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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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An Ode to Linux Desktop Users Everywhere
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. The package makers, the man page writers. The rounded windows in Qt mixed with the less rounded windows of GTK. The ones who literally see things differently because of missing proprietary fonts. They’re not fond of rules, installation wizards, …
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So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
It is with deep regret that I announce the closure of Whitechapel Bell Foundry , the world’s most famous bell foundry and Britain’s oldest manufacturing company. Below you can read my interview with Alan Hughes, the last in a line of bell founders stretching back to 1420, who will retire next year at sixty-eight years…
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Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative
Education in Victoria is succeeding in some areas, but failing in many others – we have new school buildings, but they are overflowing and the school rolls climbing so quickly that teachers a…
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Thought as a Technology
Have you ever felt awe and delight upon first experiencing a computer interface? An interface that surprised you with its strangeness, with a sense of entering an alien world?
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European Union dedicated questionnaire on the Encryption of Data
On both sides of Atlantic the debate around strong cryptography frequently resurfaces. Proponents of weakening cryptography or introduction of backdoors (or "golden keys") cite national security. Technologists and activists oppose such proposals, citing freedoms and cybersecurity. Regulating cryptography is of course…
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I don’t belong in tech
Trying to find my place in the place I love, and constantly failing
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A Simple Explanation of How Shares Move Around the Securities Settlement System
I explained here how money moves around the banking system and how the Bitcoin system causes us to revisit our assumptions about what a payment system must look like. In this post, I turn my attent…
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Top Books on Amazon Based on Number of HN Users Linking Them in Comments
This visualization shows the top 29 books ranked by the number of unique users linking to corresponding Amazon pages in Hacker News comments from Oct 2006 to Oct 2015.
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Geocities Cage at the Exodus Datacenter
This is what the inside of the cage looks like. Nearly all of the machines in the cage are Sun Ultra 2s. Attached to nearly all of these boxes are dual sets of MTI JBODs ("Just a Box Of Disks") (either 2500s or 8300s). The newer JBODs (the 8300) make up the majority of the storage arrays in the cage. Nearly all of the…
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To Know If the Election Was Hacked, Look at the Ballots
You may have read at NYMag that I’ve been in discussions with the Clinton campaign about whether it might wish to seek recounts in critical…
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Microsoft and Linux and Patents and Tweets
Fact-checking some tweets about Linux Foundation’s newest member and their harvesting of other members’ money. Microsoft recently joined the Linux Foundation while still asserting its p…
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How to run for Florida Office
Hey All, This year I ran for Florida House of Representatives District 49 (Orlando). I lost, but I got 31% of the vote and I only spent $3000. My opponent got 69% of the vote and spent $100,000. I've been asked about this on Reddit, so I'm going to make a detailed post about how
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Let’s replace Twitter with something much better
(There is also a Russian language version of this post available, translated and published by SoftDroid on 2017-04-12.) I love Twitter. I love that by following certain people, my timeline has become a stream of interesting and entertaining information. I love that sometimes I am able to fit my little publication just…
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Who Will Command the Robot Armies?
This is the text version of a talk I gave on November 11, 2016, at the Direction conference in Sydney.
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You Are Still Crying Wolf
Go away, pro-Trump bots [Update 5/30: I originally took this post down because it got picked up by some pro-Trump accounts that I think were bots which would post it several times a day to various …
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If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter (2012)
Blaise Pascal? John Locke? Benjamin Franklin? Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac? Abraham Lincoln ? Henry David Thoreau? Cicero? Mark Twain? Woodrow Wilson?
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Don’t Mess with The Google
Update, 11/17 at 8pm: Google has reactivated the suspended accounts! Here is the message that they each received: "Hello Google user, Your Google Account
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ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
ICQ is turning 20 (and that is no small potatoes). A whole generation has already grown up with the forerunner of all messengers. For this…
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Reasons not to use Uber
Uber donated a million dollars to the corrupter's inaugural celebration. This is the moral equivalent of a bribe.
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What Percent of the Top-Voted Comments in Reddit Threads Were Also First Comment?
Are commenters ’late to this thread’ indeed late?
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American Elections Will Be Hacked
It’s over. The voting went smoothly. As of the time of writing, there are no serious fraud allegations, nor credible evidence that anyone tampered with voting rolls or voting machines. And most important, the results are not in doubt. While we may breathe a collective sigh of relief about that, we can’t ignore the…
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It's Going to Be Okay
Let's pause and discuss this for a minute.
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South Korean President Park Geun-hye's corruption scandal
President Park Geun-hye issues a public apology on October 25, 2016. ( source ) President Park Geun-hye is in deep trouble. The sto...