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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
American values differ from those of Western Europeans in many important ways. Most notably, Americans are more individualistic and are less supportive of a strong safety net than are the publics of Spain, Britain, France and Germany. However, Americans are coming closer to Europeans in not seeing their culture as…
Research highlights how a lack of vegetation and shade exposes vulnerable residents to heightened health risks.
Previously in this series
Within a few days of the announcement that libraries, schools and colleges across the nation would be closing due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, we launched the temporary National Emergency Library to provide books to support emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual…
The tech behind peer-to-peer (P2P) social networks such as Secure Scuttlebutt enforces permanency. Absolute permanency isn’t what you want in a social network.
And why I am trying to minimize my dependence on external libraries (whenever possible).
This week we’re going to take a detour into understanding the structure of academia, in particular the different kinds of ‘professors’ and their academic ranks in the American sys…
The October 29, 2013 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter is the 500th edition. So rather than answer a reader’s question, I’m celebrating this milestone by making up my own question, and doing my best to answer it. (What? You don’t subscribe to the free, weekly e-mail Ask The Headhunter Newsletter? Don’t miss the next…
If you wanna do crimes, make them incredibly complicated and technical. Like the hustlers that came into the bookstore I worked at and spun these long-ass stories about why they needed money for a Greyhound ticket home.
Chris Adamson notes a significant contraction in iOS and related conferences recently (via Michael Tsai ).
When entertaining the idea of communities issuing their own money (called complementary currencies ), people often wonder if that idea has been successfully done before. In doing our research into the concept, we encountered a number of stories where communities issued their own currency and produced a prosperity…
Eric Park's website
The rise of tooling for vulnerability detection combined with pressure driven by Vendor Due Diligence is causing a massive enterprise freezeout for non-mainstream technologies across the board. Of particular concern is the impact this will have on the adoption of functional programming in enterprise and small business…
I'm continuing to follow the Aaron Swartz case , which is grinding away (disclosure: I know him socially, and have admired his work). The latest development, which seems to have not been reported anywhere but here (scoop! :-) breaking story! :-)), is that the prosecution has issued a "Superseding Indictment" . That…
The people are the best thing about a life in science fiction – eclectic, bright, opinionated, talented – people like Elise Mathson: writer, jeweller, and all-round brilliant person (she's up for a Hugo this year).
A little rest area by the road to a better web.
I read something depressing last Monday, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
1 Aug, 2017 Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube (Google/Alphabet, Inc) have formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and Amber Rudd is asking them to quietly drop end-to-end encryption from their products. You should not believe a single word any of those companies tells you about end-to-end…
Despite dealing with issues like depression, suicide, domestic violence, and PTSD, these apps share data freely and raise many security concerns
Google has recently announced their intention to remove the H.264 video codec from its Chrome browser. This decision has been smeared as an evil campaign for controlling video on the web, akin to not-invented-here syndrome. It’s also been lauded as the push that the web needs to remain open and free. Mostly, it’s been…
Psiphon, a software company that helps internet users under oppressive regimes evade online censorship, plans to leave Canada if the lawful-access bill passes.
[A Federal Air Marshal (FAM) tasked with surveillance of an airline passenger targeted by Quiet Skies lists and/or rules followed the traveler out to the curb and recorded the license plate number of the vehicle in which she left the airport, so that her airline reservations could be integrated with license plate…
Imagine a Silicon Valley strategy implemented with the United States phone system 100 years ago. It's not a pretty picture.
