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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
6171

The Importance of India

This post sparked a great conversation on Hacker News! See the comments here. “Quantity has a quality of its own”–Attribution contested A significant factor in the power of states throughout history has been sheer numbers. Spain was able to control an overseas empire to a significantly greater degree than Portugal…

6180

What Is Life? (2019)

What is life? This question keeps many people awake at night and has led to rafts of definitions, some involving features (procreation, metabolism and so forth), some involving chemistry, entropy or energy flux and some are of a more philosophical bent. A BBC article noted there are over 100 definitions of life and it…