Best of 2020

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2020. 913 posts.

Society, Policy & Culture
341

The cult of the free must die

For a terrible half an hour last night I thought Firefox was on the brink of disappearing as an independent browser and rendering engine. I was frightened silly by the rumour that Mozilla laid off significant portions of its browser team. The official press release being full of useless corporate open web blah didn’t…

352

‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang

‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang. What’s the problem? The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority1 citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs…