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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
I’m old enough to remember when age verification bills were pitched as a way to ‘save the kids from porn’ and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like…“the transgender”). We have long cautioned about the dangers of these laws, and pointed out why they are likely to...
The NBA controversy in China highlights a culture clash that both tech companies and the U.S. government need to take to heart. Plus, why Tiktok being Chinese is increasingly a problem.
EFF has been fighting against DRM and the laws behind it for a decade and a half, intervening in the US Broadcast Flag, the UN Broadcasting Treaty, the European DVB CPCM standard, the W3C EME standard and many other skirmishes, battles and even wars over the years. With that long history behind us...
In 1983, at the University of Wisconsin, Dina Bitton, David DeWitt, and Carolyn Turbyfill created a database benchmarking framework . Some of their results included (lower is better):
My challenge: I'm trying to get a computer that doesn't suck Like lots of people I spend about half of my waking life on my laptop, so this really matters. However, I don't want a Mac. Apple...
Claiming that “right-wing voices are being censored,” Republican-led legislatures in Florida and Texas have introduced legislation to “end Big Tech censorship.” They’re right. Conservatives are being censored. But it’s not just conservatives who have their political speech blocked by social media giants.
Software doesn't work. I'm shocked at how often we put up with it. Here's just ...
Since 1851 Amsterdam had a registry that recorded the following innocent pieces of data about the residents: Name, Date of birth, Address, Marital Status, Parents, Profession, Religion, Previous Addresses and Date of Death if deceased. For many years this system served well and was kept meticulously up to date.
Facebook has an interesting feature. It will let you see which companies have associated your off-Facebook activity with your Facebook account. If you visit: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ you'll see what companies are snitching on you to Facebook. Alice St⭕️llmeyer@StollmeyerEU#AirBnB shares your…
53MB of source code leaked from a government endpoint. 269 verification checks. biometric face databases. SAR filings to FinCEN. and the same company that verifies your ChatGPT account.
Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants…
For 3,278 people, it was nonviolent offenses like stealing a $159 jacket or serving as a middleman in the sale of $10 of marijuana. An estimated 65% of them are Black. Many of them were struggling with mental illness, drug dependency or financial desperation when they committed their crimes. None of them will ever…
I asked Jev and 13 other decision models the Trolley Problem.
Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
If you follow Gamefromscratch on Twitter, you may have already seen this tweet I put out last night about a blackmail demand that was made against our YouTube channel:First off, I really want to give a gigantic shout out to all of the people that helped get the message out, the tweets, retweets and even [...]
It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.
Over 80 percent of 200 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Spain have vitamin D deficiency, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Update 5/6/24: A podcast recording of this same panel discussion has also been targeted multiple times on the Spotify platform. The Engelberg Center’s experiences with these are documented here .
When web-based social networks started flourishing nearly two decades ago, they were genuinely social networks. You would sign up for a popular service, follow people you knew or liked and read updates from them. When you posted something, your followers would receive your updates as well. Notifications were genuine…
Google's search preference menu auction, as we predicted, has resulted in DuckDuckGo being eliminated, making it harder for people to get simple privacy.
Privacy regulations such as the GDPR say that you need to seek permission from your website visitors before tracking them. Most GDPR consent banner implementations are deliberately engineered to be…
