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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 658 posts.
A lot of people are watching the spectacle of Apple vs. the FBI and the Homeland Security Theatre and rubbing their eyes, wondering why Apple (in the person of CEO Tim Cook) is suddenly the knight in shining armour on the side of consumer privacy and civil rights. Apple, after all, is a goliath-sized corporate…
This morning we filed a new lawsuit in federal court against the United States government to stand up for what we believe are our customers’ constitutional and fundamental rights – rights that help protect privacy and promote free expression. This is not a decision we made lightly, and hence we wanted to share…
Stevan Harnad’s “Subversive Proposal” came of age last year. I’m now teaching students younger than Stevan’s proposal, and yet, very little has actually changed in these 21 years. On the contrary, one may even make the case that while efforts […] <a class="more-link"…
In 2012, I signed the Cost of Knowledge pledge, and stopped reviewing for, and publishing in, all Elsevier journals. In the four years since, I’ve adhered closely to this policy; with a coupl…
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
As a kid, I'd always wonder what it was about adults that made them so busy. What could they be possibly doing with all their time? After I (kinda) became one, it hit me. There's an alarmingly large list of things adults do that we never quite grasp until we're there.
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
[German]It seems that Google has established a surveillance function for Android phones. They are claiming the right, to collect and store meta data from incoming/outgoing phone calls and SMS from…
If you live in an economy where officials are corrupt, contracts are hard to enforce, and trust is scarce, everyday transactions are burdensome and time-consuming. If you don’t want to get scammed,…
Alternatively titled ‘Be aware of context, and maybe start using Google AdWords’ Instead
You may have seen the TSA Randomizer on your last flight. A TSA agent holds an iPad. The agent taps the iPad, a large arrow points right or left, and you follow it into a given lane.
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
Urban Confessional: A Free Listening Movement have been Free Listening on street corners for almost a decade. How to Listen When You Disagree is a reflection on listening from the 2016 RNC, and it is more relevant today than ever before.
With only three more years of savings, you can finally afford that two-bedroom condo
I am endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. I've never endorsed a presidential candidate before, but I'm making an exception this year, because this election is exceptional. Donald Trump...
Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups. I’m very please…
Microsoft had an ambitious goal with the launch of Windows 10: a billion devices running the software by the end of 2018. In its quest to reach that goal, the company aggressively pushed Windows 10 on its users and went so far as to offer free upgrades for a whole year. However, the company’s...
Over the last month I've had so many 'fails' from (mostly) large companies that my twitter timeline has started to read like failblog. Have we given up?
I created a bot to respond to these types of emails…
Today, in an unfortunate example of the overreach of the United States’ current copyright law, the Wikimedia Foundation removed the Dutch-language text of The Diary of Anne Frank from Wikisou…
Since 2013, millions of people have turned to Vine to laugh at loops and see creativity unfold. Today, we are sharing the news that in the…
Diversity and inclusion are hard, especially in tech. Doing them right means agreeing on values, setting standards, calling out bad…
The military seized her photographs, quietly depositing them in the National Archives, where they remained mostly unseen and unpublished until 2006.
