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Confessions of a Necromancer
Kind people already sent donations that will make my childrens' lives easier, when I'm not there any more. Thank you enormously! :-)
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 2,107 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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Forget privacy: you're terrible at targeting anyway
I don't mind letting your programs see my private data as long as I get something useful in exchange. But that's not what happens. A forme...
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The Wire in HD
This tale begins and ends with a fellow named Bob Colesberry, who taught me as much as he could about filmmaking in the three or four years I was privileged to work with him. To those who knew Bob, it will provoke warm memories to say that he was not a language guy; he understood image, and story, and the delicate way…
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T-Mobile’s Binge On Optimization is Just Throttling, Applies Indiscriminately
Back in November, T-Mobile announced a new service for its mobile customers called Binge On, in which video streams from certain websites don’t count against customers’ data caps.[fn]To be fair, T-Mobile’s plans don’t have traditional data caps—they just slow down to “2G” speeds once customers...
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Money Laundering and AML Compliance
A brief overview of what money laundering is, what financial institutions do about it, and why.
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Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
And a plea to think seriously about climate change without getting distracted
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Benjamin Button Reviews the New MacBook Pro
The new MacBook Pro shows that Apple is finally becoming serious about developers.
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What Twitter Can Be
Disclaimers: 1) This is a very long read. Thinking about a company and using its product obsessively for nine years straight will do that to you. 2) My funds and I own a lot of Twitter stock. 3) I do not … Continue reading →
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How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain
Yesterday at the CogX conference, I sat in a room listening to companies pitch their blockchain based startups. Because I hate myself. One in particular caught my attention. On the surface it seems to solve an important economic problem - art forgery and provenance. By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain"…
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How printers and Photoshop detect and refuse to process images of currency
Professor Steven J. Murdoch
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Facebook is a Ponzi Scheme
Quill Grid: The Starlink for AI becomes a network. An optional, opt-in distributed AI grid where idle Quill One devices share spare capacity, earn credits, and donate AI hours.
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On me, and the Media Lab
(Please be sure to read the addendum at the end of this post.) A week ago last Friday, I spoke to Joi Ito about the release of documents that accuse Media Lab co-founder Marvin Minsky of involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific crimes.* Joi told me that evening that the Media Lab’s ties to Epstein went… Read More »On…
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Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino
Who decided these personalized Siri features should go in the WWDC keynote, with a promise they’d arrive in the coming year, when, at the time, they were in such an unfinished state they could not be demoed to the media even in a controlled environment? Three months later, who decided Apple should double down and…
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Can Apple read your iMessages?
About a year ago I wrote a short post urging Apple to publish the technical details of iMessage encryption. I’d love tell you that Apple saw my influential crypto blogging and fell all over t…
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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, …
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Diversity and Startups
Sexism in tech is real. One of the most insidious things happening in the debate is people claiming versions of “other industries may have problems with sexism, but our industry doesn’t.” Both men and women claim this, even though it keeps getting harder to do in the face of shocks like the Tinder texts. We know there…
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Futurist prediction methods and accuracy
I've been reading a lot of predictions from people who are looking to understand what problems humanity will face 10-50 years out (and sometimes longer) in order to work in areas that will be instrumental for the future and wondering how accurate these predictions of the future are. The timeframe of predictions that…
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Our World in Data: Suicide
Suicide rates can be reduced with greater understanding and support for people at risk.
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A National Emergency Library to Provide Digitized Books
To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners…
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The first serious infowar is now engaged
by John Perry Barlow Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.We have no elected...
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Excess Automobile Deaths as a Result of 9/11
People commented about a point I made in a recent essay: In the months after 9/11, so many people chose to drive instead of fly that the resulting deaths dwarfed the deaths from the terrorist attack itself, because cars are much more dangerous than airplanes. Yes, that’s wrong. Where I said “months,” I should have…
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The curious history of NovaMin toothpaste (2018)
I buy my toothpaste from overseas through eBay. Wonder why?
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The Just-World Fallacy
The Misconception: People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it. The Truth: The beneficiaries of good fortune often do nothing to earn it, and bad people often g…
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Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union
Apple announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store impacting developers’ apps in the EU to comply with the DMA.