their lives. Fourteen people said no. Sixteen said
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There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence
What is the function of a fire alarm?
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When did the golden age of The Simpsons end?
It’d be difficult to argue against the fact that The Simpsons isn’t quite the show it once was. Even just a quick glance at the IMDb ratings is enough to see that the show is routinely not hitting the highs it did so regularly in the earlier seasons. I’d suggest...
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The CIA's “Development Tradecraft Do's and Dont's”
Useful best practices for malware writers, courtesy of the CIA. Seems like a lot of good advice. General: DO obfuscate or encrypt all strings and configuration data that directly relate to tool functionality. Consideration should be made to also only de-obfuscating strings in-memory at the moment the data is needed…
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EFF's 100-Day Plan
The Trump presidency starts Friday. Here is the Electronic Frontier Foundation's agenda. In a matter of days, the United States will enter a new era. On Friday, President Elect Donald J. Trump will swear the oath of office, pledging to uphold the Constitution. But as EFF has learned in the course...
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As the U.S. Retreats, Canada Doubles Down on Net Neutrality
As the U.S. Federal Communications Commission prepares to rollback net neutrality protections, the Canadian government has used the controversy to double down on its support for net neutrality safeguards, linking it to democracy, equality, and freedom of expression. I've written several posts on how the U.S. decision…
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A modest proposal
AdamW on Linux and more
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Officials Don't Get to Choose Who Gets to Receive, Comment, and Reply to Tweets
We’ve taken a stand for the First Amendment rights of individuals to receive and comment on social media posts from governmental officials and agencies. We’ve received a lot of good questions about why we believe that public servants—mayors, sheriffs, senators, even President Donald Trump—can’t...
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Ajit Pai is right
Any regulation, including those around net neutrality, should be put to a cost-benefit analysis. In this case regulation advocates come up short.
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Were Early Modern People Perpetually Drunk? (2016)
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A Secretly Detained American Has Asked for a Lawyer – But Gov Won’t Give Him One
An American being held without charges by the U.S. military in Iraq has asked for an attorney, the ACLU finally learned last night following an extraordinary court hearing . The government is resisting our efforts to make contact with the man so he can challenge his detention, in an outrageous violation of the basic…
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