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Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014
Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually.
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Is This Justice? Charging an Eighth Grader with a Felony for “Hacking”
A 14-year-old eighth grader in Florida, Domanik Green, has been charged with a felony for “hacking” his teacher’s computer. The “hacking” in this instance was using a widely known password to change the desktop background of his teacher’s computer with an image of two men kissing. The outrage of...
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Chris Poole
Back in 2011, USV invested in Chris Poole’s startup Canvas. I worked closely with Chris on that investment and they built something great called DrawQuest. But it did not turn into a sustainable business and eventually Chris shut it down. All through this time, Chris ran and managed 4chan, a service he built and…
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Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”
My translation of DIE ZEIT’s interview with Thomas Piketty is now hosted by TheWire.in. Read it here.
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The time has come to stand up for the GPL
The Software Freedom Conservancy provides a non-profit home and services to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects.
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Fukushima
When I visited Chernobyl 7 years ago, I didn’t think that a similar disaster could take place anywhere ever again, and certainly not in Japan.
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What can a technologist do about climate change?
Frustrated by a sense of global mispriorities , I blurted out some snarky and mildly regrettable tweets on the lack of attention to climate change in the tech industry (Twitter being a sublime medium for the snarky and regrettable). Climate change is the problem of our time, it’s everyone’s problem, and most of our…
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The Software Revolution
In human history, there have been three great technological revolutions and many smaller ones. The three great ones are the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the one we are...
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What taking my daughter to a comic book store taught me
I like to think that I'm a pretty decent human being. Don't think I didn't hear that snort of derision...lighten up - I didn't say "perfect", I just said "prett
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I Do Not Agree to Your Terms
Apple introduced their News app at WWDC, and the other day they sent me an e-mail saying they want to include this blog in News.
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Automakers Say You Don’t Really Own Your Car
EFF is fighting for vehicle owners’ rights to inspect the code that runs their vehicles and to repair and modify their vehicles, or have a mechanic of their choice do the work. At the moment, the anti-circumvention prohibition in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act arguably restricts vehicle...
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An Open Letter to Tim Cook Regarding the App Store 70/30 Revenue Split
The official blog of the AnyList team.
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Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock
With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian. Ian started the Debian project in August of 1993, releasing the first versions of Debian later...
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TPP banning requirements to transfer or access to source code of software
This is a video by Zack Struver about Senator Bernie Sander’s proposal to expand Veterans access to patented medical inventions. The video discusses both the proposal by Senator Sanders to give the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs the authority to… Continue Reading →
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YouTube Ditches Flash, and It Hardly Matters
Last week, Google announced that its Youtube service would default to using HTML5 video instead of Flash. Once upon a time, this would have been cause for celebration: after all, Flash is a proprietary technology owned by one company, a frequent source of critical vulnerabilities that expose...
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YouTube puts the final nail in the loudness wars' coffin
This is HUGE.
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Jury Duty
There are twelve of us left. The first thing the prosecutor did during voir dire was ask all the men of color whether we trusted cops…
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Baseless Calls to Expand Surveillance Fit Familiar, Cynical Pattern
Like clockwork, cynical calls to expand mass surveillance practices—by continuing the domestic telephone records collection and restricting access to strong encryption—came immediately following the Paris attacks. These calls came before the smoke had even cleared, much less before a serious...
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Firefox, you're supposed to be in my pocket, not the other way around
Personal blog of Julien (jvoisin) Voisin
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