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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 742 posts.
This will be short, ranty and to the point: these warnings are getting ridiculous: I know, tell you something you don't know! The whole ugly issue reared its head again on the weekend courtesy of the story in this tweet: > I’m not sure if this makes it better
I’ve started nine firms and I’m, generously, 3-4-2 (win-lose-tie). In retrospect, and I think about this a lot, the only reliable forward-looking indicator of our firm’s success or failure was … timing. Specifically, the part of the economic cycle at founding. The firms we started in recessions had an easier time…
The top-secret story of why NUKEMAP switched from Google Maps to Mapbox+Leaflet.
Hi, Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly.
Way back in the 80s, some people had a dream of combining the cutesy graphics of 80s visual games and the soul-crushing difficulty of 80s text adventures. And so Sierra On-Line created quest games.
Examine.com was born in 2011 out of our personal frustration with the poor quality of information on nutrition and supplementation available on the Internet, and since then we’ve helped tens of millions of people get health information free from advertorial pressures, miracle cures, and clickbait headlines that tease…
Part 2 in a series. (See also Part 1: The Great Dot Org Heist.) Updates: Moz letter, El Reg, registry agreement, ISOC forum + letter, Wyden Ethos Capital seems on track to complete their takeover …
My mom fainted the first time she set foot in an American supermarket. It was 1981 and we were freshly arrived in America, and some combination of the culture shock and smell and sensory overload of a Safeway was too much for her, not normally a fainting woman.
Richard Stallman has had a rough month. This article is a decent summary of the events. In short: Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments on a private mailing list, most…
We live in the era of browser monopoly. Google occupied the whole web by its Chrome. Chrome has more...
An update on the proposed acquisition of Public Interest Registry (PIR) by Ethos Capital and where ICANN was in the process in December 2019.
For many years I’ve interacted with my fellow humans, I think perhaps more than any other way, via the medium of Internet chat. But in my chat window, they’re fading, one by one. This problem is technical and personal and I felt it ought not to go unrecognized.
UPDATE : Revolut has refunded me, I will update the post with more details soon.
A detailed explanation of why I keep saying that advertising is a cancer on modern society.
The bicycle, as we know it today, was not invented until the late 1800s. Here are some theories about why
This post got *a lot* of attention. I’m super happy about that because I had been afraid that we had reached a point where we collectively didn’t care about cameras or meaningful disclosure. Although, to that point here’s a comment someone posted: "I just assume that there will be camera constantly recording when I…
Chinese distributors can help foreign companies reach customers without setting up a business in China. The wrong agreement can leave a supplier locked into years of poor sales, trademark disputes, or regulatory problems. Here are ten issues we address before a client signs.
The NBA controversy in China highlights a culture clash that both tech companies and the U.S. government need to take to heart. Plus, why Tiktok being Chinese is increasingly a problem.
Updates: EFF letter, PIR’s update; IGP’s insider take; ICANN resolution; Ways to act, Reg essay x2, Ohashi, Tim Berners-Lee response; Letters from ISOC(😇), Ethos(🌈), and…
For many years developers were not particularly satisfied with Apple's AppStore. It creates an artificial frontier between users and developers. Developer can not inform users about updates, tips, issues or fixes, and users often turn to the AppStore with one star reviews and negative comments instead of reaching out…
My 6 month old daughter was born with a genetic mutation that will leave her severely disabled. We can silence her mutation within months…
There's heartening news for our location privacy out of Massachusetts this week. The Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest court, ruled that police access to real-time cell phone location data—whether it comes from a phone company or from technology like a cell site simulator—intrudes on a...
I did a detailed privacy check of the app TikTok and its corresponding website. Multiple law infringements, trust, transparency and data protection breaches were found.I provide all technical an
