811
The Church FAQ
A few years ago, we bought a church building. Since then, every time I mention it online and/or on social media, someone always responds, “wait, you bought a church, what” and then asks…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 992 posts.
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813
Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino
Who decided these personalized Siri features should go in the WWDC keynote, with a promise they’d arrive in the coming year, when, at the time, they were in such an unfinished state they could not be demoed to the media even in a controlled environment? Three months later, who decided Apple should double down and…
814
Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
EFF is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Mark Klein, a bona fide hero who risked civil liability and criminal prosecution to help expose a massive spying program that violated the rights of millions of Americans.Mark didn’t set out to change the world. For 22 years, he was a...
815
My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster
Romance fraud has been growing as an issue for years. It's not uncommon to see news stories with bewildered victims explaining just how deeply they'd been sucked in. After receiving a number of opener
816
A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024)
These are the two most-streamed children's shows. Joe Brumm's personal touch for Bluey trumps Cocomelon's engagement-hacking approach.
817
It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life
Most countries spend less than 1% of their national income on foreign aid; even small increases could make a big difference.
818
People are just as bad as my LLMs
Last year I created a fun little experiment where I asked a bunch of LLMs to rank 97 hackernews users using their comment history based on whether they would be good candidates for the role of “software engineer at google”. (yes yes, seems silly I know, you can read part 1 and part 2 but […]
819
Real Chilling Effects
A extraordinary pattern of government censorship and threats to speech
820
Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
Because we believe that the world would be a better place if more businesses were driven by a meaningful cause instead of greed.
821
An investigation into egg prices
'More hens, less income!' So said the United Egg Producers' economist Donald Bell in 1994. The industry has gotten more consolidated ever since. And avian flu is just the latest excuse to hike prices.
822
A Post Mortem on the Gino Case
Zoe Ziani, a psychology researcher who had the misfortune several years ago as a Ph.D. student be tasked with following up on some unrelicable published psychology research, tells the story of how her department pulled the chair out from under her:
823
An election forecast that’s 50-50 is not “giving up”
tl;dr. In 2024, pre-election polls were off by about 2 percentage points. Election forecasters were aware of this and incorporated this into their uncertainties. But if you were not following the forecasts carefully, you might’ve not realized this. You might have mistakenly thought that, when predictions happened to…
824
Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
We used to control apps like Facebook and Instagram with our own choices. They became daily comforts, making the world seem a little bit smaller and closer by bringing the people that we cared about together in to one place.
825
Discworld Rules
And LOTR is brain-rot for technologists
826
Take It Down Act: A Flawed Attempt to Protect Victims That'll Lead to Censorship
Congress has begun debating the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146), a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of a troubling type of online content: non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. In recent years, concerns have also grown about the use of digital tools to alter or create such images, sometimes...
827
Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance
I’m old enough to remember when age verification bills were pitched as a way to ‘save the kids from porn’ and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like…“the transgender”). We have long cautioned about the dangers of these laws, and pointed out why they are likely to...
828
Betting on the Pope was the original prediction market
500 years before Polymarket, the Vatican fought to stop gambling on papal affairs. Should we worry that it’s back?
829
Bye, Prime
Why? · As I wrote in Not an Amazon Problem (and please go read that if you haven’t) I don’t see myself as an enemy of Amazon, particularly. I think the pressures of 21st-century capitalism have put every large company into a place where they really can’t afford to be ethical or the financial sector will rip them to…
830
Automatically tagging politician when they use their phone on the livestreams
How does it work? Every meeting of the flemish government in Belgium is live streamed on a youtube channel. When a livestream starts the software is searching for phones and tries to identify a distracted politician. This is done with the help of AI and face recognition. The video of the distracted politician are then…
831
A few words about FiveThirtyEight
Silver Bulletin will begin publishing some new features soon — including Trump approval ratings. But the media just lost an extremely valuable resource.
832
The "Take It Down" Act
We've opposed the Take It Down Act because it could be easily manipulated to take down lawful content that powerful people simply don't like. Last night, President Trump demonstrated he has a similar view on the bill. He wants to sign the bill into law, then use it to remove content about — him....
833
"Big 3" science fiction magazines including Asimov's and Analog acquired
For other news from February, see my previous grapevine. This report is available free to the public. If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon.
834
Exploring the Paramilitary Leaks
In January, Distributed Denial of Secrets published over 200 gigabytes of chat logs and recordings from paramilitary groups and militias, including American Patriots Three Percent (APIIII) and the Oath Keepers. The files were obtained by John Williams, a wilderness survival trainer who spent years deep undercover…
835
NCSC, GCHQ, UK Gov't expunge advice to “use Apple encryption”
This is some really embarrassing timing on the Home Office’s (HO’s) part: a few weeks ago when news first broke of the HO’s demand for a backdoor in Apple ADP, I pointed out to MP…
836
Skynet won and destroyed humanity
For a very long time, it appeared obvious to outside observers of the time flow that Skynet would never win the war, and never annihilate humanity.
837
Study: The ozone hole is healing, thanks to global reduction of CFCs
An MIT-led study confirms the Antarctic ozone layer is healing as a direct result of global efforts to reduce ozone-depleting substances.
838
The Demoralization is just Beginning
This is a map of primary trading partners, US vs China, and how it has evolved over the last 20 years. Think about it, and realize this probably reflects your experience.
839
Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked
To decarbonize road transport, the world must move away from petrol and diesel cars towards electric vehicles and other forms of low-carbon transport.
840
Losing a 5-year-long Illinois FOIA lawsuit for database schemas
Thomas Ptacek, a friend and expert witness in this lawsuit summed it up best in the court's hallway while walking within three feet of opposing counsel: "This is fucking stupid" .