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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 913 posts.
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SBA Disaster Loans: Unofficial guide for freelancers and startups
Join a WebRTC video conference powered by the Jitsi Videobridge
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Vitamin D: the New Covid-19 Chloroquine?
Welcome to this post, in which we’ll be taking a trip through the wild and bumpy ride that has been Vitamin D & sunlight research over the past few decades, and what it might mean for COVID-19. As with my previous post, before any non-specialist attempts to write something on COVID-19, we should wonder: are any actual…
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Assange Hearing Day 7
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH This morning we went straight in to the evidence of Clive Stafford Smith, a dual national British/American lawyer licensed to practice in the UK. He had founded Reprieve in 1999 originally to oppose the death penalty, but after 2001 it had branched out into torture, illicit detention and…
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Break Up Google
It’s easy to say “Break up Big Tech companies!” Depending how politics unfold, the thing might become possible, but figuring out the details will be hard. I spent the last sixteen years of my life working for Big Tech and have educated opinions on the subject. Today: Why and how we should break up Google.
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Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline
Some ideas for socially valuable research topics across 19 fields.
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Glitch employees vote to form union, joining CWA
In a historic step forward for workers organizing in tech, employees at Glitch, a coding platform tool company, today won recognition for their union.
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Maybe we shouldn't want a fully decentralized web
Why I have stopped working with IPFS and the distributed web
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How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
The Federal Highway Administration has a chart full of answers to that question you might find useful.
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Stop Watching the News (2019)
Want someone else to think for you? Watch the news. Want to be distracted? Watch the news. Want something to get mad about? Watch the news. A recent passage in The Daily Stoic discussed the negative impact of hearing bad news – something like a tsunami destroying a village, or a terroris
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Why Is 1 World Trade Center Missing from Spider-Man?
Like many people across the world, I’m using my quarantine effectively: by catching up on all the video games I wasn’t able to play while traveling. The game at the top of my list? Spider-Man, which was widely recognized as one of the top games of 2018. The game is features an open-world, which means you can travel…
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Visa, Plaid, networks, and jobs
The history of credit cards helps explain why Plaid is valuable to Visa, and how Visa can make it significantly better.
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Police in Mississippi to Pilot a Program to Live-Stream Amazon Ring Cameras
The police surveillance center in Jackson, Mississippi, will be conducting a 45-day pilot program to live stream the security cameras, including Amazon Ring cameras, of participating residents.
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The future of work requires a return to apprenticeships
With apprenticeship programs, government and the private sector can partner to train and reskill workers – and meet the challenges of 4IR.
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WeChat Surveillance Explained
This document provides a summary of the Citizen Lab's WeChat surveillance research findings, as well as questions and answers from the resesearch team.
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Lessons from the Gnome Patent Troll Incident
First, for all the lawyers who are eager to see the Settlement Agreement, here it is . The reason I can do this is that I’ve released software under an OSI approved licence, so I’m covered by the Releases and thus entitled to a copy of the agreement under section 10, but I’m not a party to any of the Covenants so I’m…
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Sales tax creates more unnecessary pain than value added tax
Explains through a model of selling coconuts while value added taxes distort the economy less than sales taxes.
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The local timeline is the key to enjoying Mastodon
I'm sure you have already heard about Mastodon, typically marketed as a Twitter alternative. I will try to convince you that the word alternative doesn't mean here what you think it means, and why you may be using Mastodon wrong if you find it bori
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Don’t Fly During Ramadan (2013)
A couple of weeks ago, I tried to fly from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles on JetBlue. I was racially profiled, detained, and interrogated for hours.
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Smartphone contact tracing has failed everywhere
Even the ‘successful’ contact tracing apps have fallen well below expectations, and incapable of discovering their effectiveness.
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Software Freedom Conservancy: New Strategy for GPL Enforcement
Software Freedom Conservancy, the only organization actively engaged in General Public License (GPL) enforcement and compliance work for Linux, announces today a new strategy toward improving compliance and the freedom of users of devices that contain Linux-based systems. The new work has received an initial grant…
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The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
Recently listed as the number one worse place on the planet to take a short vacation, Stolipinovo is a shocking parallel world that defies belief.