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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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Something funny is about to happen to some prices
Technology, running tech companies, data science, religion, translation technology, natural language processing, backups, p-adic linguistics, academia
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Is Apple Evil?
Today’s iPad introduction has to be about the most depressing Apple product launch I’ve ever watched. As has been noted , Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field only works when he believes in what he’s selling and he didn’t seem to really believe in this. The audience must have further added to the disappointment, expecting a…
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Anywhere but Medium
Last night I posted a tweet: "Next time you want to post an essay to Medium, do the open web a favor and post it elsewhere. Anywhere. Tumblr. WordPress.com." If I had more space I would have added Pastebin or Blogger. Really anywhere but Medium. I didn't have room to explain, but people asked, so here's…
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“May You Live in Interesting Times”
Chinese Curse? Austen Chamberlain? Frederic R. Coudert? Joseph Chamberlain? Diplomatic Staff? Albert Camus? Arthur C. Clarke? Robert F. Kennedy? Hillary Rodham Clinton?
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I tried to watch Game of Thrones legally in France, Here is what happened
As many of my friends in France started watching the last season of Game Of Thrones: I decided to start watching it too.
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Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?
In my February 23 blog post, I gave a brief overview of how search engines have evolved over the years and how today’s search engines learn from past searches to anticipate which results will be mo…
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Using Wikipedia in the classroom: a cautionary tale
(Third and final update: If you read this post, please also read this follow up post, which includes summaries of ways to try to reduce the likelihood of running into the same problem.) Last fall, …
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The world needs computational social science
The world needs computational social science, and it is not only, or even primarily, about the AI revolution. The reasons follow below and I also cover what a computational social scientist should …
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There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street
A few days ago, I was scouting for office space around West 57th Street when I happened to walk by Stack’s Rare Coins shop…
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The EU can be shut down with a few keystrokes
On a QWERTY keyboard
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Jason Calacanis’ Backup Plan For Replacing Content: Steal It From Wikipedia
/sigh Ok Jason, we get it, you’re desperate. But stealing content from Wikipedia in order to replace what you deleted? Come on! I am flipping through Mahalo.com today, just seeing if you’re keeping your word or not, when all of a sudden I notice this huge amount of pages with odd names that somehow I ... Read more
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Inequality and Skin in the Game
(Chapter from Skin in the Game)
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It's true, “we” don't care about accessibility on Linux
What do concern trolls and privileged people without visible or invisible disabilities who share or make content about accessibility on Linux being trash without contributing anything to projects have in common? They don’t actually really care about the group they’re defending; they just exploit these victims’…
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We've lost our respect for complexity
I was talking recently to a friend about a video essayist I like, (Dan Olson of Folding Ideas) and when asked why I thought he was any good I pondered it for a moment and said “he has a lot of respect for complexity”. On reflection, I think that is one of the virtues I […]
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Googling for Sociopaths
One of the best things about capitalism is the way it handles sociopaths. Major executives look up to Alexander the Great and apparently try to follow in his footsteps. But instead of leading a murderous campaign across Asia, they decide to make something people want: newspapers and movies and television shows. True…
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The Elsevier boycott one year on
A few days ago was the anniversary of the beginning of the Cost of Knowledge boycott of Elsevier. It seems a good moment to take stock of what the boycott has achieved and to think about what progr…
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My Hacker News firehose
I love Hacker News , and appreciate that they have a feed for the stories that make it to the front page. But I want more. I want to get a stream of stories, as they are submitted. For that I'd need a feed that they don't have.
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The Information Apocalypse (2018)
My friend Aviv was recently the subject of a popular Buzzfeed article about the possibility of an impending “information apocalypse”. tl;dr: Aviv extrapolates from the fake news crisis that started in 2016 to a world in which anyone can create AI-assisted misinformation campaigns indistinguishable from reality to the…
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How MTV's “16 and Pregnant” May Have Reduced Teen Pregnancy
Apparently MTV broadcasts a show called "16 and Pregnant," in which each show tracks a pregnant teen-ager through the final months of pregna...
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How to get beyond the parasite economy
It is time to get parasitic structured finance out of our economy - and we should start with the musical instrument industry.
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Arguing Without Warning
We should encourage more public disagreement.