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Don’t record your social life on an append-only social network (2022)
The tech behind peer-to-peer (P2P) social networks such as Secure Scuttlebutt enforces permanency. Absolute permanency isn’t what you want in a social network.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 952 posts.
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Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025
Apple today announced a new 2025 target to use 100 percent recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries.
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I’ve been single all my life
I’m single. I don’t know if this comes as a surprise to you. Of course, you have yet to hear me talking about a wife or a girlfriend. But I also rarely talk about dating and finding someone. The bigger surprise might be that I’m a lifelong single. In other words, I was never in any romantic or sexual relationship…
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Yes, it's OK to be mad about crime in San Francisco
Let's not make excuses for Chaos City.
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Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair
Denver legislators have just passed the first-ever agricultural Right to Repair bill. Today’s landslide 44-16 vote in the House follows successful votes in the Senate last month.
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Almost all of the world’s mammal biomass is humans and livestock
Humans and livestock make up 95% of the world’s mammal biomass; wild mammals are just 5%.
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The EU proposed CRA law may have unintended consequence for the Python ecosystem
Python Software Foundation Blog2023186 points134 commentscited by 4Society, Policy & Culture details
After reviewing the proposed Cyber Resilience Act and Product Liability Act , the PSF has found issues that put the mission of our organization and the health of the open-source software community at risk. While we support the stated goals of these policies of increasing security and accountability for European…
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Twitter showed us its algorithm – what does it tell us?
On March 31, Twitter open-sourced its recommendation algorithm. It turns out to be a standard engagement prediction algorithm of the kind most major platforms use; I explained how these algorithms work in a recent essay . The source code release makes for an interesting case study of social media transparency. Let’s…
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Shutting down nuclear power could increase air pollution: study
An MIT study shows that if U.S. nuclear power plants are retired, the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas to fill the energy gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths.
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My diatribe against “skeptics” (2016)
April 10, 2023. The backlash was immediate after I spoke at the 2016 Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism , which bills itself as a “celebration of science and critical thinking.” Although the conference had allotted me 10 minutes for questions, the stage manager, Jamy
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I wish GPT4 had never happened
Made in Notion, the connected workspace where AI agents and teams organize docs, projects and knowledge together.
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Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk
In "Behavioral Advertising and Consumer Welfare: An Empirical Investigation," a trio of business researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Pamplin College investigate the difference between the goods purchased through highly targeted online ads and just plain web-searches, and conclude social media ads push overpriced junk:
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Why human societies developed so little during 300k years
Why human societies developed so little during 300 000 years
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The Erosion of Free Will: Why Society's Loss of Belief in Freedom Is Dangerous
Pay attention to how people are talking about freedom. It's a leading indicator of cultural (and economic) trends.
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We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
ChatGPT lies to people. This is a serious bug that has so far resisted all attempts at a fix. We need to prioritize helping people understand this, not debating the …
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The longest straight line in Great Britain without crossing a public road
In short, I believe I've found a longer straight line without crossing a public road than the line identified by Ordnance Survey in 2019. Im...
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Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)
You can't handle it! In 2018 or 2019, I was introduced to the idea of hyper-rationality. I think it was under another name (to be g...
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Defamed by ChatGPT
Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that “it remains to be seen” whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “dangerous.” I would beg to differ. I have been writing about th…
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I don't want streaming music, I just want to stream my music
I don't want your streaming music service, I just want the music I've collected and care about available to stream.
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I’m a doctor: Here’s what I found when I asked ChatGPT to diagnose my patients
ChatGPT recently passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, but using it for a real-world medical diagnosis would quickly turn deadly.
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Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty
It’s 1986 and you’ve got a 31 tons of copper, in the form of a giant 46 meter tall statue, that’s looking a bit worse for wear.
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Mapping hospital accessibility with OpenStreetMap
Using OpenStreetMap data to craft a self-hosted interactive map of hospital accessibility in Virginia.
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Was there a U.S. nuclear weapons accident at a Dutch air base?
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
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Finland Becomes a Member of NATO on Tuesday 4 April
Office of the President of the Republic of Finland Press release 10/2023 3 April 2023 Finland will become a Member of NATO on Tuesday, 4 April 2023. President of the...
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The day Windows died
As a longtime user of Windows, it was my first choice when preparing the first computer for my son. But that didn't work out as expected.