1051
Death by AI
One man's struggle with his mortality.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1052
Advertising without signal: The rise of the grifter equilibrium
Economists credit ads with two welfare‑enhancing roles: 1. Informative – trimming search costs (Stigler 1961 (pdf)). 2. Signaling – In classic models, high-quality sellers are more willing to incur large, sunk ad costs because they expect to recoup them through future sales, especially in experience-good markets where…
1053
Silence Is a Commons by Ivan Illich (1983)
Ivan Illich is doing to computers what he did to education (De-Schooling Society, 1971), to energy (Energy and Equity, 1974), to medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1975), and to sex roles (Vernacular Gender, 1983). Each time it has been radical analysis that changes our perception of what is really going on. Each time, and…
1054
The EU can be shut down with a few keystrokes
On a QWERTY keyboard
1055
What were the earliest laws like?
Hammurabi’s code doesn’t tell the whole story
1056
What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?
Governments worldwide are trying to increase fertility with cash. But the most famous birthrate "boom" had a lot to do with science and technology, as well.
1057
LLM Inevitabilism
Have you ever argued with someone who is seriously good at debating? I have. It sucks. You’re constantly thrown off-balance, responding to a point you didn’t expect to. You find yourself defending the weak edges of your argument, while the main thrust gets left behind in the back-and-forth, and you end up losing…
1058
Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions
Why random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions
1059
You Are in a Box
your data is trapped inside the box that is your program. you can only see what the program author exposes.
1060
Death by a Thousand Slops
I have previously blogged about the relatively new trend of AI slop in vulnerability reports submitted to curl and how it hurts and exhausts us. This trend does not seem to slow down. On the contrary, it seems that we have recently not only received more AI slop but also more human slop. The latter … Continue reading…
1061
Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
So many sci-fi movies, anime, and video games owe a massive debt of gratitude to William Gibson's seminal 1984 novel.
1062
Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online
Am I now committing civil disobedience... just by keeping my personal literary website up as is?
1063
I'm done with social media – Or: why I have a blog now
Or: why I have a blog now.
1064
Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses
Why being popular is not the goal of most small businesses
1065
Grok: Searching X for "From:Elonmusk (Israel or Palestine or Hamas or Gaza)"
If you ask the new Grok 4 for opinions on controversial questions, it will sometimes run a search to find out Elon Musk’s stance before providing you with an answer. …
1066
Why you should delete WhatsApp and install Signal
WhatsApp is not private or secure. Please consider using Signal instead.
1067
The death of partying in the USA
Young Americans today spend 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties than they did at the beginning of the 21st century. Why?
1068
The lethal trifecta for AI agents: private data, untrusted content, and external communication
If you are a user of LLM systems that use tools (you can call them “AI agents” if you like) it is critically important that you understand the risk of …
1069
A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs
In many discussions where questions of "alignment" or "AI safety" crop up, I am baffled by seriously intelligent people imbuing almost magic...
1070
Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels
We are products with labels
1071
Why English doesn't use accents
And why French is full of them
1072
Belgium Is Unsafe for CVD
This post is about the reason I will probably never try to warn any organisation in Belgium about any vulnerability again. Recently I have been dealing with an attempt at coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) with an organisation in Belgium. This post is not about that, because I’m not allowed to write about it…
1073
Stop killing games and the industry response
Recently, there's been a European Citizens' Initiative called "Stop Destroying Videogames" which by now has hit the milestone of 1'000'000 signatures. You're still encouraged to sign it if you care about its goals and are a EU citizen, since not all of those are likely to be valid signatures, but overall this is a…
1074
The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public
This isn't innovation, it's tyranny
1075
Are we the baddies?
I signed up for Hinge. Holy shit with the boosts.
1076
1077
Stop Killing Games
tl;dr: If you're an EU citizen, sign the Stop Killing Games initiative here. Or, if you're in the UK, sign this petition. A month ago, I had a second video on self-hosting taken down. YouTube said it was 'harmful or dangerous content'. I appealed that, but my appeal was rejected. Luckily, I have enough reach I was…
1078
1079
Why are there no good dinosaur films?
running on jurassic park's fumes for over 30 years
1080
The Rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.