991
How does the US use water?
Water infrastructure often gets less attention and focus than other types of infrastructure.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
992
A statistical analysis of Rotten Tomatoes
Can Hollywood's stamp of artistic excellence still be trusted?
993
Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
=== This is a free online edition of Bruce Sterling's anthology Mirrorshades. === Coverted to webpage by Rudy Rucker, posted September 2022, and updated November 2023. === Each story is Copyright (C) 2022 to its original authors, and all rights are reserved. The book is not public domain, nor is it Creative Commons…
994
The forgotten meaning of "jerk"
Ben Lindbergh at the Ringer asks “When did jerk stop meaning ‘stupid’?” He starts with the Steve Martin movie The Jerk , saying of its protagonist:
995
996
Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing
I really like Ted Chiang’s writing.
997
What could have been
Even if we manage to snap out of the AI bubble, we are never going to get these years back. I can only be left to wonder what could have been.
998
The decline of high-tech manufacturing in the United States
America's major high-tech manufacturing industries have not escaped the general decline in manufacturing employment.
999
When did AI take over Hacker News?
One in three top 10 Hacker News posts in August 2025 were AI-related. Can we pinpoint when this trend started?
1000
AI doesn't lighten the burden of mastery
<no value>
1001
D4D4
A co-worker of mine (the incomparable Yohei Manabe) was looking at some disassembled ARM code the other day, and discovered something weird. Lots of d4d4 instructions, scattered about. LLVM’s objdump says this is a relative branch to -0x58 . The weird part is that they were always unreachable.
1002
Who does your assistant serve?
ChatGPT and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
1003
Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity
I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post
1004
Is air travel getting worse?
More delays, fewer accidents, and lower prices
1005
When the CIA got away with building a heart attack gun
How 16 Senators Accidentally Saved Democracy (Then Watched It Die)
1006
Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects
HS2 has become a case study in how not to build infrastructure. But what if we’d taken a different path entirely? In this post, I imagine how the Swiss would have done it: starting with the timetable, not the project. It’s a counterfactual, but it’s not a fantasy.
1007
"Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit
I don't think that it's impossible for politicians, even nontechnical politicians, to make good tech policy. After all, the fact that no one in Congress is a microbiologist doesn't stop federal standards from delivering potable water (and it doesn't excuse the ghastly failures, such as Flint, MI):
1008
Open Banking and Payments Competition
Why the banks really hate fintechs that allow businesses to learn your account number easily.
1009
1010
LLMs tell bad jokes because they avoid surprises
LLMs suck at comedy, art, journalism, research, and science for the same fundamental reason
1011
Gartner's grift is about to unravel
swyx recognizes $IT as a visionary short in the DX Tips Magic Quadrant of Boomer Relics That No Longer Make Sense
1012
I'm worried it might get bad
Starting to worry things might get very bad, very soon
1013
When DEF CON partners with the U.S. Army
DEF CON has alienated many hackers by officially aligning its geopolitics with those of the U.S. military and announcing partnerships with the authoritarian countries of Bahrain and Singapore.
1014
The Missing Protocol: Let Me Know
I want a new protocol, tentatively called “Let Me Know” (LMK). The purpose is to provide someone an anonymous way to get notified when a singular, specific event occurs. Here’s a basic use case: Some random blog author has published Parts 1 and 2 of a series. You enjoyed it, and you want to know…
1015
Enlisting in the Fight Against Link Rot
Google is killing a decade of its shortened links. Will you enlist in the fight against link rot?
1016
Weathering Software Winter (2022)
This is a blog post based on a transcript of a talk by Devine on November 26th 2022. Watch the video version on (YouTube). The slideshow presentation was made using Adelie .
1017
The value of institutional memory
In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an …
1018
1910: The year the modern world lost its mind
What one of my favorite history books about my favorite historical period—turn-of-the-century American—tells us about technology, anxiety, and human nature
1019
GPTs and Feeling Left Behind
Every time that I read some blog post about “coding with AI”, or how cool new models write entire libraries by themselves, I feel like I’m lagging behind, like I’m missing out on some big, useful tool, and my skills are about to become obsolete very soon.
1020
A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union
In May 1991 a Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyev was sent into space. At the end of the year he was still circling around the Earth waiting for a spaceship to bring him back. He had left a Soviet Union that was still a superpower but would return to a world where there was no Soviet Union any more. The Soviet empire…