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The European Commission versus Android
Examining the history of Android explains why the European Commission may be right to fine Google for its actions around Android, even as the reasoning feels off.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox
I’m late to posting this, but it’s important enough to be worth sharing anyway: Sandberg, Drexler, and Ord on Dissolving the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox asks: given the immense num…
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How should we evaluate progress in AI?
Improving artificial intelligence research with scientific testing, design practice, and meta-rational choice of methods and criteria
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The hotel bathroom puzzle
In his wonderful book The Evolution of Useful Things, the author and civil engineer Henry Petroski shares one of the most famous case studies in the history of design: Before it was destroyed by fi…
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Legal Systems Very Different from Ours
This is an old page, put up as part of a course I taught in 2012. The more recent draft is here . The final draft of this book has now been published and is available on Amazon as either a paperback or a kindle .
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Mark Zuckerberg and his empire of oily rags
Surveillance capitalism sucks: it improves the scattershot, low-performance success-rate of untargeted advertising (well below 1 percent) and doubles or triples it (to well below 1 percent!).
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How much is time wrong around the world? (2014)
Why Spaniards have dinner so late? A map of the difference between solar time and clock time around the world.
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Mastodon WTF timeline (2017)
In the last few days I've been fortunate to witness an interesting chapter in the Internet's history, and I'm trying to compile a timeline of what has happened while the memories are still reasonably fresh. This is incomplete and a work in progress; I'll be updating it, and n...
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Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
Some people are probably pretty used to various blocking endeavours on social media. I am not one of them…
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There was a time when search engines were a thing, and it seems they still are
There was a time when search engines were a thing. And it seems they still are
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Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution (2015)
How muggles and sociopaths invade and undermine creative subcultures; and how to stop them.
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Bitcoin is a Cult
The Bitcoin community has changed greatly over the years; from technophiles that could explain a Merkle tree in their sleep, to speculators driven by the desire for a quick profit & blockchain startups seeking billion dollar valuations led by people who don’t even know what a Merkle tree is. As the years have gone on…
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“They’ll Just Make It Illegal”
Cryptocurrencies, Public Goods & the State Late last year, I and a colleague from HKS were meeting with a VC I’d gotten to know in San Francisco. As an opening salvo in the conversation, the VC…
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A sad update about a scissors maker that went viral
Back in 2014, a lovely short film by Shaun Bloodworth called The Putter went viral. The film shows Cliff Denton making scissors for Ernest Wright & Sons. Denton
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Personalisation Is Asymmetric Psychological Warfare
Another privacy nightmare. An airline wants its cabin crew to know your birthday and favourite drinks order, to better personalise its service to you. My first instinct is to recoil in horror. It sounds like every dystopian sci-fi epic. But why do I feel this way? Partly it is the lack of genuine personality behind…
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“It’s Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission”
Grace Hopper? Cardinal Barberini? Earl of Peterborough? David Hernandez? Helen Pajama? St. Benedict? Anonymous?
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The most expensive four words in the English language: “This time is different”
There are currently a number of attempts to deploy a cryptocurrency-based decentralized storage network, including MaidSafe, FileCoin, Sia a...
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The software engineer’s guide to asserting dominance in the workplace
As a software engineer, changing jobs is a way of life. Every day, beautiful recruiters from top tech companies reach out to you on…
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The Machine Fired Me
It was 7am when my phone rang. Instead of an alarm, it was my recruiter disturbing me from a pleasant dream. It was too early for a phone call or to be caught off guard, so I did not answer. I went to
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AT&T, Time Warner, and the Need for Neutrality
It is no surprise that a judge allowed the AT&T-Time Warner acquisition to proceed given the government’s poor case; the question is if a better case could have been made. What is ultima…
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New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
The new 25% tariffs announced by the USTR , set to go into effect on July 6th, are decidedly anti-Maker and ironically pro-offshoring. I’ve examined the tariff lists ( List 1 and List 2 ), and it taxes the import of basic components, tools and sub-assemblies, while giving fully assembled goods a free pass. The USTR’s…