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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 580 posts.
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Harvard puts metadata for 12M library items into the public domain
(Here’s a version of the text of a submission I just made to BoingBong through their “Submitterator”) Harvard University has today put into the public domain (CC0) full bibliograp…
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How Copyright Industries Con Congress
I’ve yet to encounter a technically clueful person who believes the Stop Online Piracy Act will actually do anything to meaningfully reduce—let alone “stop”—online piracy, and so I haven’t bothered writing much about the absurd numbers the bill’s supporters routinely bandy about in hopes of persuading lawmakers that…
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The Gift of Death
Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it.
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European Parliament Blocks Copyright Reform With 113% Voter Turnout
In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright...
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Shouldn't Robots Be Doing My Taxes By Now?
Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants…
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“She doesn’t deserve to be alive”
What is success? When do you reach it? Is life different? Are you happy? And if it's not the shining golden star that it ought to be, is it still worth it?
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Cybersecurity Bill Broad Enough to Use Against WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay
Congress is doing it again: they’re proposing overbroad regulations that could have dire consequences for our Internet ecology. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (H.R. 3523), introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, allows companies or the government[fn]...
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Astrology For Businesses
A few years ago, my work sent me on a training course. It involved the usual things, trust exercises, team bonding, and personality profiles. I filled in a few forms, answered some questions, and the very professional looking lady marked up my paper and said, "I see that you're a Scorpio. That means you're focused…
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U.S. Government Threatens Free Speech With Calls for Twitter Censorship
“[T]he ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas....That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.” — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissent in Abrams v. United States, 1919EFF has witnessed a growing number of calls in recent weeks for Twitter to ban certain...
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Neil Armstrong, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman
Neal Stephenson and I were not standing in order to make it quite clear who Neil #1 was and would always be. I spent a couple of days ...
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The power of ignoring mainstream news
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson
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Why We Should All Care About Today's Senate Vote on FISA
Today is an incredibly important vote for the future of your digital privacy, but some in Congress are hoping you won’t find out. Finally, after weeks of delay, the Senate will start debate on the dangerous FISA Amendments Act at 10 am Eastern and vote on its re-authorization by the end of the day...
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Of Booze and Brogrammers
There's been a little bit of noise about the culture of "hard partying" at programmer conferences. Ryan complains about binge drinking , a...
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