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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
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The dark forest and the cozy web (2020)
An illustrated diagram exposing the inner layers of the dark and cozy web
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Links as originally imagined were a separate layer of annotation on documents
There’s a follow-up to this article, now, which explains the federated wiki angle to this more clearly.. “Everyone here will of course say they are carrying on his work, by whatever twi…
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Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History
Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse
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Aristotle’s (apocryphal) advice to Alexander the Great on Persian elites (2013)
One of the most frequently copied and widely disseminated books in Europe from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries was the Secret of Secrets . Formally it contains advice from the great philosopher Aristotle to the world-conqueror Alexander the Great. Aristotle’s advice covers everything from Alexander’s diet…
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It's cool to care (2025)
Caring deeply – about art, my friends, and shared experiences – has brought me so much joy.
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What Happened in 2014?
I’m not much for the rear view mirror. I like to look forward, not back. I guess that’s why I’m in the line of work I’m in. But I’m going to force myself to look back at 2014 and explain what just happened. Doing that will help me look forward (tomorrow?) and explain what is […]
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Security in 2020
There’s really no such thing as security in the abstract. Security can only be defined in relation to something else. You’re secure from something or against something. In the next 10 years, the traditional definition of IT security—that it protects you from hackers, criminals, and other bad guys—will undergo a…
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The Road Not Taken Is Guaranteed Minimum Income
The dream is incomplete until we share it with our fellow Americans.
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GDPR Hysteria Part II, Nuts and Bolts, Actionable Advice
Part I of this is here , if you haven’t read it yet please do so before reading this installment, it will help to establish context.
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US Immigration on the Easiest Setting
Having been through the US immigration process (I got my first work visa more than 25 years ago and became a citizen in 2022), it's obvious to me that Americans have no idea how weird and tortuous their immigration system is:
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It's practically impossible for regular people to buy Bitcoin
We’re in the middle of a huge Bitcoin bubble resembling Tulip mania. There’s now huge demand in the mainstream to buy bitcoin for speculation mainly due to med…
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America's best-paid CEOs have the worst-paid employees
Broadly speaking, the role of an establishment economist is to come up with new ways of saying, "actually, your boss is right." In other words, the world we're living in is the best possible world, and the fact that you got contact burns from collapsing on the scorching sidewalk outside of the grocery store where you…
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Is it futile to un-Google?
A rant on the obsession with privacy stuff.
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The likelihood of unilateral solar geoengineering
People are starting to take geoengineering seriously.
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How I realised “Free Software” is a better term than “Open Source”
A month ago I wrote an article called "How I realised “Open Source” is a better term than “Free Software”" . Now I change my mind completely and explain why everything I said was actually wrong.
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