1891
The evolution of expert communities
A look at how online forums grow, thrive, and then decay.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1892
1893
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts (2011)
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne fo…
1894
We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
( This is the text of a talk I delivered at the Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in Stuttgart on Friday November 10th, 2023. Note: early draft, contains some typos, I'll fix them next week when I get home. )
1895
Albert Einstein in 1939 composed a message for the people of AD 6939
Preparing a time capsule in 1939, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company asked Albert Einstein to compose a message for the people of AD 6939. He sent this: Our time is rich in inventive minds, the inventions of which could facilitate our lives considerably. We are crossing the seas by power and utilize…
1896
I skipped to the ending
When I was 8 years old I started making websites with my friend. His grandmother had purchased him a domain name and web hosting. It was 2003 and the world was whispering of Web 2.0. Books I checked out of the library talked about DHTML (dynamic HTML, basically what any web app is today). There was no mobile app…
1897
Are we doing this again? Yes, we're doing this again
Y esterday I was rudely summoned away from a beautiful autumn day of wild foraging by The King.
1898
I Got the Fed to Release Its 2011 "Treasury Default" Playbook
Subscribe Readers may recall that I wrote a Politico Op Ed at a critical moment in the debt ceiling showdown. That piece, was entitled “Biden Can Steamroll Republicans on the Debt Ceiling”, and I aimed squarely at debunking the idea that the Federal Reserve would step on any “unilateral actions”
1899
Seeing like a bank
The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.
1900
Apple's Trademark Exploit
try to trade and you're marked
1901
Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant
I'm organizing a boycott of Apple's Feedback Assistant , starting immediately, and I encourage all Apple developers to join me. Here's how I propose that each of us can effectively participate in the boycott and let Apple know that we're boycotting Feedback Assistant:
1902
Free Speech Is in Trouble
Young liberals are abandoning it — and other groups are too comfortable with tit-for-tat hypocrisy
1903
Current thoughts on social media
My view on the state of social media in late 2023
1904
My rude-ass car
I need to vent about the impolite piece of yet-to-become e-waste on wheels that is my rude-ass car . You've heard versions of this story before, nothing is particularly novel in the shock department, enshittification is everywhere, etcetera... but I need the catharsis.
1905
Reasons to fight cashless contagion
Total payments uberfication is a virus, and we need to build resistance to it
1906
What the Goddamn Hell Is Going on in the Tech Industry?
Sweet merciful Jesus, I woke up this morning and my inbox was flooded with horrific stories about how employers treat people. I knew things were fucked, but this was so much worse than I imagined, and that's not even getting into the comments on Hackernews. I am going to dig into some of those emails, but first...
1907
Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)
The struggle for distinction
1908
The death of a public intellectual
Is it that time of the year again? A new intellectual minted. The loss of next few evenings watching YouTube, reading substacks? All for that sweet nectar of a novel “hot take”.
1909
The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People
The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death
1910
The slow death of authenticity in an attention economy
Why I've gotten more and more pessimistic about my relationship with Twitter.
1911
Takkyu-bin: Luggage forwarding in Japan
Please don't roll your big bags around town
1912
EU parliament agreement to remove chat control and safeguard secure encryption
This week, the European Parliament's negotiators reached a broad majority agreement on a common position concerning the controversial EU chat control bill. The Commission’s bill proposes bulk scanning and reporting of private messages for allegedly suspicious content by using error-prone algorithms,
1913
What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data
Big Brother meets Big Data
1914
Good times create weak men (2019)
Software abstraction ladder becomes too tall and starts to fall
1915
I face investigation for terrorism
My phone is not being returned to me by police as, astonishingly, I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or for Wikileaks has currently not been made clear. What follows is, unspun and unvarnished, my account of my interview under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism…
1916
Two Kinds of Techno-Optimism
A few things Marc Andreessen forgot to mention
1917
Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets
In a shocking turn of events, several smartphone manufacturers, including industry giant Samsung, have taken a drastic step that has left customers outraged. These companies have remotely disabled phones purchased through gray markets, effectively holding the users’ data hostage until they buy new phones from official…
1918
1919
Cooler screens
Audible even over the squeal of an HVAC blower with a suffering belt, the whine of small, high velocity fans pervades the grocery side of this Walgreens. Were they always this loud? I'm not sure; some of the fans sound distinctly unhealthy. Still, it's a familiar kind of noise to anyone who regularly works around…
1920
We have used too many levels of abstractions
A big percentage of so-called experts today only know how to configure tools, but they understand nothing about how things work at the deeper level. This is a real challenge and a big problem for the future.