1501
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 2,108 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1502
How does the US use water?
Water infrastructure often gets less attention and focus than other types of infrastructure.
1503
The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
Abstract: Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension. The Snowden revelations motivate a reassessment of the political and moral positioning of cryptography. They lead one to…
1504
The Web3 Fraud
By now effectively all ;login:’s readers have heard the term “web3” and “dapps” bandied about as if they are some great revolution. They are not. The technical underpinnings are so terrible that it is clear they exist only to hype the underlying cryptocurrencies. The actual utility of these “decentralized” systems is…
1505
Jack Daniels writes the politest cease and desist notice ever.
Learn why professors appreciate storytelling in essays and how students can use narrative techniques to write stronger academic papers. Practical tips and examples included.
1506
Why the Movie Industry Can't Innovate and the Result is SOPA
This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S.) from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from? From source…
1507
Greece
Greece is a remarkable country full of wonderful people, but along dimensions of development and governance, the place is plainly pretty fucked up. It has been fucked up that way for a long time, for decades at least . This has never been secret. Anyone who has visited Athens knows it has far more in common with…
1508
1509
John McCarthy: The Robot and the Baby
THE ROBOT AND THE BABY
1510
Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse
How a community devoted to thinking clearly incubated salvation stories, abusive experiments, race science, and an affection for autocracy, and why that history matters now that its alumni are asking for public trust on AI.
1511
Inequality in Equalland
Every resident of Equalland has the same life story. From birth until age 18, they live with their parents, earning nothing and spending nothing — their parents cover all their needs. At age 18, they graduate from high school, become independent of their parents, and go to college. The government of Equalland funds…
1512
Death Note: L, Anonymity & Eluding Entropy
Applied Computer Science: On Murder Considered As STEM Field—using information theory to quantify the magnitude of Light Yagami’s mistakes in 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑡𝘩 𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 and considering fixes
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The Egg (2009)
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
1515
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Who smeared Richard Feynman?
Richard Feynman's FBI file contains one very pointed, personal, anonymous attack. But can we figure out who wrote it from the context?
1517
A Failure, but Not of Prediction
I. Vox asks What Went Wrong With The Media’s Coronavirus Coverage? They conclude that the media needs to be better at “not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know”. This rai…
1518
Dana-Farberications at Harvard University
“Imagine what mistakes might be found in the raw data if anyone was allowed to look!” – Sholto David
1519
A Sick Giant
Available today
1520
The Clock in the Mountain
A work crane at the Clock site in western Texas. There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the … Continue reading →
1521
1522
Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction
Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) is a condition in which sexual function does not return to normal after the use of SSRIs and related antidepressants.
1523
Computer Science in Vietnam
During my recent trip to Vietnam I took the opportunity to visit some schools and see how computer science was taught there. Officially, foreigners require permission from the department of education to enter schools. But it's much simpler (and the results are more representative) to simply show up unannounced. A…
1524
LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
This proposal aims to expressly forbid any contributions to Debian written with the use or assistance of large language models (LLMs) or other generative AI tools.
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The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman (2015)
In 1990, Marilyn vos Savant correctly answered a probability puzzle in her column for Parade Magazine. And then, the world called her an idiot.
1527
1528
Learning from Twitter
An issue popped up on Twitter this past week that caused the web site to be generally unusable for many users. It appears as if attempts to scroll were unbearably slow and caused the site to be unresponsive.
1529
Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go from Here
The Senate passed the USA Freedom Act today by 67-32, marking the first time in over thirty years that both houses of Congress have approved a bill placing real restrictions and oversight on the National Security Agency’s surveillance powers. The weakening amendments to the legislation proposed by...
1530
Data Science of the Facebook World
Stephen Wolfram shares interesting Facebook data analysis finds from the Data Donor program of Wolfram|Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook.