871
Democracy and the open internet die in daylight
O bviously there have been many editorial changes at the formerly venerable Washington Post, a tawdry saga which I don’t intend to recap here.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
872
Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites
Save and Share: Click. Ugh. Another one. You know the drill. You land on a new website, eager to read an article or check a product price, and before the page even finishes loading, it appears: the dreaded cookie banner. A pop-up, a slide-in, a full-screen overlay demanding you “Accept All,” “Manage Preferences,” or…
873
A Word on Omarchy
An in-depth look at the currently trending Arch Linux configuration that is Omarchy.
874
AI is making us work more
How tools that were supposed to free us up to find meaning work have exacerbated the rat race.
875
The AI water issue is fake
On the national, local, and personal level
876
When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone
I just got back from a 24hr trip to Los Angeles to catch my favorite Portland Thorns team, watching them clinch their playoff spot in a match at BMO stadium in downtown Los Angeles. In May of 2024, I did the same trip to catch a match on Mother's
877
I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
Not only did I give internet strangers unrestricted access to send me completely anonymous physical messages, but I also self-hosted the entire site on a Raspberry Pi
878
Attention is a luxury good
Luxury goods are special: they are scarce and expensive, and they earn us status with some folks because it shows that we paid more than we needed to. Luxury isn’t about quality, suitability …
879
You did no fact checking, and I must scream
I'm neither a journalist nor a professional fact checker but, the thing is, it's has never been easier to check basic facts. Yeah, sure, there's a world of misinformation out there, but it doesn't take much effort to determine if something is likely to be true. There are brilliant tools like reverse Image Search which…
880
4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence
Ofcom — driven by the letter of British law that they are bound to follow, but still Ofcom — are quietly making Britain look (a) very silly and (b) as if we haven’t yet shucked-off the Americ…
881
Hacker News – The Good Parts
The other day, my twelve-year-old daughter asked me what platform I spend most of my time on when I'm on my phone or computer. She intuitively noticed that ...
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You are the scariest monster in the woods
We shouldn’t worry about AI destroying society because there’s something scarier out there (it’s us)
884
Half of America's Voting Machines Are Now Owned by a MAGA Oligarch
They told us elections were rigged. Then they cloned stolen voting software. Then they bought the voting machines.
885
Why the open social web matters now
The needs are real – and you have so much power.
886
If you'd built a "tool" that stupid, why would you advertise the fact?
A few days ago I got a sensationally stupid email from one of those websites that most of us probably have a subscription to, but which I will not give the oxygen of publicity by linking to[1]. The…
887
America's future could hinge on whether AI slightly disappoints
If the economy's single pillar goes down, Trump's presidency will be seen as a disaster.
888
AI and the Future of American Politics
Two years ago, Americans anxious about the forthcoming 2024 presidential election were considering the malevolent force of an election influencer: artificial intelligence. Over the past several years, we have seen plenty of warning signs from elections worldwide demonstrating how AI can be used to propagate…
889
Free software hasn't won
This is a translated version of a talk I gave at P.I.W.O in June, with cleanups and adjustments for the blog form.
890
After the AI boom: what might we be left with?
Some argue that even if the current AI boom leads to an overbuild, it might not be a bad thing - just as the dotcom bubble left behind the internet infrastructure that powered later decades of growth. It’s a tempting comparison, but the parallels only go so far. The dotcom era’s overbuild crea
891
The App Store was always authoritarian
Apple bent the knee for months, leaving many commentators to ask why. But the reasons are not mysterious: Apple wants things that only the government can provide, things that will defend and extend its power to extract rents, rather than innovate. Namely, selective exemption from tariffs and an end to the spectre of…
892
Heroin addicts often seem normal
At least, they did to me ten years ago
893
All-natural geoengineering with Frank Herbert's Dune
Can We Terraform the Earth Using Life Itself?
894
Dark patterns: Buying a Bahncard at Deutsche Bahn
How do two well liked companies, deutsche Bahn and adobe, advertise their subscriptions? Badly. Deutsche Bahn, the fully state-owned railway company, is a we
895
Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
It’s unfortunately not uncommon for pedestrians to be killed by cars in the US.
896
The email they shouldn't have read
A real-world horror story about contracts, control, and the dark side of managed open source.
897
Seeing like a software company
The big idea of James C. Scott’s Seeing Like A State can be expressed in three points: Modern organizations exert control by maximising “legibility”: by…
898
When ChatGPT turns informant
The largely overlooked privacy risks of using AI apps that not only remember your conversations, but are capable of using these to reveal your deepest secrets to others
899
Apple's Unlawful Evil
Apple has removed ICEBlock, a totally legal app that helps people track the movements of the masked snatch-squads who illegally terrorize brown people in America's cities, capitulating to a warrantless demand from Trump's DoJ boss Pam Bondi:
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State Terror, American Style
Forget about “soft autocracy”