4231
How to identify an immoral maze
Previously in sequence: Moloch Hasn’t Won, Perfect Competition, Imperfect Competition, Does Big Business Hate Your Family?, What is Life in an Immoral Maze?, Stripping Away the Protections, What is…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
4232
What to do if you’re stopped by the police
When I was 5, I saw the Karate Kid. I saw that bad guys could beat me up, and I had no recourse if I didn't know karate. I promptly signed up for martial arts classes.
4233
4234
Why I Quit Using Google
So I was recently asked why I prefer to use free and open source software over more conventional and popular proprietary software and services. A few years ago I was an avid Google user. I was deep…
4235
4236
Facebook's PR feels broken
Facebook’s communications operation has begun to feel like its completely broken down over the past few days.
4237
A Big Little Idea Called Legibility (2010)
James C. Scott's fascinating and seminal book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Imp rove the Human Condition Have Failed , examines how, across…
4238
The President and the Bomb, Part IV
Why the problem of "the President and the bomb" isn't about the "crazy President," but something far more pernicious and possible.
4239
A Sick Giant
Available today
4240
I opened a link some random person sent me and I got raided (2015)
Personal Blog of Christian Haschek
4241
How Bees Argue
The book Honeybee Democracy, published in 2010, has been sitting on my shelf for many years.
4242
Bruce Perens: Invasion of the Ethical Licenses (2019)
About 23 years ago, I created the Debian Free Software Guidelines to help the Debian developers decide what software was permissible to include in Debian, which aspired to be 100% Free Software, and what should be consigned to a "non-free" repository upon which Debian would never depend. Nine months later, those…
4243
The Most Abandoned Books on GoodReads (2019)
Which books on GoodReads are most difficult to finish? Estimating proportions in December 2019 gives an entirely different result than absolute counts.
4244
Unremarkables
There has never been a better time to be remarkable, nor a worse time to be unremarkable.
4245
The Astonishing Prescience of Nam June Paik
I hadn’t heard of Nam June Paik until I went to his exhibition at Tate Modern a few weeks ago.
4246
Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade
For the past ten years, I have written a lengthy year-end series, documenting some of the dominant narratives and trends in education technology. I think it is worthwhile, as the decade draws to a ...
4247
Software Disenchantment (2018)
Everything is going to hell and nobody seems to care
4248
What Will Happen in the 2020s
It’s 2020. Time to look forward to the decade that is upon us. One of my favorite quotes, attributed to Bill Gates, is that people overestimate what will happen in a year and underestimate what will happen in a decade. This is an important decade for mankind. It is a decade in which we will […]
4249
What Happened in the 2010s
My friend Steve Kane suggested I take a longer view in my pair of year end posts this year: What, no decade end/decade ahead posts? 😕 — Steven Kane (@stevenkane) December 26, 2019 And so I will. Here are the big things that happened in tech, startups, business, and more in the decade that is […]
4250
Datamining Bandersnatch
You may have heard about Bandersnatch , an interactive film released on Netflix as part of the Black Mirror series. I’ve heard about it when it was released, but didn’t get around to watch it until recently, and I was surprised at how deep and thorough the implementation is. The film consists of:
4251
German expressions that don’t exist in English
The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” I wonder if he would have said so if his native language wasn’t German. Whether one agrees with it or not (I personally would do so partially!), there’s some modern neuroscience that backs important portions…
4252
Linux doesn't have Photoshop
Linux doesn’t have Photoshop. One common rant I get to hear when I try to help someone to switch to Linux. It is almost 2020 and say what? people still agree with this statement.
4253
Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books
A recent judgement makes it a breach of copyright to sell pre-owned eBooks. Do publishers really want to deter everyone from buying eBooks?
4254
4255
4256
Randomize HN: Removing the vote threshold for getting to the front page
You ever notice that there's this funny threshold for getting to the front page on sites like HN? The exact threshold varies depending on how much traffic there is, but, for articles that aren't wildly popular, there's this moment when the article is at N-1 votes. There is, perhaps, a 60% chance that the vote will…
4257
4258
Fast
San Francisco proposed a new bus lane on Van Ness in 2001. It opened in 2022 , yielding a project duration of around 7,600 days. “The project has been delayed due to an increase of wet weather since the project started,” said Paul Rose, a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson. The project cost…
4259
The modern web is becoming unusable
Some thoughts about the modern web
4260
Welcome to Gentoo is Rice, the Volume goes to 11 here.
Welcome, this page is dedicated to the Linux Community's greatest ambassadors, Gentoo users. Like the annoying teenager next door with a 90hp import sporting a 6 foot tall bolt-on wing, Gentoo users are proof that society is best served by roving gangs of armed vigilantes, dishing out swift, cold justice with baseball…