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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
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Why we're saying no to Google
Google wants other search engines to pay to become a default option in Android. Here's why we're saying no.
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The Achilles Heel of the Coronavirus
SARS-CoV-2 is critically dependent on a special mechanism for the production of its proteins. A collaborative team led by a research group at ETH Zurich obtained molecular insights into this process and demonstrated that it can be inhibited by chemical compounds, thereby significantly reducing viral replication in…
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Snowden Meets the IETF
Last night, we had a screening of CITIZENFOUR at the IETF meeting in Prague, and about 170 people showed up to see the movie about Edward Snowden’s relevations — information that led the IETF to declare such pervasive monitoring as an attack on the Internet itself.
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The US Intelligence Community has a Third Leaker
Ever since the Intercept published this story about the US government’s Terrorist Screening Database, the press has been writing about a “second leaker”: The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration. The article cites…
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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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How Japanese Dried Bonito Is Made
This workshop founded in 1882 still makes dried bonito like they did back in the Edo period. How katsuobushi — Japanese dried bonito, said to be the world’s har
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The Shape of Rome (2013)
The new Mayor of the city of Rome, Ignazio Marino, just announced his intention to destroy one of the city’s central roads, the Via dei Fori Imperiali, and turn the area around the old Roman Forum into the world’s largest archaeological park. Reactions have ranged from commuters’ groans to declarations from…
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A New Threat Actor Targets UAE Dissidents
This report describes a campaign of targeted spyware attacks carried out by a sophisticated operator, which we call Stealth Falcon. The attacks have been conducted from 2012 until the present, against Emirati journalists, activists, and dissidents.
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Allow babywearing carriers on planes
The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered"…
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Thrown Off a United Airlines Flight for Taking Pictures
You’ve changed almost everything. So why do the same problems keep coming back? Explore the rules, responses, and results with UPGRD®.
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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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Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant
And your precious first principles math proves it
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Recognizing the signs of disruption in our urban habitat
Commuter rail stations in the San Francisco Bay Area should be some of the most valuable land in the region (and by extension, the world). So why are there so many parking lots and one-story buildings right next to them?
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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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Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea
The gavel has fallen; the cup has been stomped; pick your metaphor. Microsoft has succeeded in its almost-two-year quest to gobble up Activision. The peculiar side effect in my corner of the world is that Microsoft now owns the dusty remains ...
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2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews
By ICML 2026 Program Chairs Alekh Agarwal, Miroslav Dudik, Sharon Li, Martin Jaggi, Scientific Integrity Chair Nihar B. Shah, and Communications Chairs Katherine Gorman and Gautam Kamath.
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Thomann takes legal action against Fender
For brand diversity and innovation: Why we are taking legal action against Fender's cease and desist demand.
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3D Printing Sex Toys
Ok so, sex toys! Admit it. You've thought about it. 😉But it seems so complex! You can't use a sex toy straight from the printer because the materials and nozzles aren't body safe, and even if they were, the layer lines are a breeding ground for bacteria. So traditionally you'd have to print a blank and smooth it (with…
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The tech industry's use of persuasive techniques on children
How psychology — a discipline that we associate with healing — is being used as a weapon against children
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Old bills in Yemen are worth 10% more than new ones
I often write about odd monetary phenomena on this blog. Here's a new contender, Yemen's dual banknote system. Yemen uses the Yemeni ri...
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LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation
Ideally, we would have preferred to avoid this post. However, the articles and comments published in response to Collabora’s and Michael Meeks’ biased posts compel us to provide this background information on the events that led to the current situation. Unfortunately, we have to start from the very beginning, but…
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Discontinuing Support for NSFW Imgur r/subsections Associated with Reddit
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
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Internet disrupted in Myanmar amid military coup
Network data from the NetBlocks Internet Observatory indicate the onset of widespread internet disruptions in Myanmar on Sunday 31 January 2021 (UTC) amid reports of a military uprising and the ...
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Chromium and the Browser Monoculture Problem
Okay, folks. This is new territory for me. I'm stepping into the world of.... t h i n k p i e c e s...
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Why Getting Paid for Your Data Is a Bad Deal
One bad privacy idea that won’t die is the so-called “data dividend,” which imagines a world where companies have to pay you in order to use your data.Sound too good to be true? It is. Let’s be clear: getting paid for your data—probably no more than a handful of dollars at most—isn’t going to fix...
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Email Isn’t the Thing We’re Bad At
You and me, we’re bad at a lot of things. But email isn’t one of those things, no matter how much it seems like it.
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Google Warns Developers That All New Android Apps Require 3 Days for Approval
In conversation with Google Play Store developer support today, they confirmed to me that all new Android apps now require at least three days for approval.