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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 597 posts.
So why do we know so little about it?The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly building what will likely become the largest database of biometric and biographic data on citizens and foreigners in the United States. The agency’s new Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART)...
Epistemic Status: Resident Expert I’m a little late on this, which was an old promise to Robin Hanson (not that he asked for it). I was motivated to deal with this again by the launch of Augu…
There are currently a number of attempts to deploy a cryptocurrency-based decentralized storage network, including MaidSafe, FileCoin, Sia a...
A cautionary tutorial. Let's make a sentiment classifier!¶Sentiment analysis is a very frequently-implemented task in NLP, and it's no surprise. Recognizing whether people are expressing positi
Today, we’re announcing updates to our Free and Pro accounts that mark a new step forward for Flickr. To be candid, we’re driving toward the future of Flickr with one eye on the rearview mirror; we…
Popular Science has a series of photos taken by EPA staff in the early years of the agency after it was formed in the 1970s, that have since been digitized. It’
The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Software — blender.org
Amazon’s face surveillance technology is the target of growing opposition nationwide, and today, there are 28 more causes for concern. In a test the ACLU recently conducted of the facial recognition tool, called “Rekognition,” the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people…
Research and cultural heritage institutions are facing increasing costs to provide long-term public access to historically valuable collections of scientific data, born-digital records, and other digital artifacts. With many institutions moving data to cloud services, data sharing and access costs have become more…
ANN ARBOR—Improvisational theater training can reduce fearfulness and anxiety among teens struggling with social interactions, a new University of Michigan study suggests. School-based improv theater—performing without a script or preparation—may be effective for social phobias and anxiety disord
Shifting common knowledge on Saudi Arabia has infected the narrative around SoftBank's Vision Fund, which in turn places unicorn valuations at risk.
East Wind Nut Butters manufactures premium bulk and wholesale nut & seed butters, including Organic Valencia Peanut Butter, Almond Butter, Cashew Butter, and Organic Tahini for foodservice and private-label partners.
Amazon to invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs across the two new headquarters, and announces Nashville as new Operations Center of Excellence with more than 5,000 jobs.
Air India Express flight IX611 struck an ILS lighting tower and damaged a nearby brick wall at the departure end of RWY 27 in Trichy on departure.
$25 million will be given to participants, with no strings attached.
Mozilla is continuing to fight for net neutrality — in the courts, alongside Americans, on Twitter and, today, by joining the Red Alert protest. The Red
We are asking a court to declare the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (“FOSTA”) unconstitutional and prevent it from being enforced. The law was written so poorly that it actually criminalizes a substantial amount of protected speech and, according to experts,...
As Machine Learning practitioners, when faced with a task, we usually select or train a model primarily based on how well it performs on that task. For example, say we're building a system to classify whether a movie review is positive or negative. We take 5 different models and see how well each performs this task:
Facebook’s (much deserved) media nightmare continued this week when it came under criticism for spamming members who signed up for two-factor authentication. This was followed by charges that its P…
5th Edition of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector Released
Data collection and analysis by Hasan Al-Jamaly, Maximillian Siemers, Owen Shen, and Nicole Stone.
Here are some of our favorite Hacker News comments from April and May. If you see something cool like this, email us at hn@ycombinator.com [mailto:hn@ycombinator.com] so we can add it to the next list. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HN users across countries discuss…
One Thursday afternoon last month, dozens of fires and explosions rocked three towns along the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. By the end of the day 131 buildings were damaged or destroyed, one person was killed, and more than 20 were injured. Suspicion focused immediately on the natural gas system. It looked like a…
