1981
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
1982
Nasdaq's Shame
How to rig an index to appease a billionaire
1983
Social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of profound boredom
Pandemic study shows distraction of social media may suck up the time and energy that allow us to find new passions
1984
Life Improvements Since the 1990s
A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.
1985
Why do so few people major in computer science?
The number of people who majored in computer science in the US isn't much higher in 2015 than in 2005. Why do so few students major in computer science?
1986
Ofcom concedes defeat in 4chan case
Insofar as a political organization like Ofcom is even capable of admitting defeat, it did so in the 4chan enforcement today. In testimony before the Commons Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Comm…
1987
The dangers of high status, low wage jobs
This tweet first reads as snarky, then insightful, but give it a few seconds and you’ll realize it’s pointing out a real problem. There are many reasons why an industry can become conce…
1988
Google restricts Android sideloading
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
1989
Startup dudes: Cut the sexist crap
Last week I was speaking on what would have otherwise been a terrific panel. It was Frank Artale from Ignition, Tom Duterme from Groupon M&A, Andy Sack from Lighter Capital & Founder’s Co-op, and me talking about funding & exiting. The only thing that spoiled it was yet another guy in the tech scene putting forth yet…
1990
What programming languages are used late at night?
Do you program in the evening? How about late at night? I enjoy programming as a hobby and I'm a bit of a night owl, so I often code well outside working hours, sometimes past midnight. And whatever time it is, when I run into a bug I visit Stack Overflow. This means that Stack Overflow data can give us insights into…
1991
1992
Happy Birthday OpenStreetMap
18 years ago, OSM Founder Steve Coast posted this invitation to OpenStreetmap’s 1st birthday party.
1993
Apple squandered the Holy Grail
Why Apple Intelligence failed even though everything it's built upon is nearly perfect
1994
Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
News and insights on the Android platform, developer tools, and events.
1995
What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications
I wrote recently about what Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple are doing to your email: how four providers stopped being transport layers and turned into active intermediaries between brands and their customers, parsing, ranking, summarising, and increasingly answering on the recipient's behalf.
1996
1997
Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak
UpGuard has discovered an open database containing information on what appear to be approximately 198 million American voters left misconfigured by a GOP analytics firm.
1998
1999
2000
Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
My head has been spinning after getting a spreadsheet roughly a week ago. Before we dive into my dirty laundry, let’s state the obvious: millions of people have a vague sense that AI is changing things. And LLMs sure are convenient for getting answers quickly. My team and I use Claude and other tools daily. […]
2001
2002
The Constitution Applies When the Government Bans Americans From the Skies
The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful opportunity to object, the ACLU argued in a brief filed last Friday with the federal district court in Oregon.
2003
MIT and Harvard agree to transfer edX to ed-tech firm 2U
MIT and Harvard University announced a major transition for edX, the online platform for university courses: edX’s assets are to be acquired by education technology company 2U, and reorganized as a public benefit company. 2U will transfer $800 million to a nonprofit organization, led by MIT and Harvard, to explore the…
2004
When we got to the scanner, I opted out. Then they opted out.
Writing and Stuff from Isaac Z. Schlueter
2005
No user accounts, by design
Ethics has been central to the F-Droid community from the beginning, with a focus on free software, privacy and user control. A key part of F-Droid’s design ...
2006
Apple memory holed its broken promise for an OCSP opt-out
When you launch an app, macOS connects to Apple's OCSP service to check whether the app's Developer ID code signing certificate has been revoked by Apple. In November 2020, Apple's OCSP service experienced a mass outage , preventing Mac users worldwide from launching apps. In response and remedy to this outage, Apple…
2007
Apple Confirms “Back Doors”, Downplays Their Severity
Apple responded to allegations of hidden services running on iOS devices with this knowledge base article . In it, they outlined three of the big services that I outlined in my talk. So again, Apple has, in a traditional sense, admitted to having backdoors on the device specifically for their own use.
2008
2009
Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
“Internationalization” is, roughly speaking, geek-speak for the process of supporting multiple languages on a website. For a company doing business in multiple countries, it needs to be done - otherwise you’ll risk losing the attention of people who don’t speak your development team’s native language. There are…
2010
An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles
A miracle occurred this week. Everyone I have talked to about it, myself included, is shocked that it happened. It’s important to Understand what happened.Make sure everyone knows it ha…