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Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade
For the past ten years, I have written a lengthy year-end series, documenting some of the dominant narratives and trends in education technology. I think it is worthwhile, as the decade draws to a ...
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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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Apple Is Trying to Shut Down Hey
Apple deserves the antitrust scrutiny that they’re getting for their anti-competitive App Store policies.
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The international student bait-and-switch
Come for the schools, be used as pawns for politics.
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Dear Apple: Here’s How to Stop the Antitrust Investigations
A Five-Step Guide from the Developers You Sherlocked. It’s in Apple’s best interest to be proactive and tackle the antitrust problem itself rather than waiting for the government to step in. To help Tim Cook get ahead of the scrutiny, we’ve compiled some reasonable suggestions for Apple that don’t require government…
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How to catch a spy that is using a numbers station – The KGB Experience
From 2019 on, the Latvian National Archive offers access to various KGB documents.The Archive digitized operation cases and also special KGB training manuals.
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Swiss police automated crime predictions but has little to show for it
A review of 3 automated systems in use by the Swiss police and judiciary reveals serious issues. Real-world effects are impossible to assess due to a lack of transparency.
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Solar storm risk and EMP attacks
A Q&A style dialogue to separate fact from fiction.
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The polls messed up
To continue our post-voting, pre-vote-counting assessment (see also here and here ), I want to separate two issues which can get conflated: 1. Problems with poll-based election forecasts.
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The fresh smell of ransomed coffee
How a simple coffee maker became a cybersecurity nightmare
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DuckDuckGo Founding Member in Global Privacy Control Standards Effort
We're proud to announce the launch of Global Privacy Control (GPC), a new standard to put privacy protection in the hands of consumers.
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What's wrong with social science and how to fix it
Replication, citations, power, incentives, and more.
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Pseudonymity as a Trivial Concession to Genius
Update (6/24): For further thoughts and context about this unfolding saga, see this excellent piece by Tom Chivers (author of The AI Does Not Hate You, so far the only book about the rationalist co…
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Toddlers who use touchscreens show attention differences
New research from Dr Rachael Bedford as part of the TABLET project recruited 12-month-old infants who had different levels of touchscreen usage.
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Excess mortality from March to December of 2020
Explore data on COVID-19 excess mortality across the world.
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Assange Hearing Day 8
The great question after yesterday’s hearing was whether prosecution counsel James Lewis QC would continue to charge at defence witnesses like a deranged berserker (spoiler – he would), and more importantly, why? QC’s representing governments usually seek to radiate calm control, and treat defence arguments as almost…
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Pandemic Villains: Robinhood
Have a pair of gangly Stanford grads built the perfect mousetrap?
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Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts
The business of state civil courts has changed over the past three decades. In 1990, a typical civil court docket featured cases with two opposing sides, each with an attorney, most frequently regarding commercial matters and disputes over contracts, injuries, and other harms.
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Global capital is the tail that wags the U.S. economic dog
Although Wall Street would be ferociously opposed to policies that limit the unfettered flow of capital around the world, the right polices could sharply reduce the economic disruption wreaked on workers, producers, farmers, and the middle class.
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Covid-19: The T Cell Story
When COVID-19 burst on to the scene, tests quickly showed that the everyone was susceptible - no pre-existing antibodies were found that bound to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This led to dire predictions that over 80% of the population might eventually fall ill. Now more than six months in, this has not happened, and it does…
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The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Naval Officer? Voltaire? William Pitt Lennox? Herb Caen? Howard Jacobs? Norman R. Augustine? Anonymous?
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IBAHRI condemned UK treatment of Julian Assange in US extradition trial
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) condemns the reported mistreatment of Julian Assange during his United States extradition trial in February 2020, and urges the government of the United Kingdom to take action to protect him. According to his lawyers, Mr Assange was handcuffed 11…
653
Fixing Google Map Transit Feed Mistakes in Taiwan
Probably one of the nerdier things I do in my free time is fix and report transit errors on Google Maps. Accurate transit directions and schedules are extremely important if we want more people to take transit more often, especially in scenarios where good transit options exist! I do these bug reports and the…
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On the Graying of Gnome
The GNOME project turned 23 this year, and despite equally persistent rumors to the contrary, it's still alive and kicking. Just how alive, though?
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Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters
Americans are in general more worried about the prospects for boys than for girls, and for their own sons more than their own daughters, according to new data from the American Family Survey.
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San Francisco Residents Are Leaving at an Unprecedented Rate
NorthStar Moving Company is the best mover in San Francisco, CA with a 4.66 out of 5 rating and 93% positive reviews. Compare top-rated companies, pricing, and get quotes.
658
Why We Sleep: A Tale of Institutional Failure
In our previous installment of this podcast, we learned from independent researcher Alexey Guzey that famed sleep researcher Matthew Walker seems to have committed research misconduct in his bestselling book, Why We Sleep. Walker is a University of California professor, Google researcher, and Ted talk star, and his…
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Twitter, Responsibility, and Accountability
Twitter went too far last week for reasons that go back to 2016 and the unfair blaming of tech for media’s mistakes.
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Apple Silicon and losing our legacy
[Edit] This post sparked a conversation on Ycombinator ! I am concerned about Apple's move to its own home-grown processors. It's not because I'm worried about the new silicon, or Apple's ability to make high-performance CPUs, or even because I am worried about changing architectures. I survived…