Topics /
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
In a stunning victory for nonprofits and NGOs around the world working in the public interest, ICANN today roundly rejected Ethos Capital’s plan to transform the .ORG domain registry into a heavily indebted for-profit entity. This is an important victory that recognizes the registry’s long legacy...
We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the is…
ChatGPT is rolling out age prediction to estimate if accounts are under or over 18, applying safeguards for teens and refining accuracy over time.
nolan caudill's internet house
Inequality in the United States, which began its most recent rise in the late 1970s, continues to surge in the...
The best new phones come with the ability to shoot 108 megapixel photos, record 4K video with stereo sound, and pack the results into a terabyte of onboard storage. But what do you do when that sto…
When the GDPR became applicable on 25 May 2018, it was perceived as a watershed moment. The past 4 years have shown that a law alone does not change business models.
Important article slash rant about the recent story involving Linus Torvalds and his behavior in the Linux kernel development circles, the subsequent apology, the fallout, and the disturbing implications and ramifications of the whole affair on the long-term survival of Linux as a whole
A couple of months ago a new paper was released that examined the lead-crime hypothesis. Its conclusion is that there's little evidence for an association, and if there is one it's pretty small. I haven't commented on it, but not because of its negative conclusion. It's because the paper is a meta-analysis. I'm fairly…
Let's marinate in some hard truths. Dissect what is in front of our eyes.
🕵️ 40 bundles of soft plastic packaging waste were tracked through take-back schemes across England over 12 months.
This post sparked a great conversation on Hacker News! See the comments here. “Quantity has a quality of its own”–Attribution contested A significant factor in the power of states throughout history has been sheer numbers. Spain was able to control an overseas empire to a significantly greater degree than Portugal…
Health care provided by nurse practitioners and physician assistants expected to rise
Most food safety regulations say that Peking duck should be illegal. But it's not, so what gives?
A new bombshell scoop from NBC News revealed an internal U.S. Border Patrol memo claiming that 30 percent of camera towers that compose the agency's "Remote Video Surveillance System" (RVSS) program are broken. Except, this isn't a bombshell. What should actually be shocking is that Congressional leaders are acting…
The only antidote to propaganda and malicious ‘leaks’ is transparency. After so much disinformation on my presentation at the Eurogroup of the Greek government’s position, the only response is to post the precise words uttered within. Read them and judge for yourselves whether the Greek government’s proposals…
Who is the AI villain we should be angry at?
As the Covid-19 crisis progresses, censorship programs advance, amid calls for China-style control of the Internet
Mortgages are popularly thought of as loans, but to understand the industry, it's better to model them as complex manufactured products.
At least, not according to Facebook data
I recently lost my Facebook account for two months, and was significantly cut off from certain aspects of society during that time. This is the dark side of account bans.
What is life? This question keeps many people awake at night and has led to rafts of definitions, some involving features (procreation, metabolism and so forth), some involving chemistry, entropy or energy flux and some are of a more philosophical bent. A BBC article noted there are over 100 definitions of life and it…
A blog by Professor Farooq Kperogi about Nigeria, America, politics, education, culture, identity, media, language, English grammar, and much more.
If there is a new tech cold war, it is one with shots fired over a decade ago, largely by China. The questions going forward are about both leverage and values.
