5521
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero (2022)
Counterintuitively, businesses, customers, and society prefer having fraud to what they'd need to do to not have it.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,149 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
5522
Setting the bozo bit on Apple
The other day I was fighting once again with Apple Music. Not the service, the app. What I wanted to do was simple: I have some practice ...
5523
Urban renewal left the U.S. too scared to build
The destructive nature of urban renewal left the U.S. too scared to build anything at scale ever again.
5524
Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
1 in 4 American workers stay in their jobs because of the healthcare. It suppresses wages and working conditions - and prevents innovators from heading out on their own.
5525
The Icelandic Voting System (2024)
It’s election season here in Iceland! The election is on Saturday, 30th of November, so next Saturday from when this is written. Every time elections are upcoming, somebody inevitably asks me how the voting system here works, probably expecting a simple answer. So, here’s a stab at it. Iceland uses a biproportional…
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The YouTube revolution in knowledge transfer (2019)
Growing up as an aspiring javelin thrower in Kenya, the young Julius Yego was unable to find a coach: in a country where runners command the most prestige, mentorship was practically nonexistent. Determined to succeed, he instead watched YouTube recordings of Norwegian Olympic javelin thrower Andreas Thorkildsen…
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I made 20 GDPR deletion requests. 12 were ignored
I made 20 GDPR data deletion requests in the past year. 2 complied immediately. 6 complied after I filed complaints with data protection offices. 12 still haven't. The regulation exists, the enforcement doesn't.
5530
I ended up liking GNOME with the loss of one hand
I switched to Gnome after a bad injury on a hand and Gnome helped me a lot using the computer
5531
Dr. Stallman responded to my open letter
Whoa. Thanks for all the attention and feedback, everybody! In case you're curious: I ended up emailing the letter to RMS and got a reply earlier today. I am skeptical of advice from people who disagree with what I stand for. --Dr Richard Stallman Overall, commenters seem to have had fairly positive things to say, but…
5532
Making Quieter Technology
I spent the last years making technology calm and pleasant to use. This is roughly how I did it.
5533
The United States needs to learn how to learn
I just saw an announcement from November of 2020 in which the Federal Transit Administration proposes to study international best practices… in on-demand public transit. It goes without sayin…
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The Gig Economy
Warning: This post touches politics. The comments will likely be incendiary and polarizing. Don’t go into the comments if you don’t want to be annoyed or irritated. Many in the tech industry are taking these comments by Hillary Clinton yesterday as an ‘attack on Uber and the tech sector’: Meanwhile, many Americans are…
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Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)
The role of the modern librarian, and other things
5539
Jack Dorsey Needs to Step Down
To: Omid R. Kordestani Executive Chairman Twitter, Inc. 1355 Market Street, Suite 900 San Francisco, CA 94103
5540
The future of independence is interdependence
Every one of us depends on others; the only difference is how visible that dependence is.
5541
We've learned nothing from the SolarWinds hack
Mac's Tech Blog
5542
Just Put It on a Map
An underrated strategy for urbanist persuasion, powered by open source tools
5543
LLMs are good at playing you
Large language models seem just like humans, but some of this is in our heads.
5544
Et Tu, Procter and Gamble?
Apple’s new privacy rules will only work if Apple enforces them — even in China.
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Why Apple's iPhone encryption won't stop NSA
Recent news headlines have made a big deal of Apple encrypting more of the storage on their handsets, and claiming to not have a key. Depend...
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Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain
A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.