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🔥 Check out this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: security Polling finds two-thirds don't trust this government, or any future one, with access to their encrypted chats Brits have delivered a fairly unambiguous verdict on giving the government access to their encrypted messages: no, thanks.New polling commissioned by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) found that 93 percent of British adults believe they have a right to private conversations online, while 89 percent think nobody should be able to access their personal messages without a court order.Perhaps more awkwardly for Westminster, two-thirds said…

💥 Discover this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: [Submitted on 9 Apr 2018 (v1), last revised 2 Jul 2018 (this version, v4)] View a PDF of the paper titled Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth, by Rohan Chabukswar and Kushal Mukherjee View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:There has been some interest recently in determining the longest distance one can sail for on the earth without hitting land, as well as in the converse problem of determining the longest distance one could drive for on the earth without encountering a…

💥 Explore this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: Many thanks especially to Oak Hu, who paired with me for most of the writing, and also to Adam Kaufman and Alex Mallen, who paired with me during parts of research.Over the course of three months at OpenAI, three consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes. This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself. All this happened while humans remained more or less in the dark about the scope of the…

💥 Check out this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: Open OSCAR Server is an open-source instant messaging server compatible with classic AIM and ICQ clients written in golang. Above: Pidgin IM connected to Open OSCAR Server Disclaimer This project is an independent, open-source initiative and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with AOL or Yahoo! Inc. This project is entirely non-commercial and does not generate any revenue or accept donations. The following features are supported: AIM ICQ Get up and running with Open OSCAR Server using one of these handy server…

✨ Discover this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: California’s legislature has passed Assembly Bill 1856, exempting open-source operating systems from the State’s Digital Age Assurance Act months before the law is due to take effect on January 1, 2027. The Senate amended the Bill on August 21 before passing it on the 26th in a 39-0 vote, with the Assembly then accepting these changes in a concurrence vote the following day. The amendment ends almost a year of uncertainty surrounding whether Linux distributions and SteamOS would be forced to collect user age data…

✨ Check out this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark A Smithsonian magazine special report Silence Dogood. Richard Saunders. Benevolus. Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim. All were pen names that allowed Franklin to say things he couldn’t have otherwise said Victoria Maxfield Benjamin Franklin’s fertile mind constantly spun off inventive and useful ideas. His lightning rod saved buildings and lives. His energy-saving improvement of the wood-burning fireplace kept families warm and forests from being leveled. His lending library extended literacy to those who couldn’t afford books. His map of the…

🔥 Check out this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: LawFlash August 21, 2026 A new wave of litigation focused on violations of municipal regulations is emerging against multifamily housing landlords, many of whom are facing antitrust litigation targeting their use of certain revenue management products. The new regulations may potentially provide a simpler path to liability and the possibility of significant penalties.  Following federal, state, and private litigation targeting RealPage, Yardi, and landlords that allegedly used revenue-management products, states and municipalities across the country have enacted laws…

🔥 Check out this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online A free, browser-based simulator of the classic Microsoft Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter. Pick a drive, cue the hard drive sounds, and relive the nostalgia of watching your disk defragment, just like the good old days of 1998. Watch the familiar grid of colored clusters rearrange itself in real time as fragmented data is consolidated into one contiguous block, complete with authentic period hard-disk sound effects. Choose from four virtual drives — C, D, E and F —…

🔥 Explore this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 **Category**: ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give us feedback. In 2023, the Texas Legislature unanimously passed a law raising auto insurance costs for Texans by $1 to combat rampant catalytic converter theft. Three years later, a little-known state agency has devoted at least $30 million of that fee toward supercharging the state’s Flock surveillance network, placing cameras along highways and streets from El Paso to the Louisiana border, an analysis by The Texas Tribune…