3811
Forgetting the Asbestos – how we lose knowledge and technologies
Or, how we lose knowledge and technologies. And what we can do about it.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
3812
3813
California AB 2047 makes 3D printers off-limits to students, educators, business
A plain-language guide to AB2047 you can share with your school board, PTA, or neighbor. Learn what's at stake and how to take action.
3814
3815
The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB .
3816
3817
Tired of Safari
Yesterday, in reaction to pointer events becoming a W3C recommendation, Tim Kadlec published an important piece about Apple’s huge influence on the mobile web.
3818
Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)
I believe that Silicon Valley is like Las Vegas, except they make you pass a number of tests before they let you gamble. This means that only a relatively select group gets to sit at the table. The purpose of this post is to analyze the folowing problem:
3819
3820
Evidence that the NSA Is Storing Voice Content, Not Just Metadata
Interesting speculation that the NSA is storing everyone’s phone calls, and not just metadata. Definitely worth reading. I expressed skepticism about this just a month ago. My assumption had always been that everyone’s compressed voice calls is just too much data to move around and store. Now, I don’t know. There’s a…
3821
California passes groundbreaking open textbook legislation
It’s official. In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed two bills (SB 1052 and SB 1053) that will provide for the creation of free, openly licensed digital textbooks for the 50 most popular lower-division college courses offered by California colleges. The legislation was introduced by Senate President pro Tem…
3822
3823
My Product Is Unexpectedly Being Used to Help People with Dementia
One of the more heartwarming moments of my journey building NanaGram was totally unexpected. A few months after launching, I built a way for customers to post reviews. These automatically get posted to the home page. Within a couple weeks, two customers sent reviews mentioning how their loved one has dementia and…
3824
3825
Programming Isn't Special
Artists understand that AI is bad for art. Why don’t programmers understand that we are artists?
3826
3827
Resurrect the Old Web
Recently a local news station in Maine reported a story of some middle schoolers calling their friends with landline telephones. Their parents thought they w...
3828
The tech sector might be evil
Or at least, your employer might be. Over the years we in the tech sector have gotten used to being well-regarded. After all, we make people’s lives better, on balance. That’s changing. At the moment it’s rumblings from thought leaders, not pervasive popular anger. The other thing that’s new is that they’re thought…
3829
3830
Not Using Zoom
Dear client, Setting aside the challenges of using Zoom under ChromeOS and Linux, I have mostly been declining invitations to Zoom calls...
3831
The Last Quiet Thing
Your possessions came alive. Now they won't stop talking.
3832
3833
3834
Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games Because “Hacking” Is Illegal
The Entertainment Software Association doesn’t want anyone to restore the functionality of older videogames that are no longer supported by their publisher, because, says ESA, this is “hacking,” and all hacking is “associated with piracy.” EFF, along with law student Kendra Albert, is asking the...
3835
Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions
It all started with a simple Twitter query from a Baltimore man: “Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?” This was several days after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, and the subsequent riots and protests. Pete Cimbolic, an aviation buff and…
3836
Serious threat to the web in Italy
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
3837
Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones
Whether controlled by an artificial intelligence or a remote human operator, armed police robots and drones pose an unacceptable threat to civilians. The ongoing revolution in the field of robotics requires us to act now to prevent a new era of police violence.
3838
If – A Poem by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
3839
H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office
In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that. H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S....
3840
