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Society, Policy & Culture

The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.

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1300 Still Images from the Animated Films of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli (2023)

「君たちはどう生きるか」の場面写真を提供致します。 現在、劇場公開中の「君たちはどう生きるか」の場面写真 14枚を、本日から提供いたします。 これまでの分と同様に、常識の範囲でご自由にお使いください。 君たちはどう生きるか14枚 2023.08.04 提供開始 2020.12.18 提供開

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Aaron Swartz shows his FBI file

I got my FBI file today. ( Request yours! ) As I hoped, it’s truly delightful. It has only minor redactions for reasons of personal privacy (basically, they deleted agents’ names and so on). It all started when the—actually, I’ll let the file tell the story:

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When tech says ‘no’

The tech industry always has a reason why any new laws or regulations are bad - indeed, so does any industry. They always say that! The trouble is, sometimes it’s true, and some laws are (or would be) disasters. So which is it? Well, there are three ways that people say ‘NO!’

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Nowhere is safe

Drones in Ukraine and in the War with Iran have made the surface of the earth a contested space. The U.S. has discovered that 1) air superiority and missile defense systems (THAAD, Patriot batterie…

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TSA considers new system for flyers without ID

According to a solicitation to potential contractors published last week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants to outsource its current questioning of airline passengers without ID , and its decisions about which travelers without ID to allow to travel and which to prevent from flying , to a…

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RIAA to .ORG Registry: Take down ThePirateBay

We were forwarded a letter from the RIAA via our lawyers on Friday whom in turn received it from Public Interest Registry (PIR), who is the registry operator of the .ORG top level domain. The letter was sent from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asking PIR "to reconsider whether it…

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Reasons not to use Skype (2012)

As of August, 2025, Skype no longer exists as a dis-service for actual use. However, this information about how it was unjust while it operated may still be interesting for comparison with other online dis-services and for understanding the wrongs that they often do to users.

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Bye, Gemini

The Gemini protocol was a big part of my COVID-19 lockdown experience. Discovering this underground, small protocol, having long discussions on the mailing list, and most importantly for me, developing software. My terminal Gemini browser, Amfora, was my first public FOSS project, something actually intended for a…

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When Pepsi Had a Navy

In 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR, the Pepsi Company cut a deal with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev that left it with a fleet of Russian military ships, making PepsiCo temporarily th…