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Who By Very Slow Decay
[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
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I was kicked out from TEDx event for saying water-fuelled car is a scam
Ivan Jakobović with his “water-powered car”. Because gas is so expensive, he modified his car to run on water.
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Verizon, caught red-handed
Verizon has now on multiple occasions refused to connect my Google Nexus 7 LTE tablet, though the device was publicized widely as working on Verizon and...
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Dear USA, my data has left your building
NSA, GCHQ, Prism, FISA, Project Bullrun, Sigint. After Edward Snowden, former CIA and NSA employee, started revealing how massively, intensely and easily we are all being spied upon by the intelligence agencies of various governments, the terms above have suddenly been spending a great deal more time in the media…
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Rat Park Experiment: A New Theory of Addiction
We all learned this in DARE class. About the rats in a cage who can self-administer morphine who get addicted to the stuff, and then just hit that lever until they die. A seemingly keystone...
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Where my mouth is
For many years, i've been convinced that programming needs to move forward and abandon the Algol family of languages that, still today, dampens the field. And that that forward direction has been signalled for decades by (mostly) functional, possibly dyna...
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Drug addiction: The complex truth
We’re told studies have proven that drugs like heroin and cocaine instantly hook a user. But it isn’t that simple – little-known experiments over 30 years ago tell a very different tale. Drugs are …
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Why Netflix should buy AMC
Earlier today AMC announced they have secured the prequel to Breaking Bad, a show based on the popular supporting character, Lawyer Saul Goodman. What was particularly fascinating was that an artic…
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"I have come to find out what it's like to be dumb."
I’m a smart guy. I’m not bragging. It’s not like I deserve any credit for being smart. I didn’t do anything to make that happen. I’m also tall, but nobody compliments me on that. (Good job being tall!) Intelligence is an immutable characteristic that I have at times capitalized on and at other times let […]
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Don't trust me: I might be a spook
But the latest revelations scare me. It's one thing to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software; there's a lot of software out there which was written by developers with very little understanding of cryptography or software security, and it shows. If you care about security, we reasoned, stick to software written…
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Excess Automobile Deaths as a Result of 9/11
People commented about a point I made in a recent essay: In the months after 9/11, so many people chose to drive instead of fly that the resulting deaths dwarfed the deaths from the terrorist attack itself, because cars are much more dangerous than airplanes. Yes, that’s wrong. Where I said “months,” I should have…
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You are committing a crime right now (2012)
Are you reading this blog? If so, you are committing a crime under 18 USC 1030(a) (better known as the “ Computer Fraud & Abus...
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Doing Good in the Addiction Economy
The world is becoming ever-more addictive and distracting, showering us with short-term rewards. But we can still take control of those mechanisms in order to do good in the world, and make ourselv…
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Court: Federal Law Allows Lying in TSA-Related FOIA Requests
Moments ago, the remaining claims in my lawsuit stemming from being illegally detained at FLL airport and then lied to about the existence of CCTV video of the incident, were dismissed. The questio…
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How much it's worth to be #1 on Hacker News for a day
Last Tuesday my blog post about using a standing desk for 2 years shot to number 1 on Hacker News for a brief but glorious 10 hours. Below I’ll explain how this impacted my traffic and sales.kamagra acheter Here’s my setup. My blog is of low-to-medium popularity, with wildly varying...
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Our Newfound Fear of Risk
We’re afraid of risk. It’s a normal part of life, but we’re increasingly unwilling to accept it at any level. So we turn to technology to protect us. The problem is that technological security measures aren’t free. They cost money, of course, but they cost other things as well. They often don’t provide the security…
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The Deal That Makes No Sense
Early this morning Microsoft acquired Nokia for €3.79 billion (plus €1.65 billion for patents). It is a deal that makes no sense. While industry observers love to pontificate about mergers and acqu…
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Developers are the autoworkers of our generation
Fifty years ago, an autoworker could provide a middle-class existence for his family. Bought a house. Put kids through college. Wife stayed home. He didn’t even need a degree. That shit’s over. Detroit just went bankrupt. No one’s got it better than developers right now. When
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Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing
As a long-time reader of Hacker News, I keep seeing some comments they don't really contribute to the conversation. Since the discussions a...
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More on the NSA Commandeering the Internet
If there’s any confirmation that the U.S. government has commandeered the Internet for worldwide surveillance, it is what happened with Lavabit earlier this month. Lavabit is—well, was—an e-mail service that offered more privacy than the typical large-Internet-corporation services that most of us use. It was a small…
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Why You’ve Never Read “I Have A Dream”
(I know some people will be interested in a followup post to Don’t Fly During Ramadan . I plan on writing one, but this post happens to be timely.)
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Humor: Interview with an Ex-Microsoftie Who Used to Name OS Folders
—Sure is. I thought, "This is where we'll put the programs. On the file system. And since they're gonna be made out of files, I'll stick the word "Files" on the end. With a space in the middle. People are going to be typing this all the time, so they'll want it to be as long and descriptive as possible."