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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 695 posts.
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Farewell to Aaron Swartz
Yesterday Aaron Swartz, a close friend and collaborator of ours, committed suicide. This is a tragic end to a brief and extraordinary life. Aaron did more than almost anyone to make the Internet a thriving ecosystem for open knowledge, and to keep it that way. His contributions were numerous, and...
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Is Wine Bullshit?
How should we understand the robust findings that suggest that the price of wine is not only uncorrelated with how much people enjoy it, but that the different tastes we describe in wine may all be in our heads?
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Quote Meritocracy Unquote
Meritocracy is a political philosophy that holds power should be vested in individuals according to merit. Advancement in such a system is based on perceived intellectual talent measured through examination and/or demonstrated achievement in the field where it is implemented.
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Until Today, If You Were 17, It Could Have Been Illegal To Read Seventeen.com
If you are 17 or under, a federal prosecutor could have charged you with computer hacking just for reading Seventeen magazine online—until today. It’s not because the law got any better. Earlier today, we wrote about news sites that alarmingly prohibit their youth audiences from accessing the news...
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Dear Mozilla, stop watching me
I have signed the StopWatching.Us letter today. I am not a US citizen, so even if the letter succeeds, I don’t think my privacy will improve substantially. But at least I did something.
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Icelandic Pirate Party enters parliament
The Icelandic Pirate Party has entered Parliament. This is clear as all the votes have been counted, with the Pirate Party at 5.1% as...
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Disappointing Unsealing Decision in Aaron Swartz Case
The public lost another battle in the U.S. v. Aaron Swartz case, this one over transparency. On May 13, 2013, the U.S. District Court judge handling the prosecution sided with the government, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR and refused to make public any information in the case...
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Snowden's Dead Man's Switch
Edward Snowden has set up a dead man’s switch. He’s distributed encrypted copies of his document trove to various people, and has set up some sort of automatic system to distribute the key, should something happen to him. Dead man’s switches have a long history, both for safety (the machinery automatically stops if…
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An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
I just ran across a wretched, unfortunate looking man while walking through the Tenderloin. If you've spent any time here, you know this is nothing out of the ordinary. It made me sad.
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MIT Legal repudiated Xbox hacker too
I am joining three academic research web sites, SIFT and Polyphen (websites for predicting disease mutations) and CRAVAT (a website for predicting cancer mutations), in a moment of silence to mark Aaron Swartz’ passing. On January 25, we will bring down our sites for the day to honor his contributions and mark the…
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The American-Western European Values Gap
American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the publics of Spain, Britain, France and Germany. However, Americans are coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as…
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Employment in America: WTF is going on?
The October 29, 2013 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter is the 500th edition. So rather than answer a reader’s question, I’m celebrating this milestone by making up my own question, and doing my best to answer it. (What? You don’t subscribe to the free, weekly e-mail Ask The Headhunter Newsletter? Don’t miss the next…
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Shon Hopwood and Kopf’s terrible sentencing instincts
Sebagai situs sentra wahana berbagai jenis game luber slot tidak berbatas, EGP88 menjadi salah satu pilihan terbaik di jaman hari ini serba mahal. Narik dan nyaldonya pun di EGP 88 sangat cepat gak pake gocekan.
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Today I Deleted My LinkedIn Account; You Probably Should Too
(Please note corrections after the post) Today I will delete my LinkedIn account. I say I will instead of I have because I do not know how LinkedIn’s account settings work; deleting my accou…
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Oxford Temporarily Blocks Google Docs
University of Oxford IT Services blogs support dissemination of news, updates on research projects, reflection, and musings by IT Services staff for widespread readership.