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Everything is Ghibli
When we got “create anything” and all made the same thing
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 992 posts.
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When DEF CON partners with the U.S. Army
DEF CON has alienated many hackers by officially aligning its geopolitics with those of the U.S. military and announcing partnerships with the authoritarian countries of Bahrain and Singapore.
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The Internet Slum: is abandoning the Internet the next big thing? (2004)
The Internet Slum
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How many artists' careers did the Beatles kill?
The sinister side of rock 'n' roll
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Encryption Is Not a Crime
Encryption is not a crime, encryption protects us all. Encryption, and especially end-to-end encryption, is an essential tool to protect everyone online. Attempts to undermine encryption are an attack to our fundamental right to privacy and an attack to our inherent right to security and safety.
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Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
IRB you kidding me?
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I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone
One of my weirder hobbies is trying to convince people that the idea that companies are listening to you through your phone’s microphone and serving you targeted ads is a …
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Hidden Messages in Emojis and Hacking the US Treasury
On December 30th, while most of us were preparing for a New Year’s Eve celebration, the US Treasury was prepping a notice to lawmakers to notify them that their systems, which (obviously) contain highly sensitive, confidential data, had been compromised.
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EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban
Shutting down a communications platform or forcing its reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally.
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How Thai authorities use online doxxing to suppress dissent
A sustained, coordinated social media harassment and doxxing campaign – which we codenamed JUICYJAM – targeting the pro-democracy movement in Thailand has run uninterrupted, and unchallenged, since at least August 2020. Through our analysis of public social media posts we determined that the campaign was not only…
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Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
Flock's 'licence plate readers' read much more than license plates. A judge says what they record must be released.
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The Banished Bottom of the Housing Market
How America Destroyed Its Cheapest Homes
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Rolling the ladder up behind us
Who will take over for us if we don't train the next generation to replace us? A critique of craft, AI, and the legacy of human expertise.
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AI is impressive because we've failed at personal computing
AI is impressive because we’ve failed at semantic web and personal computing | exotext
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Rights groups urge UK PM Starmer to abandon plans for mandatory digital ID
Big Brother Watch and other human rights, civil liberties, digital rights, and racial justice organisations have written to the Prime Minister urging him to abandon plans for a mandatory digital ID. The letter comes just days before an expected statement from Keir Starmer announcing the rollout of a mandatory digital…
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Is it possible to allow sideloading and keep users safe?
In which I attempt to be pragmatic. Are you allowed to run whatever computer program you want on the hardware you own? This is a question where freedom, practicality, and reality all collide into a mess. Google has recently announced that Android users will only be able to install apps which have been digitally signed…
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Tomorrow's emoji today: Unicode 17.0
Trombone emoji skanking it's way into our hearts …
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Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters
New research: Eight popular, commercial VPN apps operate deceptively and put more than 700 million users at risk of authoritarian surveillance.
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Coffee linked to slower biological ageing among those with severe mental illness
New research from King’s College London finds that coffee consumption within the NHS recommended limit is linked to longer telomere lengths – a marker of biological ageing – among people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The effect is comparable to roughly five years younger biological age.
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Polish city is using mussels to monitor water quality (2020)
A city in Poland is relying on the mechanisms of mussels to safeguard its population from polluted drinking water.
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China's New Rare Earth and Magnet Restrictions Threaten US Defense Supply Chains
China has imposed its most stringent rare earth and magnet export controls yet, restricting products with even trace Chinese content. This bolsters its leverage ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting and heightens risks to U.S. defense and semiconductor supply chains.
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I announced my divorce on Instagram and then AI impersonated me
After maintaining a total stance of public silence for months, I recently publicly announced my unexpected divorce on Instagram. I shared a picture of the divorce cake that my friends got for me, and shared a brief essay I had drafted the day before about the news. I had to edit it down slightly from my original draft…
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People are just as bad as my LLMs
Last year I created a fun little experiment where I asked a bunch of LLMs to rank 97 hackernews users using their comment history based on whether they would be good candidates for the role of “software engineer at google”. (yes yes, seems silly I know, you can read part 1 and part 2 but […]
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The hype is the product
Large publicly traded tech companies seem to no longer consider their customers – that is, people and organizations who actually buy their products or pay for access to their services – their core foc
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Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr
P2P and federated protocols converge toward becoming Nostr, but with extra steps
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Price of a bot army revealed across online platforms
The first global index tracking real-time prices for buying fake account verifications on 500+ online platforms in every country has been launched by a team at the University of Cambridge.
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63 Chinese Cuisines: The Complete Guide (2024)
Not one cuisine, not eight, but many more. Our best shot at a comprehensive-ish guide.