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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 1,050 posts.
XMPP, a comeback story
Everyone loves a comeback story. Can a 20 year old overlooked technology make a comeback as a completely decentralized, free, and scalable technology for the growing masses of people who value freedom and privacy?
Conspiracy: In Theory and Practice
Would you like to know a secret?
Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia
In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, we'll restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing news on Facebook.
Windows Refund Day (1999)
Anyway, a few people from SVLUG , including Don Marti, Rick Moen (yes he was there ), Chris DiBona, the world famous Nick Moffitt, and Tabinda Khan, organized the Bay Area windows refund effort. Since at the Linux tea party , microsoft showed up at our meeting point to try to deter us from going to their offices in…
Short fat engineers are undervalued
Professionals supposedly come in two shapes: either short and fat, or tall and skinny, meaning their skill set is either broad or deep.
I have a lot to say about Signal’s Cellebrite hack
This blog post is based off of a talk I gave on May 12, 2021 at the Stanford Computer Science Department’s weekly lunch talk series on computer security topics. Full disclosure: I’ve done some consulting work for Signal, albeit not on anything like this issue. (I kinda doubt
Google is now a Visionary Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
Our top sponsors—companies who step forward to make the biggest investment in Python and its community—not only use Python for their own internal development, but also offer Python as a crucial part of the products they offer to their own customers. That is certainly true of Google, the Python Software Foundation’s…
Facebook Disabled My Account After I Criticized Them
Facebook unfriended me. Why? So far as I can tell, it’s because I’ve been using Facebook to advocate for decentralization of social media. And apparently th ...
Reflections as the Internet Archive turns 25
A Library of Everything As a young man, I wanted to help make a new medium that would be a step forward from Gutenberg's invention hundreds of years before. By building a Library of Everything in the digital age, I thought the opportunity was not just to make it available to everybody in the world,
Europe's Software Problem
This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Europe’s communication needs are currently almost exclusively delivered by Chinese hardware that connects us to US-based platforms. For a variety of reasons, this is not a good idea. As stated recently by Charles Michel, President of the…
Peer-reviewed papers are getting increasingly boring
The number of researchers and peer-review publications is growing exponentially. It has been estimated that the number of researchers in the world doubles every 16 years and the number of research outputs is increasing even faster. If you accept that published research papers are an accurate measure of our scientific…
My personal wishlist for a decentralized social network
I'd be interested in a decentralized social network with network-layer anonymity, grassroots content delivery, and customizable moderation.
Dude, where’s my stuff
The global supply chain mess will require increased vaccination and acquired immunity, semiconductor capacity expansion and the end of extraordinary housing/labor supports to resolve. A close look at some very anomalous charts on shipping, semiconductors, inventories, labor shortages, foreclosures and mortality.
Why in the world would you own bonds?
…Bond markets offer ridiculously low yields? Founder and Co-CIO Ray Dalio describes this new paradigm and implications for investors.
FedEx shipping damage creates fractured artworks
Since 2007, artist Walead Beshty has been cleverly using FedEx’s shipping infrastructure to create a series of artworks. He constructs glass objects that fit ex
The high price of mistrust
When we can’t trust each other, nothing works. As we participate in our communities less and less, we find it harder to feel other people are trustworthy. But if we can bring back a sense of trust in the people around us, the rewards are incredible.
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)
Well I'm in the working world again. I've found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it's returning to normal after my nine months of traveling. Beca...
Nevada cops use civil forfeiture to steal a veterans life savings
Last February, while driving down a Nevada highway on the way to visit his daughters, Stephen Lara was robbed in plain sight. But his assailants […]
Publish and Perish
Coronavirus gain-of-function research comes from playing the "Science Game"
Software Freedom Conservancy files GPL lawsuit against Vizio
The Software Freedom Conservancy provides a non-profit home and services to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects.