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Bill Watterson Commencement Speech (1990)
A speech Bill Watterson gave at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 141 posts.
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Statement on 'Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses' review
June 2024 update: Following engagement with the authors, the decision has been made that changes to the plain language summary and abstract would not impact the scientific integrity of the content and so Cochrane is no longer seeking updates to the plain language summary and abstract of this version of the review…
33
Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
Signal is the world’s most widely used truly private messaging app, and our cryptographic technologies provide extra layers of privacy beyond the Signal app itself. Since launching in 2013, the Signal Protocol—our end-to-end encryption technology—has become the de facto standard for private commu...
34
“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”
The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now
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Apple previews Live Speech, Personal Voice, and more new accessibility features
Apple today previewed software features for cognitive, vision, hearing, and mobility accessibility, along with innovative tools for individuals who are nonspeaking or at risk of losing their ability to speak.
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New AI classifier for indicating AI-written text
We’re launching a classifier trained to distinguish between AI-written and human-written text.
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Goodbye, section 2.8 and hello to Cloudflare’s new terms of service
We’re excited to announce new updates that will modernize our terms of service and hopefully cut down on customer confusion and frustration.
38
How many people have ever lived on Earth?
The global population milestone of 8 billion represents nearly 7% of the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth.
39
Autoenshittification
Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car's digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare – but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist…
40
I Am No Longer Speaking at RustConf 2023
I will no longer be speaking at RustConf 2023 about A (Possible) Future for Compile-Time Programming.
41
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
An allegory against complacency about aging and death.
42
Global Perspective on U.S. Health Care
This cross-national comparison of health care systems assesses U.S. health spending, outcomes, status, and service use relative to 12 other high-income countries.
43
The expanding dark forest and generative AI
Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content
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“Pay or Okay” on tech news site heise.de illegal, decides German DPA
The Data Protection Authority of Lower Saxony (LfD) decided that the “Pay or Okay” solution used by heise.de was unlawful
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The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
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How is money created?
Most of the money in the economy is created by banks when they provide loans.
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High U.S. Health Care Spending
Administrative costs, prescription drugs, and physician and nurse wages may contribute to excess health spending in the U.S., compared with peer nations.
48
Money Laundering and AML Compliance
A brief overview of what money laundering is, what financial institutions do about it, and why.
49
Archive.today: on the trail of mysterious guerrilla archivists of the Internet
Do you like reading articles in publications like Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal or the Economist, but can’t afford to pay what can be hundreds of dollars a year in subscriptions? If so, …
50
French govt. says users of uBlock Origin, Signal etc. are potential terrorists
This article was written on the basis of information related to the so-called "8 December" case (see the footnotes for a global overview of the case, we focus on the "numerical part" of it in this article<fn>For a summary of the 8 December affair see in particular the testimonies available in thi
51
Urgent: Sign the petition now
Nearly 40,000 of all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank were small businesses. If swift action isn’t taken, over 100,000 people could soon lose their jobs.
52
We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
( This is the text of a talk I delivered at the Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in Stuttgart on Friday November 10th, 2023. Note: early draft, contains some typos, I'll fix them next week when I get home. )
53
South Korea’s online security dead end
Websites in South Korea often require installation of “security applications.” Not only do these mandatory applications not help security, way too often they introduce issues.
54
Keeping Open Source Open
Every user of Rocky Linux is valued and their contributions matter. From software engineers to IT professionals and hobbyists, together, we are all pa...
55
I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it
Voltaire? François-Marie Arouet? S. G. Tallentyre? Evelyn Beatrice Hall? Ignazio Silone? Douglas Young? Norbert Guterman?
56
Microsoft is using illegal bribes in the Middle East and Africa
After paying fines for violations in Hungary and South Africa, Microsoft agreed to stop the practice—but I have evidence that I believe shows they continue to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act elsewhere.By Yasser ElabdI was recruited by Microsoft in 1998, and I helped bring the company’s products throughout…
57
Introducing Superalignment
We need scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us. To solve this problem within four years, we’re starting a new team, co-led by Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, and dedicating 20% of the compute we’ve secured to date to this effort. We’re looking for excellent ML…
58
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?
John Maynard Keynes? Paul Samuelson? Winston Churchill? Joan Robinson? Apocryphal?
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Defamed by ChatGPT
Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that “it remains to be seen” whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “dangerous.” I would beg to differ. I have been writing about th…