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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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The Great Bifurcation
Tracing the evolution of tech’s three eras, and why the fourth era — the Metaverse — is defined by its bifurcation with the physical world.
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Sam Altman Wants Your Eyeball
Last week, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman announced in San Francisco that the World project he co-founded, formerly known as Worldcoin, is opening six stores across the United States, allowing users of the project's app to scan their eyeballs. This is worrisome, to say the least.
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Elite Biases Make Policy Biases
A 2014 paper predicted U.S.
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Reflections on our Responsible Scaling Policy
Lessons from implementing our first Responsible Scaling Policy, which focuses on catastrophic safety failures and misuse of frontier models.
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‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics
Researchers have created a plant-based, sustainable, scalable material that could replace single-use plastics in many consumer products.
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1 in 6 retirees are considering returning to work, and 53% want remote positions
In the last few years, the pandemic and inflation in the U.S. have upended peoples’ lives in different levels making young people adjust their retirement goals.
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What could have been
Even if we manage to snap out of the AI bubble, we are never going to get these years back. I can only be left to wonder what could have been.
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The Myth of Bananaland
The marketing and reality of the United Fruit Company
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'Zero trust’ security is a poor choice of words
Consider the user's perspective when naming a security initiative
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Cybersecurity and the curse of binary thinking
Working in information/cybersecurity and technology risk is a fascinating and challenging career, as I’ve covered here. There is, mostly, a great spirit of sharing and collaboration among security professionals. However, I’ve observed one disturbing and growing trend in the past few years that might be characterized…
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SFO Quiet Airport (2025)
The airport targeted gate announcements, overlapping PA messages, and tenant music. Instead of blasting departure calls terminal-wide, messages are limited to each gate and their immediate surroundings. In 2020, they worked with airlines to centralize and reduce announcements, cutting 40% of the paging.
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EFF letter to FTC on X consent order [pdf]
Strong safeguards on our information require eagle-eyed oversight when that data is abused and misused for profiteering ventures. X’s actions not only showed us this in the past, but continue to do so in the present day.
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France's largest semiconductor company got nationalized in plain sight (2022)
A power struggle was actually China encroaching on France's Largest Company. France decided to nationalize instead.
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The NSA Is Hoarding Vulnerabilities
The National Security Agency is lying to us. We know that because data stolen from an NSA server was dumped on the Internet. The agency is hoarding information about security vulnerabilities in the products you use, because it wants to use it to hack others’ computers. Those vulnerabilities aren’t being reported, and…
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Technology as It Should Be
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
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The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
I recently listened to a discussion of knowledge work in the browser. Along the way people imagined idealized workflows and the tools that could enable them. This result felt familiar from concept videos since forever (such as this old Mozilla concept video ):
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EU DSA: Industry and government interests prevail over citizens’ digital rights
After 16 hours of discussion, negotiators from the European Parliament and EU governments have just made deal on a new EU Digital Services Act. Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer sat at the negotiating table as Rapporteur for the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and summarises: "We were able to p
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The Melancholy of Subculture Society
Internet links small groups, helping dissolve big groups; good, bad? But a bit sad.
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Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads
Lessons from the plagiarists of the steppe
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Own your own data
A new system would allow individuals to pick and choose what data to share with websites and mobile apps.
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