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Why We Dominate the Earth
Why did Homo sapiens diverge from the rest of the animal kingdom and go on to dominate the earth? Communication? Cooperation? According to best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari, that barely scratches the surface.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
4622
Ontology Is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (2005)
Based on two talks I gave in the spring of 2005—one entitled "Ontology Is Overrated", and one entitled "Folksonomies & Tags: The rise of user-developed classification."
4623
Google: Please Stop Telling Lies About Me
People who search for me in Google see a Google-generated box which incorrectly says that I am Israeli. Google has ignored my complaints about this; they dont seem to care about the accuracy of the…
4624
My Parents Are Flat Earthers
For decades, my parents have been working up to Flat-Earther beliefs. From Egyptology to Jehovah's Witnesses to theories that human built the Moon billions of years in the future. Surprisingly, it doesn't affect their successful lives very much. For me, it's a fun family pastime.
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Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email
In November 2017, I deactivated my account on Facebook. I didn’t leave Facebook for moral reasons back then but more because it was starting to feel like a waste of time and valuable brain cy…
4627
Airbnb and security camera disclosure
This post got *a lot* of attention. I’m super happy about that because I had been afraid that we had reached a point where we collectively didn’t care about cameras or meaningful disclosure. Although, to that point here’s a comment someone posted: "I just assume that there will be camera constantly recording when I…
4628
No more XS4ALL is unthinkable
They are the example of how it should be, the Dutch ISP called XS4ALL. They were bought in '98 by the former state-owned KPN, but continued to operate independently. Born from a group of hackers and the first ISP in the Netherlands, today they are still the example that we measure other ISPs by.
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Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
Question for Quote Investigator: The host of a video on YouTube mentioned a remarkably prescient quotation from a New York book dealer in the 1960s who predicted that telephones would have screens, and people would read books on those screens selected from a large electronic library. Would you please explore this…
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Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time
Originally designed as a decentralized ecosystem, the Web has undergone a significant centralization in recent years. In order to regain control over our digital self, over the digital aspects of our lives, we need to understand how we arrived at this point and how we can get back on track. This chapter explains the…
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Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist
I was first introduced to Austrian economics during my senior year in high school, when I first read and enjoyed the writings of Mises and Rothbard. The summer before I began my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, I was able to attend the 1989 Mises Institute summer seminar at Stanford, where I met Murray Rothbard and…
4635
Things You Can’t Say About Assange or WikiLeaks
A complete copy of the 140 things that WikiLeaks said journalists weren’t supposed to say about Julian Assange
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75% of med students are on antidepressants, stimulants, or both? (2017)
As scientists, we can’t continue to approach medical education reform as a neurotransmitter deficiency in medical students. Can we?
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Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)
In a beautiful, rollicking piece last month for Aeon Magazine, web developer James Somers ponders the question, Are coders worth it?
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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning…
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A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China
Set up WeChat Pay and AliPay as a foreigner in China: linking a foreign card, loading and transferring RMB, and paying by QR code without cash.
4641
The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands
How Colleges Make More Money Than God By Giving It Away
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Jean Bourgain
I have just learned that Jean Bourgain passed away last week in Belgium, aged 64, after a prolonged battle with cancer. He and Eli Stein were the two mathematicians who most influenced my early ca…
4644
Why everything you have said about the determinants of health expenditure is wrong in one million charts: a response to Noah Smith.
Household income determines health spending, mostly via higher intensity, not prices. US behaviors are consistent with well-measured income in multiple dimensions.
4645
Apple needs to change iPhone’s call UI because robocalls are killing us
Right now, any robocall hacker in the world can instantly take over your phone’s screen, knocking you out of your mobile gaming experience, disrupting you as you check out at the store, or breaking your concentration as you try and type out an email.
4646
Why don't I take military funding? (2004)
Mostly it's a testimony that it's possible to have a successful career in computer science without taking military funding. My position has its roots in the Vietnam War, when I was a conscientious objector, did alternative service instead of submitting to the draft, and joined the Society of Friends (Quakers). During…
4647
Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie
Ok, enough bickering and fighting.
4648
The Internet of Unprofitable Things
Gather 'round children. Uncle Andrew wants to tell you a festive story. The NTPmare shortly after Christmas
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Why Most Software Engineers Lose Nothing by Unionizing
Should software engineers unionize? I can’t give a simple answer to this. There are advantages and disadvantages to enrolling in a collective bargaining arrangement. If the disadvantages didn…