2821
Can growth continue?
A five-minute talk for Ignite Long Now
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
2822
Inflation is differential and restructuring (2021)
When it comes to inflation, economists get it wrong. Inflation is always and everywhere differential.
2823
I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)
If you follow Gamefromscratch on Twitter, you may have already seen this tweet I put out last night about a blackmail demand that was made against our YouTube channel:First off, I really want to give a gigantic shout out to all of the people that helped get the message out, the tweets, retweets and even [...]
2824
The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling
It will take about three minutes to read this column. Whether it’s worth three minutes depends on me, of course. I will do my best. But it also depends on you, on your attitude to time and, perhaps…
2825
The New York Times is wrong about Haiti
The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the history of Haiti.
2826
Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?
Reflections on a phenomena that’s unique to culture-war topics
2827
2828
Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
In-flight messaging I was on a Delta flight the other day, and I was thinking about how they offer free messaging from your smartphone. How do they limit the wifi? Maybe they have some basic filter that says “deny everything except the urls for these 3 messaging apps”, which makes sense conceptually. What if we don’t…
2829
Notes on Ukraine: I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine
I spent most of April and some of May traveling around Ukraine, visiting the cities of Uzhgorod, Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odessa. As with my other travels, I’ll write down thoughts and obse…
2830
My Favorite Liar (2008)
[the following recounts an exceptionally powerful teaching technique employed by an economics professor of mine at university; teaching fact-checking and skepticism by salting it into the content of his delivery]
2831
2832
Senators Urge FTC to Probe ID.me over Selfie Data
Some of more tech-savvy Democrats in the U.S. Senate are asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate identity-proofing company ID.me for “deceptive statements” the company and its founder allegedly made over how they handle facial recognition data collected on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service …
2833
My deepfake DALL-E 2 vacation photos passed the Turing Test
I went on a real vacation, and created photos of a fake vacation using DALL-E 2. Most people couldn't tell the difference.
2834
2835
Plagiarized in a plagiarism atonement essay
News broke this morning that upcoming author Jumi Bello plagiarized from Plagiarism Today when drafting a plagiarism explainer essay.
2836
Taking a break from social media makes you happier and less anxious
In my writing on technology and culture I try to be judicious about citing scientific studies. The issues involved in our ongoing wrangling with digital ... Read more
2837
The Worst (2012)
I don’t really know who Dustin Curtis is, but he blogs a lot, and those blog entries often end up onHacker News. Not too long ago, he wrote a blog post titled “The Best,” in which he explains that he has nice stuff. That in fact, everything he owns is actually the very best of its kind.Dustin’s...
2838
2839
Web3 is expensive P2P
Web3 claims to be the only way to save us from commercial entities defining what we can see and what not. Yet, it does exactly this: It results in commercialized entities defining what we can see and what not. More on the blockchain ecosystem in this overview and especially in the simple, hum
2840
I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it
I finally got Twitter after years of not getting it. Here's what I know.
2841
2842
The problem with Bitcoin miners
Disclosure: I hold short positions in companies mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.
2843
Who owns the copyright to my medical images? (2018)
I popped round to an NHS dentist a few months ago - and they stuck my head on one of these contraptions. The Kodak 8000C takes a panoramic X-ray, giving a superior view of your teeth. Nifty. The dentist showed me where my wisdom teeth were and I was impressed with how high resolution the image was. Afterwards, I asked…
2844
The scourge of Rec dot gov (2021)
Recreation DOT gov gets managed by the multi-billion dollar DC beltway firm of Booz-Allen-Hamilton. And here’s why I think it’s awful.
2845
Scarcity Truthers
Artificial Scarcity and the Semmelweis Reflex
2846
Is there a housing shortage or not?
The housing shortage in the US is a perennially popular topic of conversation for the urbanist crowd (which online includes basically everyone.) The basic argument is that housing starts collapsed after the financial crisis and have never truly recovered.
2847
How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising
Gerrymandering distorts the will of the people, but the basic math of geographic representation makes it difficult to get rid of, unless we get rid of representation for geographic districts.
2848
Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services
As part of an omnibus bill, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed a troubling bill restricting how under-18 users engage with user-generated content (UGC) services. [At the bottom of this post, I’ve included the text as passed by the Minnesota...
2849
My journey through the American immigration system as a computer engineer
It sounds surreal to even say it out loud, but I’ve been living in America for the majority of my life, ever since I was a teenager. And for 18 of those years, I was legally a transient – hop…
2850
Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11
Next week on Wednesday (May 11), the EU Commission will present an EU draft law on mandatory chat control to the public for the first time. Similar to Apple's highly controversial "SpyPhone" plans, the Commission wants to oblige all providers of email, chat and messaging services to search for susp