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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
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Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting
Today, at the Microsoft Build developer conference, CEO Satya Nadella announced ElectionGuard, a free open-source software development kit (SDK) from our Defending Democracy Program. ElectionGuard will make voting secure, more accessible, and more efficient anywhere it’s used in the United States or in democratic…
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California Megafires Are Solvable
The basics on how we got to now, why it matters for all Americans, and how we can fix it together.
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Some observations on the final text of the European Digital Identity framework
The final text of the update to the eIDAS regulation (establishing a framework for a European Digital Identity) has been agreed upon. In a last minute effort to improve the text, we wrote an open letter criticising the proposal on weakening the security of the web, and providing too few safeguards protecting users of…
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Getting a 787 back in the air after a diversion
On Wednesday, 12 October at 38,000 feet over the North Pacific Ocean, American Airlines flight 288 developed an issue with its number 2 engine, the General Electric GEnx-1B engine on the right hand side of the aircraft. The crew decided the best course of action was to divert the aircraft, but over the Pacific…
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I think I'm done thinking about GenAI for now
The conversation isn’t over, but I don’t think I have much to add to it.
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Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist
I was first introduced to Austrian economics during my senior year in high school, when I first read and enjoyed the writings of Mises and Rothbard. The summer before I began my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, I was able to attend the 1989 Mises Institute summer seminar at Stanford, where I met Murray Rothbard and…
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I bought an encyclopedia
NOTE: This is a companion post to my piece in Public Books, "The Encylopedia Project: Or, how to know in…
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Enlisting in the Fight Against Link Rot
Google is killing a decade of its shortened links. Will you enlist in the fight against link rot?
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UK version of “Online Harms Bill” wants to prefilter content without due process
Experts warn that ISPs would use black-box AI to comply Like our piece on Canada's Cyber-Security Bill earlier this year, this item was flagged in my work for the Internet Society, Canada Chapter, but this post does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the ISCC. It concerns a legal opinion…
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Vice.com Reveals John McAfee's Location In iPhone Metadata
Some time ago, the website Vice.com posted an article with the somewhat full of themselves title “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers”. In it, they reveal how they have been traveling with John for the better part of the week.
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International chess federation sanctions Kramnik
The FIDE Ethics & Disciplinary Commission (EDC) has issued its decision in disciplinary proceedings involving former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik .
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Decentralization is about diversity
Take control of your web by running your own personal cloud server with Sandstorm.
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Sci-Hub users cost ASA journals thousands of downloads
UPDATED to include Sci-Hub data from six months: September 2015–February 2016, and correcting a coding error that inflated download counts. Well, they might not have lost the downloads, but t…
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How the Military Will Hack the Election
Task Force Raider’s role in 2026 elections has military officers uneasy
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Why Is Booz Allen Renting Us Back Our Own National Parks?
In 2017, consulting giant Booz Allen cut a deal with the government to extract junk fees from Americans who want to use Federal lands and waters for hunting or fishing. Will Congress or Biden act?
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Golden Gate Claude
When we amplify the "Golden Gate Bridge" feature, Claude's responses focus on the bridge. For a short time, anyone can interact with this model.
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Ways to think long-term: a cognitive toolkit for good ancestors
None of these six ways is enough alone to create a long-term revolution of the human mind — a fundamental shift in our perception of time. But together — and when practised by a critical mass of people and organisations — a new age of long-term thinking could emerge out of their synergy.
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Verizon Routing Millions of IP Addresses for Cybercrime Gangs
Over the past few years, spammers have sought out large ranges of IP addresses. By spreading out their sending patterns across a wide range of IP addresses, they can attempt to defeat spam filters and get spam and malware emails delivered where they are not wanted. However, IPv4 addresses are getting scarce and hard…
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Helsinki Central Library chosen as the best new public library
On Tuesday 27 August Helsinki Central Library Oodi was chosen as the winner of the 2019 Public Library of the Year award in the World Library and Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), which is currently underway in Athens. The annually presented Public…
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Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
Privacy is only dead if we let it die. Be careful about the all-or-nothing mindset in data privacy, it can do more damage than good to the cause. While striving for improvements, do not forget to cheer and celebrate each small win.
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Cancer vaccine begins Phase I clinical trials
Cross-disciplinary team from Harvard University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute brings novel therapeutic cancer vaccine to human clinical trials
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Switching Jobs
When people move to different jobs, here’s where they go.
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Help Make the 19th Century Searchable
In 1847, Frederick Douglass started a newspaper advocating the abolition of slavery that ran until 1851. After the Civil War, there was a newspaper for freed slaves, the Freedmen’s Record. The Internet Archive is bringing these and many more works online for free public access. But there’s a problem: Our Optical…
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Lithuania: Students stop university from using only proprietary authentication
Vilnius Tech officials attempted to enforce the use of proprietary two factor identification (2FA) methods. Some students were concerned the methods would ...