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The electric car as a talisman of false hope
Electric cars give us a sense that we can have change without having to change. In 'solving' climate breakdown, they are a talisman of false hope.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 13,070 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
9122
Why I don't think AGI is imminent
The CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic have both claimed that human-level AI is just around the corner — and at times, that it's already here. These claims have generated enormous public attention. There has been some technical scrutiny of these claims, but critiques rarely reach the public discourse. This piece is a sketch…
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Twitter, Responsibility, and Accountability
Twitter went too far last week for reasons that go back to 2016 and the unfair blaming of tech for media’s mistakes.
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More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
Many people in the U.S. believe that their statistical knowledge is limited, but they would rely on statistics for decision-making more if they understood statistics better, according to a new study led by a Penn State researcher.
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The False Promise of Chomskyism
Important Update (March 10): On deeper reflection, I probably don’t need to spend emotional energy refuting people like Chomsky, who believe that Large Language Models are just a laughable fa…
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Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast
Russian officials have accused Wagner Group of staging a mutiny, with some calling it an attempted coup. What happens next? Monday 26 June 0700 UTC With the situation somewhat stab
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Apple Silicon and losing our legacy
[Edit] This post sparked a conversation on Ycombinator ! I am concerned about Apple's move to its own home-grown processors. It's not because I'm worried about the new silicon, or Apple's ability to make high-performance CPUs, or even because I am worried about changing architectures. I survived…
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Rejected emoji proposals
Proposed emoji that didn’t make the cut.
9133
Why We Dominate the Earth
Why did Homo sapiens diverge from the rest of the animal kingdom and go on to dominate the earth? Communication? Cooperation? According to best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari, that barely scratches the surface.
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Stupid Alexa Trick: Speaking French with a Horrible American Accent
Asking for a repeat, but in a different speech synthesizer.
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A simple solution to credit card fraud, and why you won't see it any time soon
This is the first in what will probably be a very long series of articles. Ultimately, this is the beginning of the story of why I stopped ...
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Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
The executive branch is interfering in U.S. elections in unprecedented ways.
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Why I have resigned from the Royal Society
The Royal Society is a venerable institution founded in 1660, whose original members included such eminent men as Christopher Wren, Robert H...
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The UK government's Low Value Purchase System is a waste of time
It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things. Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy…
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Facebook the Devourer
I can't find a way to write this article without it sounding like a rant, so why fight it? The views and opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer.
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The promise and paradox of decentralization
Plus! Valuation Arbitrage; Labor Liquidity; Pricing Power; Diff Jobs
9148
Ozymandias
Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those…
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Google now defaults to not indexing your content
Picture this: It’s ten years ago, and you’ve just launched a new WordPress blog. Within hours, sometimes even minutes, your content is indexed by Google. You search for a unique sentence from your…
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NYPD can use more than 15,000 cameras to track people using facial recognition
Thousands of volunteers helped map surveillance cameras that the NYPD could use to track people using facial recognition.