1801
The quiet death of Ello's big dreams
Ello launched in 2014 with big dreams, but the artsy social network suddenly shut down last year, deleting nine years of posts without warning. What happened?
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1802
Escaping surveillance capitalism, at scale
Self-hosting and paid subscriptions promise an escape from surveillance capitalism. What guarantees do they really offer, and at what cost?
1803
Corporations are not to be loved
I started using Apple computers — and writing code for them, starting with BASIC — 43 years ago, before the Macintosh, even, and I’ve made this my career. I’ve had all these decades to really, thoroughly delight in these incredible machines and software, and to give a little back with my own apps.
1804
1805
Coming to Grips with Apple's Seemingly Unshakable Sense of Entitlement
No matter what the sport, no matter what the letter of the rulebook says, it’s never a good idea to piss off the refs.
1806
Bad stuff going down at the American Sociological Association
I knew the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, the American Political Science Association, the American Statistical Association, and the National Academy of Sciences had problems. It turns out the American Sociological Association does some bad things too.
1807
1808
On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
I’ve had Feeling Hard Or Hardly Feeling saved to my hard drive since 7-17-2005 without even knowing who made it. Just now bothered to find out.
1809
A Theory of Grift
Plus! Buy The Change You Wish to See in the World; Schmuck Insurance; Uncertainty; Block Trading; Ads
1810
1811
Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads
Lessons from the plagiarists of the steppe
1812
Cars suck, man
What better way to start off the new year than with a little rant.
1813
Peer review is an honor-based system (2008)
It would take too long to expose all of the flaws of peer review, here are some: some work is just flat wrong because the reviewers cannot analyze all of the mathematical results, and because they cannot redo the experiments; numerous researchers cheat, sometimes in small ways ("2 out of 3 experiments agree with by ……
1814
It's Time to Nationalize and Then Break Up Boeing
If America wants to make civilian airplanes here, the government must step in, take over Boeing, and then design a competitive industry.
1815
A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest
[Edit May 2024: This concept was republished in Asterisk Magazine.] Just a couple of hours drive east of Los Angeles lies the Imperial Valley, home to Palm Springs, some of the most productive agri…
1816
Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)
[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal] A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid a…
1817
We need technology that is less immersive, not more
How come so many of the most talented engineers of our time work on making our entertainment more immersive?
1818
Where Have All the Websites Gone?
It feels like all the cool websites from the late 2000s are gone. But maybe we are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it is us who vanished.
1819
A Guide for Prospective Tea Monks
Inspired by Becky Chamber's Monk & Robot Series
1820
1821
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero (2022)
Counterintuitively, businesses, customers, and society prefer having fraud to what they'd need to do to not have it.
1822
The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
Dorothy Bishop has the story about “a chemistry lab in CNRS-Université Sorbonne Paris Nord”:
1823
The New York Times Launches a Strong Case Against Microsoft and OpenAI
It seems that The New York Times Company (“The Times”) got fed up with the pace of its negotiations with Microsoft and OpenAI over their use of The Times’ content for training and…
1824
A legal and moral question: The crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 (2021)
The story of how McDonnell Douglas’s corporate culture led to the deaths of 346 people in one of the deadliest plane crashes of all time.
1825
Age verification is incompatible with the internet
The recent move among U.S. states to add digital “age verification” to websites which serve adult content is a troubling one. Digital age verification systems are rife with privacy concerns, many requiring you to upload your government ID to third-party vendors or even directly to the website in question. Privacy…
1826
Apple Rejects the Hey Calendar from Their App Store
There should at least be a standard of double jeopardy when it comes to the app store monopoly regimes. If you’ve managed to overturn a rejection of your service once, they can’t come after you on the same service again later. We could have used that today! But unfortunately there is no rule of law with the app…
1827
Will US companies hire fewer engineers due to Section 174?
It’s rare that a tax change causes panic across the tech industry, but it’s happening in the US. If Section 174 tax changes stay, the US will be one of the least desirable countries to launch startups
1828
1829
Notes on the Ivory Coast
I spent about ten days in the Ivory Coast, mostly in Abidjan, but also Yamoussoukro, Man, and Grand Bassam. (Note – The Ivory Coast is so French in culture and temperament that it insists on offici…
1830
We Could Fix Everything, We Just Don't
[programmers frantically pulling cables out of the wall]AI: "Nuclear power. Double teachers' salaries. Build more houses. Distribute food more fairly. TRAINS—"— qntmyrrh (@qntm) November 24, 2023 I remember growing up with that same old adage of how you could be the next scientist to invent a cure for cancer, or a…