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My Parents Give Me $28k a Year
Not long ago, my wife, a composer, asked me if I would ever advise a student from a low-income family to pursue a career in the arts. “What do you mean? Of course.” “Really?” “If that’s what they w…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 597 posts.
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The EU's Link Tax Will Kill Open Access and Creative Commons News
All this month, the European Union's "trilogue" is meeting behind closed doors to hammer out the final wording of the new Copyright Directive, a once-noncontroversial regulation that became a hotly contested matter when, at the last minute, a set of extremist copyright proposals were added and...
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The Waiting Time Paradox, Or, Why Is My Bus Always Late?
If you, like me, frequently commute via public transit, you may be familiar with the following situation:
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Better Genderless Pronouns in English
Writing or speaking English, we always face a conundrum when we need a pronoun to refer to a person without specifying gender. Previously we needed a way to cover both male and female; nowadays some people state that they don't want to be considered either of those, and I believe in respecting their wishes.
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Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?
Around this time last year, I wrote a post dissecting the decline of The Simpsons from its peak in the mid 90s finding that the golden age of the show spanned an incredible 214 episodes. As a comparison, Friends, which seemed to have been on TV forever, managed 236 episodes...
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iPhones are hard to use
I once wrote a user manual for a handheld engine-diagnostics module for Daewoo cars. I know “hard to use” when I see it. iPhones are hard to use.
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Two in Three Americans Now Support Legalizing Marijuana
Americans' support for legalizing marijuana continues to set new records, with 66% of U.S. adults now in favor of making the drug legal.
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What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?
I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here’s my 15 second answer: We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It’s called Stack Overflow. As of
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Pushback against Saudi funding endangers Silicon Valley valuations
Shifting common knowledge on Saudi Arabia has infected the narrative around SoftBank's Vision Fund, which in turn places unicorn valuations at risk.
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Massachusetts gas fires: Another technological tragedy
One Thursday afternoon last month, dozens of fires and explosions rocked three towns along the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. By the end of the day 131 buildings were damaged or destroyed, one person was killed, and more than 20 were injured. Suspicion focused immediately on the natural gas system. It looked like a…
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The Chamber of Guf
[I briefly had a different piece up tonight discussing a conference, but the organizers asked me to hold off on writing about it until they’ve put up their own synopsis. It will be back up ev…
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Proposition C
Read the latest news and information from Stripe, including corporate and product announcements, research reports, brand assets, and more.
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The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
In my last post, I wrote about my adventure of requesting metadata for both phone calls and emails from the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor. The work there - and its associated frustration - sent me down a path of sending requests throughout the US to both learn whether these sorts of problems are systemic…
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Robert and Virginia Heinlein's Colorado Springs House
Socolive là địa chỉ được nhiều người hâm mộ bóng đá tìm đến khi muốn cập nhật và theo dõi trực tiếp bóng đá trên nền tảng trực tuyến. Nội dung tại Socolive được xây dựng xoay quanh nhiều giải đấu và cuộc đối đầu đáng chú ý, giúp người xem dễ dàng tìm thấy trận đấu đang được quan tâm. Cách phân loại thông tin theo từng…
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TSA announces “biometrics vision for all commercial aviation travelers”
Today the US Transportation Security Administration released a detailed TSA Biometric Roadmap for Aviation Security & the Passenger Experience , making explicit the goal of requiring mug shots (to be used for automated facial recognition and image-based surveillance and control) as a condition of all domestic or…
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Reinvent the Social Web
Open Source Freelancer
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Ways people trying to do good accidentally do harm instead and how to avoid them
Even when you try to do good, you can end up doing accidental harm. But there are ways you can minimise the risks.
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How the Sears Catalog Undermined White Supremacy in the Jim Crow South
Sears has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to close hundreds of stores in an effort to keep the company afloat. The Sears catalog is perhaps one of the
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United Airlines Threatens to Engage Collections for Passengers Who Skip Segments
United reportedly has an effort to go after customers specifically that utilize Skiplagged to fly hidden city itineraries on the airline. In one case they're demanding payment of over $3000 and threatening to shut down the member's frequent flyer account and ban then from the airline. They are also threatening to send…
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Survey of YC female founders on sexual harassment, coercion by angels and VCs
Earlier this year we funded Callisto [https://www.projectcallisto.org/], a non-profit dedicated to building tech to combat sexual assault and harassment. During their time at YC, we helped Callisto send a survey to 125 of the 384 female founders who have participated in YC.1 They were asked if they’d ever been…
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The future’s so bright, I gotta wear blinders
“This is only the beginning,” writes Kevin Kelly in an essay in Wired’s 25th anniversary issue. “The main event has barely started.” He’s talking about the inter…
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Air pollution linked to “huge” reduction in intelligence
Air pollution can have a “huge” negative effect on cognitive intelligence – especially amongst older men – according to a study released this past August.
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I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)
If I pay for a website, I expect to not see ads.
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Dear Spotify, please let me unlink my Facebook account
Please let me unlink my Facebook account
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Mastodon’s 2 Year Anniversary
Mastodon was first announced to the public through Hacker News, a link aggregator site for programmers, on October 6, 2016. Now we’re celebrating the 2 year anniversary! 🎉
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