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Why we still love board games
In a sprawling convention centre in Essen, western Germany, the busiest day in the German board games calendar – Saturday at “Spiel” – is about to begin. Hall after hall of stands are piled high wi…
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 580 posts.
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Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free
Normally I avoid complaining about Apple because (a) there are plenty of other people carrying that flag, and (b) I honestly like Apple and own numerous lovely iProducts. I’m even using one t…
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Aaron Swartz "JSTOR" case indictment revised/expanded
I'm continuing to follow the Aaron Swartz case , which is grinding away (disclosure: I know him socially, and have admired his work). The latest development, which seems to have not been reported anywhere but here (scoop! :-) breaking story! :-)), is that the prosecution has issued a "Superseding Indictment" . That…
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Apple Has Removed Airfoil Speakers Touch From The iOS App Store
Visit the Rogue Amoeba blog to read more.
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Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms
Two weeks ago, Steve Wozniak made a public call for Apple to open its platforms for those who wish to tinker, tweak and innovate with their internals. EFF supports Wozniak's position: while Apple's products have many virtues, they are marred by an ugly set of restrictions on what users and...
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EFF Challenges National Security Letter Statute in Landmark Lawsuit
Since the first national security letter statute was passed in 1986, the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of such letters seeking private telecommunications and financial records of Americans without any prior approval from courts. Indeed, for the period between 2003 and 2006 alone, almost 200,...
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Never ever do business with Samsung India Software Operations
Back in October 2010 I was very glad to receive a mail from the people behind the Samsung Dolfin browser, who turned out to work from Bangalore, India, asking for my cooperation in making it better and even offering to pay me for it. Unfortunately, by now it turns out that they’re a bunch of fucking assholes who don’t…
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Of abusive behavior in programming communities
It is traditional for each release of perl to be announced with a form letter beginning with a quote, or epigraph, chosen by the release engineer. For Perl 5.16.0, I chose the penultimate stanza from W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939.
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Tor trip report to an FBI conference
In October I attended an FBI conference, as part of my work to try to keep Tor on good relations...
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Fixing Hacker News: A mathematical approach
There is a certain phenomenon that seems to happen in almost every online community of user-generated content. A community is created: the ...
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Twitter's descent into the extractive
Twitter started out life as a wonderfully inclusive society. There were very few rules and the ones there were the people loved. Thou shall be brief, retweet to respect. Under this constrained freedom, Twitter prospered and grew rapidly for the joy of all. Budding entrepreneurs built apps that m…
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When Facebook was Fun
It’s hard to remember, now , but there was a time when Facebook was the most exciting thing on the Internet.
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Another Piece of the Stuxnet Puzzle
We can now conclusively link Stuxnet to the centrifuge structure at the Natanz nuclear enrichment lab in Iran. Watch this new video presentation from Ralph Langner, the researcher who has done the most work on Stuxnet. It’s a long clip, but the good stuff is between 21:00 and 29:00. The pictures he’s referring to are…
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Apple Broke My iPhone, and Their Policies Prevent Them from Fixing It
Hello. I’ve been an otherwise happy iPhone user since 2008. I use my iPhone with an MVNO carrier in the U.S. called Straight Talk, which runs over AT&T’s network. This is my story.
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They may just be chat bubbles, but they’re our chat bubbles
Atlassian and Slack have forged a new strategic partnership.
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Silicon Valley Is Filled With Liars
Have you been caught telling one of these lies?
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