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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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Bill Thurston has died
Bill Thurston, who made fundamental contributions to our understanding of low-dimensional manifolds and related structures, died on Tuesday, aged 65. Perhaps Thurston’s best known achievement…
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Fixing Hacker News: A mathematical approach
There is a certain phenomenon that seems to happen in almost every online community of user-generated content. A community is created: the ...
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We consistently underestimate kids.
I've long believed that we seriously underestimate kids. Hanging around with my friend's daughters who were 2, 3, and 5 when I was in college was really illuminating as I found myself interacting and conversing with his (admittedly smart) 2 year o...
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The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story
Written in college after watching textbook salesmen work the faculty hallway: how custom editions and access codes squeeze students, and why it keeps getting worse.
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Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free
Normally I avoid complaining about Apple because (a) there are plenty of other people carrying that flag, and (b) I honestly like Apple and own numerous lovely iProducts. I’m even using one t…
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Your Words are Wasted
It needs to be said again, perhaps this time more strongly. Your Blog is The ...
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A Proposal To Improve Hacker News
This morning, HN user sw007 reached out the community to explain why he/she hates Hacker News . sw007 is not the first to notice the vile demeanor of the site but it was his/her post that got me thinking about how to improve the community I love.
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How anti-competitive lawsuits by incumbents are killing early stage startups
These days, Southwest Airlines is synonymous with low airfares and solid customer experience. But in the late 1960's when it was founded, the fledgling airline (then Air Southwest) was almost sued...
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Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)
Excellent blog post by Valerie Aurora about sexual harassment at the DefCon hackers conference. Aside from the fact that this is utterly reprehensible behavior by the perpetrators involved, this is a real problem for our community. The response of “this is just what hacker culture is, and changing it will destroy…
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Abuse of Youtube's copyright infringement claim process for doxxing purposes
UPDATE: it appears that the pathetic cowards who perjured themselves filing these maliciously false copyright infringement claims have chick...
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Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa.
Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. A…
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Income inequality, as seen from space
Last week, I wrote about how urban trees—or the lack thereof—can reveal income inequality. After writing that article, I was curious, could I actually see
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Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job
I have long been a fan of Wired's coverage of privacy and security issues, particularly the insightful reporting and analysis by Ryan Singel...
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Elsevier charges authors to make items "Open Access", then charges to read them.
[This is a long post – in summary Elsevier breach licences and charge readers for Open Access. I also ask the world to verify and amplify my conclusions].
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How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle.
The Digital Imprimatur