2851
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
2852
The Open Web Is Dying
It\'s difficult to comprehend that there would be anything else more important right now than public health and the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the midst of it all
2853
False claims in a widely-cited paper
A couple months ago we had a post, This paper in Management Science has been cited more than 6,000 times. Wall Street executives, top government officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President have all referenced it. It’s fatally flawed, and the scholarly community refuses to do anything about it. which was about…
2854
Italian Anti-Corruption Authority Adopts Onion Services
Anonymity technologies are becoming a legal requirement for public agency and corporate anti-corruption compliance.
2855
Thank HN: Our friend is Safe and Sound
Two weeks ago to the day I asked for your help in finding a lawyer for a HN’er that was about to be arraigned in front of a Delhi judge.
2856
The last time my family was replaced by technology
My great-great-grandfather thought he’d be replaced by technology too. He was a farrier in Mandres-en-Barrois, the small village in rural France where I grew up.
2857
2858
Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected
Caltrain announced at its monthly Board of Directors meeting that regenerative braking on the new trains is generating and sending back to the electric grid approximately 23% of the energy consumed by the system.
2859
I hate screenshots of text
Why do people take screenshots of text?
2860
BBC Modi Documentary Removal
We have observed some confusion about the Internet Archive’s removal of links to a BBC documentary about Indian PM Narendra Modi ("India: the Modi Question"). Internet Archive can confirm that it has removed links in response to DMCA takedown requests from the BBC.
2861
How to disable or avoid intrusive AI
One of the biggest questions I get at Drop-In Time at the library (besides "what is taking up all my cloud storage?") is how to disable or avoid intrusive AI that shows up where people don't want it. This is a guide for people who would like less intrusive AI in their tech environment. Maybe you lik
2862
2863
Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook's claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites. Power Ventures makes a web-...
2864
Sharing National Security Letters with the Public
*On August 10, 2017, we updated this post with additional National Security Letters (NSLs) we received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been free…
2865
Should this be a map or 500 maps?
500 priests, cartographic n00bism, and the limits of scale
2866
Hacker News Fires Steve Yegge
It's great that you aren't quitting google, but it seems like you misspoke rather than being misinterpreted. It's kind of random that you claim that people misheard the word "project" when it is easy to check the actual video and realize that you didn't say that word. Your exact quote was "I am officially quitting…
2867
DuckDuckGo Donates $300K to Raise the Standard of Trust Online
At DuckDuckGo, our vision is to raise the standard of trust online. For the 7th year we're making donations to organizations that share a similar vision.
2868
2869
Ok, it’s time to freak out about AI
There are at least two kinds of catastrophe scenarios, and both are getting more plausible
2870
The Coming Meltdown In College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Soon
Remember the housing meltdown ? Tough to forget isn’t it. The formula for the housing boom and bust was simple. A lot of easy money being lent to buyers who couldn’t afford the money they were borrowing. That money was then spent on homes with the expectation that the price of the home would go up and it could easily…
2871
Why Stack Overflow Sucks and Participating There is Impossible
StackExchange/StackOverflow is broke. Real broke. Have you tried to participate in it? If so then you know how broke it is. But for those of you who haven’t sit back and get a view into fru…
2872
2873
Penny Auctions
Unless you use an ad blocker, you probably notice ads for penny auction sites from time to time. They usually advertise with sketchy messages like “iPhone sold for $14.21.” They can sell iPhones such low prices because of their unusual auction system where each bid increases the auction price by only one cent. This…
2874
Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library
Last Tuesday we launched a National Emergency Library—1.4M digitized books available to users without a waitlist—in response to the rolling wave of school and library closures that remain in place to date. We’ve received dozens of messages of thanks from teachers and school librarians, who can now help their students…
2875
2876
No, Google did not hike the price of a .dev domain from $12 to $850
But domain pricing is very confusing. Let's demystify it.
2877
Police search homes of Zwiebelfreunde board members and OpenLab in Augsburg
On June 20th, board members of the „Zwiebelfreunde“ association in multiple German cities had their homes searched under the dubious pretence that they were „witnesses“ while their computers and...
2878
2879
IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
An article on why IRC is still the only chat protocol worth using, and a positive look at the surprisingly autistic-friendly Microsoft Comic Chat IRC client.
2880
Reasons Not to Use Apple (2018)
Apple reportedly had objections to what Jon Stewart said in his video program — it canceled the show after he had criticized China, and something the article describes as "AI". (It could be that what he criticized was actually large language models, which may be an important issue but are not "intelligence" .)