The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,981 posts.
This is about a reaction I noticed with myself in response to membership programs, patreons and individual sponsorship as I've run into significantly more of these following Corona. The advertising-supported model has confirmed many of the concerns about its sustainability and creators are looking for more reliable…
A Universal Basic Income (UBI) would improve everyone’s lives, increase our free time, empower workers, and ensure everyone has food and a roof over their head. These are noble goals, but obviously there’s a downside or it would already be implemented, right?
Most of the civilized world years ago shifted to requiring computer chips in payment cards that make it far more expensive and difficult for thieves to clone and use them for fraud. One notable exception is the United States, which is still lurching toward this goal. Here’s a look at the havoc that lag has wrought, as…
Congress is exactly where discussions about tech and society should be happening. Then, a list of questions for every tech CEO.
A chat with the PornHub development team, about working in the adult website industry, technology, virtual reality, and more.
The NY Times profile quotes me saying “We don’t really have an Amazon problem. What we have is a deep, societal problem with an unacceptable imbalance of power and wealth.” But the URL contained the string “amazon-critic-tim-bray” and the HTML <title> says “Tim Bray Is Not Done With Amazon”. I feel like I’m being…
The tale of the July 4th surprise $2700 AWS bill. It is more nuanced than you think and might have exposed a bug.
Chase Sunset & Vine, 2012. Painting by Alex Schaefer There is a fundamental asymmetry to banking. Banks don't like to share higher inte...
This is a story of how a software company was able to start a conversation with 8x more of their users by cutting the length of their emails by 90%. You could set up a test of this method in less than an hour. The Problem One of the most
Torn between whether to write on Medium or post on your own blog? Here's a cautionary tale.
There are four Internets: China versus the U.S., and the E.U. and India. India’s potential new model rests on Jio.
Why ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ isn't as great a thinking tool as you might think.
Don't be the gravy
GPT-3 is indeed a large step forward for AI text-generation, but there are very many caveats with the popular demos and use cases.
Twitter was thrown into chaos on Wednesday after accounts for some of the world’s most recognizable public figures, executives and celebrities starting tweeting out links to bitcoin scams. Twitter says the attack happened because someone tricked or coerced an employee into providing access to internal Twitter…
How TikTok exposed Facebook’s blindspot, thanks to its Chinese roots, and why those Chinese roots make TikTok a genuine concern.
Come for the schools, be used as pawns for politics.
The AirPods Pro “Rattlegate” The first generation of the AirPods was generally regarded as a perfect product. “Apple at its best!” was the universally accepted opinion. I used them for a long time. No speaker issues, no battery issues. Excited for the noise cancelling feature I ordered the AirPods Pro and for the…
You’re intrigued by biotech and want to explore ideas in the area. Where do you start?
On a Spring 2019 walk in Beijing I saw two street sweepers at a sunny corner. They were beat-up looking and grizzled but probably younger than me. They’d paused work to smoke and talk. One told a story; the other’s eyes widened and then he laughed so hard he had to bend over, leaning on his broom. I suspect their jobs…
Inflections in finance and tech. Click to read The Diff, by Byrne Hobart, a Substack publication.
