Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 2,107 posts.
The first question any thoughtful person might ask when reading the title of this essay is, "Hard for whom?" A reasonable question. After all, Chinese people seem to learn it just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the "terrible twos", it's Chinese they use to drive their parents crazy, and in a few years the…
From Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!:
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning…
Lazy kids. Whatever happened to hard work? A sure sign of my descent into senility is bitchin’ and moanin’ about “kids these days,” and how they won’t or can’t d…
In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker".
When legally forced to provide information to government or law enforcement agencies, we'll disclose the transcripts of that communication here.
People are living longer across the world, but large differences remain. Explore global data on life expectancy and how it has changed over time.
One of the better things I’ve done with this blog was help popularize Nicholas Shackel’s “motte and bailey doctrine”. But I’ve recently been reminded I didn’t do…
As a part of our ongoing pursuit to humanize the web, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Kagi Small Web initiative. What is Kagi Small Web? To begin with, while there is no...
TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. "nom nom" . This blog post is not for you.
It seems like there's actually a model we could use for legalizing marijuana. From 1919 to 1933 alcohol went from being legal to illegal back to legal again. It happened. Lots of people died when alcohol was illegal. More probably die now that it is legal. And technically, marijuana is legal in California for medical…
Wikipedia's "NPOV" is dead. The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy. There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call "false balance."
Published December 2, 2020 Since autumn of 2019, I’ve been bearish on the dollar, meaning I have a longish-term outlook towards a weaker dollar. This view began forming when the Federal Reserve cut interest rates in summer 2019, and then the view solidified with a catalyst after an overnight repo rate spike in…
Which countries are net importers and exports of emissions? How much CO2 is ‘offshored’?
There have been several updates appended to this page as of 2020-11-16, please see below. Also available in: Türkçe Français Español Português Português…
Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
For decades, municipal broadband operations have been subject to a minefield of restrictions and barriers designed to make the prospect of establishing or maintaining a community broadband network costly, difficult, and unsustainable. The Biden administration initially pledged that the Broadband Equity, Access, and…
I am deeply honored and humbled by the CEO role. I’m also grateful for the messages of support. At the same time, I know there are concerns about my commitment to fostering equality and welcome for LGBT individuals at Mozilla. I hope to lay those concerns to rest, first by making a set of commitments to you. More…
Human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of climate change. The world needs to decarbonize to reduce them.
Miguel de Icaza's Blog
I. Vox’s David Roberts writes about Donald Trump and the rise of tribal epistemology. It’s got a long and complicated argument which I can’t really do justice to here, but the the…
We could reduce the amount of land used for grazing and croplands used to grow animal feed.
Russia's propaganda model is high-volume and multichannel, and it disseminates messages without regard for the truth. It is rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it does not commit to consistency.
[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “…
