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Group chats rule the world
The importance and dynamics of private group chats in shaping tech discourse
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
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The death of a TLD
Another one bites the dust. The gTLD gold rush is now seeing a steady flow of TLD’s that clearly just didnt work out.
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CIA, MKUltra, and the cover-up of U.S. germ warfare in the Korean war (2022)
CIA & Army Counterintelligence involved in secret “processing” of U.S. POWs who confessed to using biological weapons against China, No…
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Automatically tagging politician when they use their phone on the livestreams
How does it work? Every meeting of the flemish government in Belgium is live streamed on a youtube channel. When a livestream starts the software is searching for phones and tries to identify a distracted politician. This is done with the help of AI and face recognition. The video of the distracted politician are then…
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Lawsuit against TSA and DEA over airport seizures achieves first victory
PITTSBURGH—When travelers go online to find out whether it is legal to fly with cash, the government tells them that there are no restrictions on […]
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TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In
TIME is now serving two different versions of its website. Humans get the magazine. AI crawlers get a stripped down markdown copy with ads baked in that no person will ever see. I fetched one ordinary…
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Dutch secret service tries to recruit Tor-admin
Recently a Dutch man with an MSc (Master of Science) at the Delft University of Technology and admin of Tor-exit nodes was approached by two agents of the Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD. They wanted to recruit the man as an informant or undercover agent, who would also infiltrate foreign hacker communities. The…
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Dutch Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Links Censored Has Conflict of Interest
Judge Chris Hensen, who ordered the Dutch Pirate Party to censor all links to The Pirate Bay recently (something Techdirt calls Censorship Crazy), appears...
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Annual EFF Awards: Alexandra Elbakyan, Library Freedom Project, and Signal
SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce that Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan, Library Freedom Project, and Signal Foundation will receive the 2023 EFF Awards for their vital work in helping to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all...
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Why we should all have a basic income
Imagine everyone getting a basic income just because they are a citizen. Read on to know how this basic income will change things in society.
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The Internet Is for Porn
It always was, it always will be.
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Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
Today, January 10, 2020, the Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation released the fact-finding report it commissioned to help the Institute understand the origins, nature, and extent of Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to MIT and learn from them. The questions and answers below provide context.
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Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile?
TLDR: “make the web do apps” is not a disruptive strategy. It's like surviving The Great Oxidation Event, then saying “make anaerobes do photosynthesis”. Ok, but the blue-green algae got there first, so photosynthesis is no longer asymmetric. It is symmetric competition.
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Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined
Hepatitis C has become so widespread that experts are calling on doctors to screen all adults 18 to 79, even those with no known risk factors or symptoms.
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Two narratives about AI
I want to present you with two narratives about AI. Both of them are about using this technology to automate computer programming, but they point ... Read more
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Thatcher killed the UK’s superfast broadband before it even existed
Grrrh! I could get really annoyed about this! Living and working in rural Stirlingshire has its advantages for sure, but fast broadband is not one of them.
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Russia Poisons Wikipedia
How state-sponsored actors exploit the open-source platform to skew reality, create 'foreign digital interference' and what that means for the future of facts
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I'm retiring from the engineering profession
To protect our advocacy work against future harassment from the Minnesota licensing board, Strong Towns President Charles Marohn is retiring as a professional engineer.
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Journalists’ Twitter use shows them talking within smaller bubbles
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Journalists in Washington, D.C., have long been accused of living in a “Beltway bubble,” isolated from the broader public, talking too much…
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How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain
Every time Disney’s beloved mouse is about to enter the public domain, U.S. copyright law magically changes. Does he deserve special protection, or should he be relinquished to society?
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EU copyright proposal could undermine the use of Creative Commons licenses
Over the last few years the European Union has been working on revising its rules on copyright. But the latest proposal from the head of the copyright committee would deny creators the right to refuse remuneration — the right to share a work without getting paid — which could undermine the use of CC licenses…
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Skype contact lists may have been exposed (2017)
UPDATE: February 14, 2019: Since writing this article in late 2017, Microsoft seems to have made a change that makes it a bit harder to reverse
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TSA’s Roadmap for Airport Surveillance Moves in a Dangerous Direction
The Transportation Security Administration has set out an alarming vision of pervasive biometric surveillance at airports, which cuts against the right to privacy, the “right to travel,” and the right to anonymous association with others.The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, which included language...
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One in three young people say they felt happier during lockdown
One in three young people say their mental health and wellbeing improved during COVID-19 lockdown measures, with potential contributing factors including feeling less lonely, avoiding bullying and getting more sleep and exercise, according to researchers at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford.