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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 597 posts.
Two weeks ago we promised to take a hard look at the information apps can use when you connect them to Facebook as well as other data practices. Today, we want to update you on the changes we're making to better protect your Facebook information.
A new standard for cryptography is on the horizon, called Transport Level Security 1.3 (TLS 1.3). TLS 1.3 is a major update to cryptography, and
Congress approved legislation that will renew and strengthen the federal Open Textbook Pilot, which provides grants to expand OER in higher education.
Google Is Quietly Providing AI Technology for Drone Strike Targeting Project Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones
A Social Transition Last week, I wrote a blog post emphasizing the distinction between the social internet and social media. The former describes the internet’s ... Read more
Experiences navigating disintegrating American health care institutions, and what they might imply for life in 2037
On Friday, the Tagansky District Court in Moscow is expected to rule on a request by Roskomnadzor, the Russian media watchdog, to block Telegram for its refusal to provide the Federal Security Service (FSB) with backdoor access to encrypted messages.
Katharina Nuss, a mom of three in Winnipeg, Canada, had a recent run-in with the authorities which radicalized her -- if it's radical to work toward a day when parents are allowed to send their kids down the block unsupervised for a minute or two. We spoke by phone. Here's her story: I have three
If you’re going to commit an illegal act, it’s best not to discuss it in e-mail. It’s also best to Google tech instructions rather than asking someone else to do it: One new detail from the indictment, however, points to just how unsophisticated Manafort seems to have been. Here’s the relevant passage from the…
It’s been just over fours years since I started mentoring high school students at work , and I recently began mentoring my fourth such student. That’s enough students for me to start observing patterns. Of course, each arrives with different computer knowledge and experience, but there have been two consistent and…
In 2013, I had the idea of making a newsgroup search engine. All I had to do was download all newsgroup postings and index them. Well I wro...
‘In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Good Will.’ Winston S. Churchill This week Microsoft announced that it is purchasing GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. I waited for a few days to write up my thoughts because this is something that deserves some thoughtful reflection. The…
The vast majority of fiction on the web is nonergodic : stories presented as linear text. Yet, in an age where everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket, literature can take on any shape imaginable. In recent years, some pieces have taken advantage of these capabilities—not as a gimmick, but in a way that is…
40 common false assumptions programmers make about names, debunked with real-world examples from global naming systems and identity practices.
Chris Adamson notes a significant contraction in iOS and related conferences recently (via Michael Tsai ).
NASA engineer Kevin Gill stitched together images from two 1998 observations of Europa by the Galileo spacecraft to create this super smooth flyover video of th
Not long ago, I wrote a post about that one, “top” software engineer role that companies don’t hire directly into. I’m going to pick up where I left off there. For a quick recap, recall the diagram I made (and my wife kindly GIF-ified for me). In red, you have the positions that a company...
Social media platform Tumblr has announced a ban on so-called “adult content,” a move made, it seems, in reaction to Tumblr’s app being removed from the Apple app store. But while making the app more available is in theory good for Tumblr users, in practice what’s about to happen is mass censorship...
Slot-based intersections that could replace traditional traffic lights, significantly reducing queues and delays.
