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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
NetBlocks metrics confirm the restriction of Twitter in Russia from the morning of Saturday 26 February 2022. Facebook servers have subsequently been restricted as of Sunday. The restrictions are in ...
That Earth-circling U.S. military X-37B robotic space drone is closing in on a new long-duration record.
New markets, new ideas, and new creators are actually what copyright is supposed to promote, not restrict. Using copyright to lock in existing gatekeepers and massive rightsholders’ profits helps neither the public nor individual artists.
It’s been just over fours years since I started mentoring high school students at work , and I recently began mentoring my fourth such student. That’s enough students for me to start observing patterns. Of course, each arrives with different computer knowledge and experience, but there have been two consistent and…
Many of you have been waiting for this, some even asked me to do it. So, this is the moment. I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors’ da…
FDR has always been one of my favorite presidents, second maybe to Lincoln. Both were men the establishment assumed were one of them until, to their horror, they governed like they weren't. Both could trash the opposition in one breath and take the moral high ground in the next.
The latest version of this post, along with the blog, has moved. TL;DR: Mozilla is largely dependent on Yahoo! We must make sure it is funded by individuals’ donations and a diverse roster of…
Comparing the process of furnishing two apartments—one in Ecuador, the other in the U.S.—was a reminder: order and efficiency aren't always what they're cracked up to be.
Drugs cause addiction*. It is a rhetoric deeply ingrained into the American psyche based on a series of rat experimentations that placed one rat alone in a cage with two water bottles--one containing cocaine or heroin, the other just water. The rat chose the cocaine- or heroin-laced water every time until it died. The…
James Grant invited me to address the annual conference of Grant's Interest Rate Observer . This was an intimidating prospect, the previous...
You may or may not know that the incidence and relapse rates of schizophrenia in African-Caribbean males in Western countries has been…
Iran is in the midst of one of the world’s most severe communications blackouts. This post uses Kentik data to detail how this historic event unfolded, where this event lies in the context of previous Iranian shutdowns, and finally discusses what might be in store next for Iran.
We’re asking the Supreme Court to reaffirm the importance of the software interoperability that has allowed developers to write millions of applications for billions of …
If you are 17 or under, a federal prosecutor could have charged you with computer hacking just for reading Seventeen magazine online—until today. It’s not because the law got any better. Earlier today, we wrote about news sites that alarmingly prohibit their youth audiences from accessing the news...
The "celebrity threesome injuction" forbids publication in England and Wales of the identities of a famous married couple who reportedly had sex with someone else. In other words, nothing bad, or important.
The findings of this analysis paint a nuanced picture of just how prevalent political speech is among U.S. adults on Twitter.
The Amazon Kindle is full of all sorts of amazing, delightful touches — the sort of thing you’d expect from an Apple product. For example, when you first take your Kindle out of its (gorgeous!) box, it boots right up knowing your name and logged into your account. This is actually out-Apple-ing Apple: it’s possible…
When BU’s Fallou Ngom found a note written by his late father, in a language that looked like Arabic but sounded like Wolof, it opened the door to a lifetime of discovery in African language and history.
Congress must ensure that the next generation of Americans is able to speak and associate freely, without fear of surveillance.
Are commenters ’late to this thread’ indeed late?
At least seven more Russian, Belarusian, Latvian, and Israeli journalists and activists have been targeted with Pegasus within the EU.
Archived MIT Admissions blog post 'An MIT Underwear Exposé (and Sorting Hat),' published April 11, 2016. Preserved for historical context; not maintained as current admissions policy.
Welcome to the new home of the Flickr Foundation! We are a new US 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to keeping the wonderful Flickr collection around for 100 years. Big goals, little steps.
OR: How to eat fewer asparagus beetles
I have signed the StopWatching.Us letter today. I am not a US citizen, so even if the letter succeeds, I don’t think my privacy will improve substantially. But at least I did something.
