1801
Why does Britain feel so poor?
Plus chaos chasers, ghost motorways, the secret symbols hiding in your street, and a rationalist death cult.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
1802
The slow collapse of critical thinking in OSINT due to AI
This isn’t a rant against AI. I use it daily, ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini. They’re in my workflow like everyone else’s. But the tradecraft is slipping. Analysts are skipping the hard parts. They’re trusting GenAI to do the heavy cognitive lifting, and it’s changing how we operate at a foundational level.
1803
The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly
in an era where tech giants increasingly control our digital experiences, the Steam Deck stands as a beacon of user freedom
1804
Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?
A Bed Assembly Drama
1805
Why I don't discuss politics with friends
March 2025
1806
1807
Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds
People hoping to build muscle with the support of a creatine supplement might be disappointed by new research that shows it has little to no effect when taken at the recommended level.
1808
Where does air pollution come from?
A breakdown of the sources of many air pollutants that damage our health and ecosystems.
1809
Dave Täht has died
It is with heavy hearts that we report that Dave Täht has passed away.
1810
Why Does Claude Speak Byzantine Music Notation?
A Caesar cipher is a reasonable transformation for a transformer to learn in its weights, given that a specific cipher offset occurs often enough in its training data. There will be some hidden representation of the input tokens' spelling, and this representation could be used to shift letters onto other letters in…
1811
Everything is Ghibli
When we got “create anything” and all made the same thing
1812
The Egg (2009)
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
1813
The demoscene as a UNESCO heritage in Sweden
The demoscene has become a national UNESCO-heritage in Sweden, thanks to an application that Ziphoid and me did last year. This has already happened in several European countries, as part of the international Art of Coding initiative to make the demoscene a global UNESCO heritage. I think this makes
1814
How each pillar of the First Amendment is under attack
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” -U.S. Constitution, First Amendment.
1815
Raising Kids to Have an Analog Childhood in a Digital World
Kids were not meant to be brought up in the digital world that exists today as it is incompatible with human neurological development.
1816
The average college student today
How things have changed
1817
Everyone knows all the apps on your phone
Until a few years ago, any app you installed on an Android device could see all other apps on your phone without your permission.
1818
The Candid Naivety of Geeks
The candid naivety of geeks par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.
1819
Accessible open textbooks in math-heavy disciplines
The challenge The authoring platform of choice in many math-heavy disciplines is LaTeX. It produces typeset documents of excellent quality and handles formulas and mathematical diagrams extremely w…
1820
Trump's attacks on universities get darker, with shadows reaching our shores
The US has become a hostile and authoritarian state to foreign scientists and is choosing ideology over science.
1821
Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds
There's a psychological burden of digital life even heavier than distraction.
1822
Banned Books: Analysis of Censorship on Amazon.com (2024)
We analyze the system Amazon deploys on the US “amazon.com” storefront to restrict shipments of certain products to specific regions. We found 17,050 products that Amazon restricted from being shipped to at least one world region. - While many of the shipping restrictions are related to regulations involving WiFi, car…
1823
Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo
It’s A Race Between Building Up and Burning Down
1824
The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
What bothers me isn’t so much that Daring Fireball is shitlisted at Hacker News. What bothers me is that it’s unexplained.
1825
The long-awaited Friend Compound laws in California
[X-posted from the Live Near Friends blog]
1826
Europe's Largest Makerspace
MotionLab.Berlin is the new operator of Europe’s largest makerspace, which is being built on the ringberlin model campus in Mariendorf.
1827
Conquest of the Incas
I wrote about the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs five years ago during the early days of this blog. The conquistadors have since remained a fascination of mine, but I haven’t had a chance to go bac…
1828
What's Happening to Students?
Here's the latest news from the zombie wars
1829
Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Patty Smith.
1830
The Great Barefoot Running Hysteria of 2010
The year was 2010. “Ke$ha's Tik Tok” was topping the Billboard charts. Steve Jobs has just introduced a goofy new oversized iPhone called an “iPad”.