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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation
This page is no longer available. Order to comply or sanctions issued by the CNIL may be made public. In this case, a time limit shall be specified in the decision. Once this time period has expired, the organisations that have been given formal notice or sanctioned are no longer identified in the public decision. For…
I'm becoming AI-blind
Recently I've been catching myself having these little moments at work, when I'm trying to read a document someone has sent me and my brain somehow refuses to analyze it. It feels like I'm reading it, but I'm unable to focus on its content. I sat down to analyze these situations and realized they all have a common…
Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
In 2013, a failing founder posted their story on Hacker News (link). The responses were overwhelmingly supportive: "Failure is just an event, not who you are." "Get back up and try again!"
ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to Wired . You are probably asking "What is SoundThinking," because the company rebranded last year. They used to be called ShotSpotter, and their outdoor acoustic gunfire detection system still goes by the ShotSpotter name.
Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)
I'm 99.99% sure that my writing this letter will have no effect, but my conscience tells me to write it anyway. Danziger's cartoon has pushed me out of my lethargy.
Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning
Show HN is Hacker News’ “showcase” page where makers show and discuss what they’ve built. A few days ago I shared my own project(https://news.ycombinator.com...
EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
foodwatch laboratory tests reveal the presence of pesticide residues in everyday foods — including substances not approved in the EU.
The unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation
Should AI systems treat different demographic groups unequally?
Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
Octopuses, crabs and lobsters will receive greater welfare protection following an LSE report demonstrating they have capacity to experience pain or distress.
My positive experience as a woman in tech
Women speaking up about the sexism they have experienced in tech is great for raising awareness about the issues. However, when no positive stories get out, the overall picture painted is bleak, which could scare even more women away .
China blocks Wikimedia from entering World Intellectual Property Organization
5 October 2021, San Francisco, CA, USA — China today blocked the Wikimedia Foundation’s bid for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for the second time after the Foundation’s initial application in 2020. WIPO is the United Nations (UN) organization that develops international…
New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste
The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials.
Happy 20th birthday Debian
Today is Debian's 20 anniversary. This anniversary would have been impossible without a strong community of users and developers. That's why for its commemoration, we asked the Debian community what Debian meant to them. Below you have a...
EU Agencies Falsely Report More Than 550 Archive.org URLs as Terrorist Content
CORRECTION: This post previously identified the sender of the 550 falsely identified URLs as Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU). The sender was in fact, the French national Internet Referral Unit, using Europol's application, which sends the email from an @europol.europa.eu address. The EU IRU has informed…
What are the mysterious light sources on light pollution maps?
I got my first telescope in 2017, in time for the Great American Eclipse. I started paying attention to the concept of light pollution, including finding detailed maps of what places had high or lo…
The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
Antitrust critics say that homebuilding monopolies are the real culprit of America’s housing woes. I looked into some of their claims. They don’t hold up.
EFF Wins Access to License Plate Reader Data to Study Law Enforcement Use
San Francisco—Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) have reached an agreement with Los Angeles law enforcement agencies under which the police and sheriff’s departments will turn over license plate data they...
How Money Moves Around The Banking System
Twitter went mad last week because somebody had transferred almost $150m in a single Bitcoin transaction. This tweet was typical: There was much comment about how expensive or difficult this would …