Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 13,068 posts.

Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
6574

Leaving in a Huff

One thing you may not know about me is that I am a writer. More specifically, I'm a freelance writer. This means I can have several clients at once, work from home in my underwear, and set my own hours. It is basically like being a prostitute, but with less stringent hygiene requirements.

6575

Blowback from the NSA surveillance.

There’s one piece of blowback that isn’t being discussed—aside from the fact that Snowden has killed the chances of any liberal arts major getting a DoD job for at least a decade—and that’s how the massive NSA surveillance of the Internet affects the US’s role in Internet governance. Ron Deibert makes this point: But…

6587

One Month Without AI

Several months ago, I decided that AI contributions were no longer welcome in a FOSS project I am building and maintaining - LibreWeddingPlanner. It’s not that it got a lot of contributions with AI — actually all contributions I’ve had are translations and feature requests — but I wanted to...

6589

Protect me from what I want

Over on Mastodon, there are many people who enjoy not being in the grip of software like Facebook or Twitter that single-mindedly tries to maximize “engagement”, which means the amount of time you stare at the screen so they can show you ads. These algorithms don’t care what they’re showing you and if it turns out…

6591

Bye, Prime

Why? · As I wrote in Not an Amazon Problem (and please go read that if you haven’t) I don’t see myself as an enemy of Amazon, particularly. I think the pressures of 21st-century capitalism have put every large company into a place where they really can’t afford to be ethical or the financial sector will rip them to…