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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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You are being followed: The business of social media surveillance
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It's Been a Year and Georgia.gov Continues to Be Hacked
Illegal drug transactions facilitated through Georgia's employee portal
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The Soul of a Pedicab Driver
The Soul of a Pedicab Driver, by Carl Etnier.
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Court Rules That “Patent Troll” Is Opinion, Not Defamation
Free speech in the patent world saw a big win on Friday, when the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that calling someone a “patent troll” doesn’t constitute defamation. The court’s opinion [PDF] is good news for critics of abusive patent litigation, and anyone who values robust public debate around...
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Icelandic Pirate Party enters parliament
The Icelandic Pirate Party has entered Parliament. This is clear as all the votes have been counted, with the Pirate Party at 5.1% as...
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Romhack.ing's Internet Archive Mirror No Longer Available
Classic game mods and resources
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Copyright troll lawsuit blows up in face of Righthaven
Righthaven is attempting to make a business out of suing Internet websites for copyright infringement. It has filed 180 copyright actions so far —without ever first asking that a work be removed from the target website—in each case alleging “willful infringement” and attempting to extract...
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So Far, So Good
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
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Disappointing Unsealing Decision in Aaron Swartz Case
The public lost another battle in the U.S. v. Aaron Swartz case, this one over transparency. On May 13, 2013, the U.S. District Court judge handling the prosecution sided with the government, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR and refused to make public any information in the case...
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ACLU and EFF Sue Over Warrantless Phone and Laptop Searches at U.S. Border
Lawsuit on Behalf of 11 Travelers Challenges Searches of Electronic Devices as Unconstitutional
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Being fat is a trap
This has been a difficult article to write. Partly because this is a painful topic for many, and partly because I have to be completely open and vulnerable to write about it. I only write this in the hope it can help others in similar situations. Nothing in this article is meant to judge you. If someone judges you for…
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Ask a Female Engineer: Interviewing and Company Culture
Read more on Y Combinator's blog.
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The Mobility Trap: Why We'll Never Fix Congestion by Speeding Up Traffic
Love to hate congestion? We’ll never fix it by obsessing over speed or traffic delays. We need to rethink our whole transportation debate, starting with this premise: it’s not about how fast you can go. It’s about what you can get to.
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Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel
Or How Competition Returns to Elite Colleges
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There are now more people over sixty-four than children younger than five
What is the age profile of populations around the world? How did it change and what will the age structure of populations look like in the future?
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Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)
The Linux kernel is licenced under the GPLv2. There are several notable things about this:
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The Hyperloop was always a scam
It's time to be honest about Musk's vacuum tube to nowhere
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If AI chatbots are the future, I hate it
About a week ago, my home Internet (AT&T Fiber) went from the ~1 Gbps I pay for down to about 100 Mbps (see how I monitor my home Internet with a Pi). It wasn't too inconvenient, and I considered waiting it out to see if the speed recovered at some point, because latency was fine. But as you can see around 7/7 on that…
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We don’t trade with ants
When discussing advanced AI, sometimes the following exchanges happens: “Perhaps advanced AI won’t kill us. Perhaps it will trade with us” “We don’t trade with ants” I think it’s interesting to get clear on exactly why we don’t trade with ants, and whether it is relevant to the AI situation. When a person says “we…
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No Need for Retirement When Utopia Is Around the Corner
I’ve mentioned before my interest in the history and development of nuclear weapons . Currently, I’m reading The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War…
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Less human AI agents, please
Nial – Knowledge work and artificial intelligence.
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Do we need copyright? (2012)
The concept of property is a social construction. Animals, such as cats, can own a piece of food, or a territory, but only as long as they are able to personally maintain a credible threat of violence. And animals can only defend concrete, physical properties, such as an area, a dead bird or a tree. … Continue reading…