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Court Rules No Suspicion Needed for Laptop Searches at Border
Decision Dismisses ACLU Lawsuit Challenging DHS Search Policy as Unconstitutional...
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 515 posts.
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Yahoo breaks every mailing list in the world including the IETF's
Search IETF mail list archives
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New NSA Documents Shine More Light into Black Box of Executive Order 12333
What is arguably the most powerful of the U.S. government’s surveillance authorities is also the most secretive, and it operates with the least amount of oversight.
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The new 501(c)(3) and the future of free software in the US
Note: I'm a software developer, not a lawyer. I suspect I'm not the only coder whose eyes roll to the back of their head when legal or tax matters are discussed. However, if you're involved in the free software movement—especially in the United States—you may want to read through this, as long as it may...
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The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies
Update: I originally quoted the average price of office space as $36 / square foot / month, where ...
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Judge Releases Information about Police Use of Stingray Cell Phone Trackers
A Florida judge has sided with the ACLU to order release of information about police use of “stingrays,” which are invasive surveillance devices that send out powerful signals to trick cell phones into transmitting their locations and identifying information. The Tallahassee judge’s pro-transparency decision stands in…
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Dear clueless assholes: stop bashing bash and GNU
This is a defense of the most prolific and dedicated public servant that has graced the world in my lifetime. One man has added hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of value to the global economy. This man has worked tirelessly for the benefit of everyone around him. It is impossible…
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A Traditional City Primer
The Traditional City simply refers to the pattern of development that human civilization has built in for millenia.
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The worst year of my life
Anna Debenham, based in London, UK
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XKCD “Time” Wins Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story
The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon 3, has announced the 2014 Hugo Award winners. 3587 valid ballots were received and counted in the final ballot. BEST NOVEL Ancillary Justice, by An…
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Engineer's Guide to US Visas
engineers-guide-to-us-visas
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We may have witnessed a NSA "Shotgiant" TAO-like action
Last Friday, the New York Times reported that the NSA has hacked/infiltrated Huawei, a big Chinese network hardware firm. We may have witne...
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US bans students from “blacklisted” countries from getting access to Coursera
I’m following a Coursera course entitled “Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World” and just received a rather odd email. All students from Syria, Sudan, Iran and Cuba will no…
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Federal Court Throws Out Six Weeks of Warrantless Video Surveillance
Update: On December 15, Judge Edward Shea issued his written opinion in United States v. Vargas, which you can read here. The public got an early holiday gift today when a federal court agreed with us that six weeks of continually video recording the frontyard of someone's home without a search...
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Firm Inefficiency
Economists are often stereotyped as claiming that firms are very economically efficient, i.e., that they very effectively minimize costs and maximize profits.
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Yik Yak Hack
Yik Yak is an anonymous, controversial social media application that allows people to make posts that are visible to other users within ~2 miles. Often landing a top 10 spot in the iOS App Store, this app has become increasingly popular with high school and college students. Due to the anonymous nature of the app…
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Is the Toilet Free?
A collection of thoughts, ideas and unsolicited opinion from Made by Many: articles, reflections, talks and interviews from the people doing the work.
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What does the NSA think of academic cryptographers?
Brighten Godfrey was one of my officemates when we were grad students at Berkeley. He’s now a highly-successful computer networking professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, …
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iOS 8 Privacy Updates
A summary of all iOS 8 Security and Privacy updates and their importance.
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Evicted in San Francisco
The story of one elderly woman's eviction in San Francisco.