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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
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
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:
Today I saw the future
Mozilla and OTOY deliver the power of native PC applications to the Web, unveil next generation JavaScript video codec for movies and cloud gaming
Important Allies Join the Fight Against NSA Internet Backbone Surveillance
Last week, the ACLU filed a welcome additional challenge to the NSA’s warrantless Internet backbone surveillance (aka “Upstream” surveillance) on behalf of Wikimedia and a number of other media and human rights organizations. We applaud all of those involved in bringing the case. It adds another...
Are film critics losing sync with audiences?
A few weeks ago I was contacted by a journalist at the New York Times, who asked if I felt that film critics were losing touch with the tastes of the broader public.
Policies that make the poor less poor
We should have policies to make the poor less poor. Unfortunately, policies explicitly aimed at trying to make the poor less poor typica...
Ukraine's three nuclear power plants have restored electricity production
Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) have largely restored their electricity production after sharply reducing output last week as a precautionary step due to renewed attacks on the country’s increasingly fragile energy grid, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy…
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!’
The Amish health care system
I. Amish people spend only a fifth as much as you do on health care, and their health is fine. What can we learn from them? A reminder: the Amish are a German religious sect who immigrated to colon…
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…
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…
Avoid the Apple App Store
Have you ever though about building an iOS app? I did, but I now wish that I hadn’t.
CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the 100 largest low-wage corporations.
Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman
Canoeboot – Free, Libre BIOS/UEFI boot firmware
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…
Here comes the first TikTok war
Russia's invasion of Ukraine will be captured in incredible detail by smartphones and social media. This changes everything.
A Failure, but Not of Prediction
I. Vox asks What Went Wrong With The Media’s Coronavirus Coverage? They conclude that the media needs to be better at “not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know”. This rai…
Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always)
Mozilla is continuing to fight for net neutrality — in the courts, alongside Americans, on Twitter and, today, by joining the Red Alert protest. The Red
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.
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…
Facebook is other people
This is what "democratization" looks like
Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in LA Are Under Investigation
Do you drive a car in the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area? According to the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff’s Department, your car is part of a vast criminal investigation. The agencies took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California’s...
Moscow Publishes Photocopies of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Secret Protocols
Paul Goble Staunton, June 1 – For the first time, a Moscow portal, Istoricheskaya pamyat , has published photocopies of th...
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…