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Paul Graham on Conversations with Tyler
Plus, his bizarre strategy for getting over a fear of flying.
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
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Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
Tyler Cowen is an economist that has spotted top talent in fields ranging from biotech to literature, often years before insiders. How does he do it?
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WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users
WhatsApp's rise and recent PR efforts highlight a class of business models that I call "user domestication".
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Blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are
If you go out seeking to learn why blockchains and the systems built atop them are apparently the future of our web, you’ll begin to see some common themes. These fall apart under further scrutiny.
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Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio?
Last fall, under the aegis of Ham Radio Village , I was awarded a grant to take my one-day Tech class on the road. Ham Radio Village believes that more people in technical fields should have amateur radio licenses and that amateur radio is underrepresented in the hacker, STEM/STEAM, and maker communities. Currently…
7446
Remain Calm: The fox is still in the Firefox logo
If you’ve been on the internet this week, chances are you might have seen a meme or two about the Firefox logo. And listen, that’s great news for us. S
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Extinction-Level Capitalism
Matthew Butterick
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Columbo: an origin story (2018)
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Prescription: Miurder, here’s a little bit about the origins of the Columbo character – and the actors who played him before …
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Sony's Legal Attack on Quad9, Censorship, and Freedom of Speech
A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy
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Global Encryption Day: Demand End-to-End Encryption in DMs
Today is Global Encryption Day, a day to highlight why encryption is critical for a safe, private internet.
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Problems coming for online publishing
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine, by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. Among other things (all correct), Zeynep explains that “Facebook makes m…
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Interview of Glenn Greenwald [video]
This must be the most cringe-inducing interview by a senior journalist I’ve ever seen. It’s conducted by Kirsty Wark, one of the BBC’s top presenters, and takes places on Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship nightly current affairs programme. It truly makes me more ashamed of the “profession” of journalism than I already was
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How Zappos' User Agreement Failed In Court and Left Zappos Legally Naked
By Eric Goldman In re Zappos.com Inc., Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, 2012 WL 4466660 (D. Nev. Sept. 27, 2012). In January, Zappos (part of $AMZN) announced a massive data security breach affecting 24 million consumers. As typically happens in these...
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Bills Introduced by Congress Fail to Fix Unconstitutional NSA Spying
In the past two weeks Congress has introduced a slew of bills responding to the Guardian's publication of a top secret court order using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to demand that Verizon Business Network Services give the National Security Agency (NSA) a record of every customer's call history...
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Japanese Death Poems
by haiku poets
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Attempts to Censor AntiPolygraph.org
AntiPolygraph.org has received a rather unpleasant letter from James D’Loughy, a lawyer representing NITV Federal Services, LLC (NITV), which markets a scientifically baseless voice-based lie detector called the “Computer Voice Stress Analyzer,” and its president, self-described “Renaissance Man” “Dr.” Charles Humble…
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JWZ on iPhone OS development: "This is why I sell beer"
301 This blog has moved to jwz.org . This post has been archived here . Please update your links. 301
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Tales from the Far Side
Sean Kleefeld's daily thoughts about comics and the comic industry.
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Xinjiang University President Tashpolat Tiyip Sentenced to Death in Secret Trial
Source: Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia (1/22/19) A Death Sentence For a Life of Service By Amy Anderson Note: This article written by Amy Anderson is based on interviews with Tashpolat Tiyip’s…
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A data analysis of speeches at the Oscars
I analysed almost 2,000 Oscar speeches to discover if the claim that Harvey Weinstein was thanked more often than God is true. Plus, we'll find out which Hollywood icon is bigger than both of them.
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The Internet Archive Pushes Back on “Notice and Staydown”
The US Copyright Office sought comments in its ongoing study of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 512 safe harbor study. They are generally looking to find out how well the notice and takedown system is working for everyone—Internet platforms and users, as well as creators and copyright holders. We…
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A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
Over the last several months, I've witnessed many controversial discussions among my friends, in my San Francisco community, and on online forums about James Demore’s memorandum [https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320] . People of both genders are wrestling with the fact…
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The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
Tomorrow I head for “ Sci Foo ” at the Googleplex. I proposed a discussion session there, “Are We Becoming Less Cooperative? If So, Why?” and I’d like to use today’s blog to help…
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Crimes against transhumanity
(Disclaimer: I am a transhumanist skeptic these days, not to mention a singularity curmudgeon and a critic of Mars colonization, but I still find these ideas nice to chew on sometimes.)