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Why Mozilla Matters
[This is an extended essay on the news out of Norway yesterday. See the closing for encouragement toward Opera and its fans, whatever the open source projects they choose to join, from me on behalf of Mozilla. /be]
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
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Google disables SSL search at BT’s request
Update – Since this was posted, Max Allan and Damion Yates have investigated further and found that BT are intercepting DNS queries and replying with doctored DNS results, which I didn’…
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Techno‑feudal elite are attempting to build a twenty‑first‑century fascist state
Introduction: Fascism at the End of Industrial Civilization This essay argues that the United States is drifting toward a distinctly twenty‑first‑century form of fascism driven not by mass parties …
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Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable
Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would quickly die from it. Now, most children in rich countries are cured.
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How do you fix a stroad?
We respond to a question posted for us on Reddit about a stroad that seems unfixable—and maybe that’s because it is.
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The web starts on page four
After 25 years of working for, on and with the web, I am looking at the current state of it and I don’t like it. There is still a lot of beautiful, creative and amazing work out there, but on the whole, we lost an amazing opportunity. In its place we have a consumption machine that creates bubbles and assumes new…
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Privacy is ok
I hate to write a piece just saying Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. But Reid Blackman’s The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs (in the NYTimes , forsooth) is not just wrong but dangerously misleading. I haven’t seen a compact explainer on why, so here goes.
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A catalog of wealth-creation mechanisms (2009)
One of the guest lecturers aboard the ship [1] (Donald Gibbs, of Pearl-Harbor conspiracy-theory infamy) gave a very interesting talk a few ...
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Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to engage in a mobile ecosystem outside of the watchful eye of the Big Tech giants and gatekeepers? A system tha...
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Making the Tibetan language a first-class citizen in the digital world
Read about a major milestone in technological innovation of the Tibetan language as the open source software suite LibreOffice's latest update supports an important feature of Tibetan: very long paragraphs.
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CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace
This content is currently in the process of being archived and integrated into the CERN Library collections.
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Steve Jobs Sometimes Lies to You
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
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Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook
Wolfram|Alpha analyzes your Facebook data for free. Compute statistics: posting activity, most liked post, words most used, friends' geography, age and genders... more than a dozen reports.
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Trolls Are Real
In most issues of EFFector, we give an overview of all the work we’re doing at EFF. Today, in light of recent developments at the U.S. Patent Office, we’re doing a deep dive into a single issue: recent changes to the patent system, and how it’s in danger of heading backwards.
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MAPS Celebrates California Senate Passage of Psychedelic Reform Bill
Fifty years after the War on Drugs was officially declared and psychedelic substance prohibition began in contravention of evidence supporting therapeutic use, the California State Senate has taken the first Legislative step to dismantle psychedelic prohibition with a 21-16 vote on June 1, 2021, in favor of Senate…
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RFC8890: The Internet Is for End Users
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has published RFC8890, The Internet is for End Users, arguing that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) should ground its decisions in what’s good for people who use the Internet, and that it should take positive steps to achieve that.
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Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
About half the public identify the cost of groceries as a major source of financial stress. Nearly 1 in 5 of them have used so-called Buy Now Play Later services to buy their groceries.
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Slop is not necessarily the future
Everyone's worried about slop, but good code will prevail, not only because we want it to, but because economic forces demand it.
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Most people don't care about quality
My friend, the photographer Paul Clarke has an uncanny eye for detail. Every single shot he publishes is beautiful - they capture life in a way that I don't have the language to describe. I'm quite content to point my phone at someone, use the default settings, and grab a snap. My photos lack composition, clarity…
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What would a “good” WebMD look like?
And what would a "good" WebMD look like?
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Autonomous Weapons: An Open Letter from AI and Robotics Researchers
2016 (>30k signatures) open letter for AI and Robotics researchers calling for ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.
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We need a new media system
If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences
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How AI destroys institutions
Civic institutions—the rule of law, universities, and a free press—are the backbone of democratic life. They are the mechanisms through which complex societies encourage cooperation and stability, while also adapting to changing circumstances. The real superpower of institutions is their ability to evolve and adapt…
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The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly
in an era where tech giants increasingly control our digital experiences, the Steam Deck stands as a beacon of user freedom