Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,148 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
Inequality in Equalland
Every resident of Equalland has the same life story. From birth until age 18, they live with their parents, earning nothing and spending nothing — their parents cover all their needs. At age 18, they graduate from high school, become independent of their parents, and go to college. The government of Equalland funds…
The Stack Overflow Age
I want to catch you all up on some stuff but mostly I want to tell the story of Stack Overflow in a not-completely-disorganized way.
US bans students from “blacklisted” countries from getting access to Coursera
I’m following a Coursera course entitled “Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World” and just received a rather odd email. All students from Syria, Sudan, Iran and Cuba will no…
The New York Times has requested that I shut the archive down
Computational Biologist + Designer + more
“Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
Electric speeds create centres everywhere. Margins cease to exist on this planet. ( Understand Media , 1964.) Marshall McLuhan remains ...
Death Note: L, Anonymity & Eluding Entropy
Applied Computer Science: On Murder Considered As STEM Field—using information theory to quantify the magnitude of Light Yagami’s mistakes in 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑡𝘩 𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 and considering fixes
Life During Class Wartime
War is bad. Don’t start one. But we’re already in a class war and we’re losing. Where by “we” I mean most people; the winning side comprises, roughly, the richest 0.1% of the population, who are morphing into a hereditary aristocracy. [I mean that, see below.] So, what to do in a war one didn’t choose?
How can I influence others without manipulating them?
Learn practical ways to influence others ethically using five respectful approaches that build trust, commitment and genuine buy-in.
Asian Boss planted deep blue YouTuber and pretended he was a 'man on the street'
Travel, books, politics, history and opinionating on life in Taiwan.
A theory of Zoom fatigue
The Convivial Society: Dispatch No. 5
Celebrating the timeless allure of Tintin's aesthetics
The Adventures of Tintin officially entered the public domain in 2025. We now all own the alluring aesthetics of this timeless classic.
Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
Four archetypes in software engineering
iDOS 3 Rejected by Apple
Earlier quite a few iDOS users and supporters reached out to me to let me know about the recent AppStore policy change (Thanks, EU). In light of this, I decided to resubmit iDOS. However, it looks like Apple has blacklisted iDOS 2, preventing me from even requesting a review under that title, and I had to submit under…
Welcome to the Cloud - "Your Apple ID has been disabled."
Welcome Hacker News, Slashdot, DF and TechMeme. Be sure to read the follow up ...
The McMurdo Wastewater Treatment Plant
Sweet, sweet humidity.
Disney's writer wage theft, a year on
In November 2020, SFWA came forward with a stunning accusation: Disney had told the beloved writer Alan Dean Foster (author of the original, bestselling Star Wars novelization) that they would not ever pay him the royalties he was owed.
Nate Silver confuses cause and effect, ends up defending corruption
Crossposted on Naked Capitalism I just finished reading Nate Silver’s newish book, The Signal and the Noise: Why so many predictions fail – but some don’t. The good news First off…
The age of Pump and Dump software
A new worrying amalgamation of crypto scams and vibe coding emerges from the bowels of the internet in 2026
An inside look at NSA tactics, techniques and procedures from China's lens
Since I reside in a Five Eyes country (Australia) and have publicly presented four cases I led on China’s APT41 attacking organisations in ASEAN , particularly concerning China’s cyber and political strategies, I was curious to explore what China publishes about Five Eyes operations. This led me down a rabbit hole of…
Important women in CS who aren't Grace Hopper (2018)
I’m tired of hearing about Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton, and Ada Lovelace. Can’t we think of someone else for once? I went ahead and compiled a bunch of really important women according to some fairly arbitrary rules: There’s a specific thing you can point to and say “That. That’s their contribution.” This leaves…