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Society, Policy & Culture

The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 913 posts.

2020
67

Who is Facebook's mysterious “Lan Tim 2”?

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…

68

I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

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 [...]

74

Studio Ghibli releases 400 free-to-use images

今月から、スタジオジブリ作品の場面写真の提供を開始します。 今月からスタジオジブリ全作品の場面写真を順次提供することになりました。今月は、新しい作品を中心に 8作品、合計400枚提供します。 常識の範囲でご自由にお使いください。 思い出のマーニー50枚 かぐや姫の物語50枚 風立ちぬ50枚 コクリ

77

The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

How do early career researchers (ECRs) use Sci-Hub and why? In this post David Nicholas assesses early career researcher attitudes towards the journal pirating site, finding a strong preference for Sci-Hub amongst French ECRs. He raises the question, will Sci-Hub prove the ultimate disruptor and bring down the…

78

Modeling a Wealth Tax

A wealth tax will usually have a threshold at which it starts. How much difference would a high threshold make? To model that, we need to make some assumptions about the initial value of your stock and the growth rate. Suppose your stock is initially worth $2 million, and the company's trajectory is as follows: the…

79

No, Cellebrite Cannot “Break Signal Encryption”

Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to. Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to co...

80

The EARN IT Act Violates the US Constitution

Since senators introduced the EARN IT Act (S. 3398) in early March, EFF has called attention to the many ways in which the bill would be a disaster for Internet users’ free speech and security. We’ve explained how the EARN IT Act could be used to drastically undermine encryption. Although the bill...

85

John Conway

I was greatly saddened to learn that John Conway died yesterday from COVID-19, aged 82. My own mathematical areas of expertise are somewhat far from Conway’s; I have played for instance with …

86

The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

To reach its potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite — that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down a blind alley.