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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 597 posts.
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Apple in China: who holds the keys?
Last week Apple made an announcement describing changes to the iCloud service for users residing in mainland China. Beginning on February 28th, all users who have specified China as their country/r…
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Debt Collection Companies Have Hijacked the Justice System
Lauren Smith (pseudonym) a mother of three in Indiana, had to file for bankruptcy because she couldn’t afford to repay her bills for treatment for thyroid cancer. And because she was unable to work, she had to stay with her parents in Florida while she recovered. She didn’t know that during that time, at the request…
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FOSS is free as in toilet
I am a bit dissatisfied with the use of the Tragedy of the commons to represent issues with free and open source software development. It is not an abstract resource that can be depleted when overused. It is not magically maintained if left alone.
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Getting free of toxic tech culture
Hi, I am Valerie Aurora, systems archictecture consultant, writer, and cat appreciator. At Bow Shock Systems , I solve difficult systems problems in networking, file systems, and operating systems. In 2023 I moved permanently to Amsterdam after 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Study finds increased possibility of information leaking around Fed meetings
Booth study finds increased possibility of information leaking around Fed meetings
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Court has confirmed coordinated raids of Zwiebelfreunde in Germany were illegal
Update July 10th: Last week Monday, prosecution stated that they will keep our things for further analysis, even after explicitly confirming to journalists that they are aware that our only connection to Riseup is the collection of donations. This includes items belonging to our partners, and other third parties like…
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Why don't I take military funding? (2004)
Mostly it's a testimony that it's possible to have a successful career in computer science without taking military funding. My position has its roots in the Vietnam War, when I was a conscientious objector, did alternative service instead of submitting to the draft, and joined the Society of Friends (Quakers). During…
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But don’t let that distract you; it was designed to kill people (2017)
I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.
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How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain
Yesterday at the CogX conference, I sat in a room listening to companies pitch their blockchain based startups. Because I hate myself. One in particular caught my attention. On the surface it seems to solve an important economic problem - art forgery and provenance. By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain"…
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The high modernism of social media companies
A Revealing Memo A couple weeks ago, BuzzFeed leaked a memo written by Facebook VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth in the summer of 2016. It contained ... Read more
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The tech industry's use of persuasive techniques on children
How psychology — a discipline that we associate with healing — is being used as a weapon against children
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The Absolute Denial of Shit
Today emoji are used by 92% of the world’s online population. The diminutive images have inspired a holiday and a $50 million animated movie. You can even make a living translating them. The Emojicon convention draws attendees from around the world. Topics of discussion at the 2018 gathering in Brooklyn include: “How…
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Zen Magnets: 6 Years of Battle End in Victory
“We will not settle for any sort of stop-sale of magnets that are perfectly safe when not misused… We vow to continue this [legal] battle until our very last drop of cash-flow blood”, promised in August 2014 , forecasting 95% chance of a glorious honorable death of insolvency on the legal battlefield.
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U.S. Freelance Workforce, Now 56.7M People, Grew 3.7M Since 2014
View the latest news, announcements, media coverage, and media resources from Upwork.
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When the business model is the privacy violation
Sometimes, when we worry about data privacy, we’re worried that data might fall into the wrong hands or be misused for unintended purposes. If I’m considering participating in a medical study, I’d want to know if insurance companies will obtain the data and use it against me. In these scenarios, we should look for…
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De-facto closed source: the case for understandable software
For someone who has been a strong supporter of FOSS for a very long time, watching what has been happening to the various FOSS communities over the past half decade or so is kind of depressing (with some exceptions, of course).
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Don’t Shoot Messenger
Update (September 28, 2018): Reuters reports that the court has denied the government's request to force Facebook to assist with the wiretap.Late last week, Reuters reported that Facebook is being asked to “break the encryption” in its Messenger application to assist the Justice Department in...
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The Justice Dept's secret rules for targeting journalists with FISA court orders
The Justice Dept has kept these FISA court rules for targeting journalists secret for years.
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WWF Report Reveals Staggering Extent of Human Impact on Planet
WWF's latest press releases, media contacts, and latest reports.
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What We Learned About the Hemisphere Program After Suing the DEA
As the year draws to a close, so has EFF’s long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Agency about the mass phone surveillance program infamously known as “Hemisphere.” We won our case and freed up tons of records. (So did the Electronic Privacy Information Center...
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The European Union versus the Internet
The EU is back to regulating tech companies, and getting the Internet wrong in the process. That, though, helps illuminate an approach that could work.