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Avatar: The Holocaust We Will Not See
Avatar half-tells a story we would all prefer to forget
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 470 posts.
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This Apple-HTC Patent Thing
There are two aspects surrounding Apple’s patent litigation against HTC that demand further consideration. First, the severe problems with the U.S. patent system as a whole, particularly regarding software patents. Second, the strategic implications of Apple’s decision to file suit.
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Things Economists Agree On
If we could get the American public to endorse all these propositions, I am sure their leaders would quickly follow, and public policy would be much improved. That is why economics education is so important.
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A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning
Chelsea Manning enlisted in the United States Army in 2007. Back then, she was known as Bradley Manning and struggled with gender identity disorder. This identity crisis made it difficult for Manning to fit into the military’s masculine and patriarchal environment. Throughout Manning’s career in the military, it was…
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Indian Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested
Updates:8/28Alex Halderman: Indian E-Voting Researcher Freed After Seven Days in Police Custody 8/26Alex Halderman: Indian E-Voting Researcher Remains in Police Custody 8/24Ed Felten: It’s Time for India to Face its E-Voting Problem 8/22Rop Gonggrijp: Hari is in jail :-( About four months ago, Ed Felten blogged about…
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How to Access the Internet (A Guide from 2025)
Welcome to the Internet! By following the simple rules below, you make sure your internet experience is smooth and risk free.
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Bravo, Apple
Finally, Apple is doing away with those arrogant upstarts who think then can write a few lines in a high level language and call it a program. Their new developer agreement requires:
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Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that "publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy" come...
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Worst-Case Thinking
At a security conference recently, the moderator asked the panel of distinguished cybersecurity leaders what their nightmare scenario was. The answers were the predictable array of large-scale attacks: against our communications infrastructure, against the power grid, against the financial system, in combination with…
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Why No Jobs
Around the time of the Great Depression, a man named John Maynard Keynes made an incredible discovery. The reason so many people were out of work was not really because of irresponsible banks or high taxes or reckless government policy. It was really much simpler than all that: there wasn’t enough money.
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Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective
Update, 2017-09-25 Hi! This essay is undergoing a long-overdue rewrite. In the meantime, consider my 2015 follow-up essay, Obergefell v. Hodges: the database engineering perspective....
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