11791
Robots Must Be Ephemeralized
There is a subfield of robotics research called “sim-to-real” (sim2real) whereby one attempts to solve a robotic task in simulation, and the...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 13,072 posts.
Society, Policy & Culture
Any year
11792
Any Technology Indistinguishable from Magic Is Hiding Something
Odes & Satires, and other matters of stuff & things.
11793
A legal and moral question: The crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 (2021)
The story of how McDonnell Douglas’s corporate culture led to the deaths of 346 people in one of the deadliest plane crashes of all time.
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Minnesota DOT Name-a-Snowplow Contest Announces Results
Announcing the winners of MnDOT’s 2025-26 Name a Snowplow contest!
11798
FOIA Improvement Act Signed into Law
President Obama signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Improvement Act of 2016 yesterday. The Act places a 25 year limit on the use of the deliberative process exemption, codifies a presumption of openness, and makes various procedural improvements in the FOIA. The Department of Justice summarized its…
11799
Democratic Backsliding Reaches Western Democracies, U.S. Decline "Unprecedented"
Press Release for the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026: "Unraveling The Democratic Era?"
11800
When Tailwinds Vanish
The Internet in the 2020s
11801
11802
The Tomb of Queen Esther in Persia
“How much is the taxi to Khomeini Square?” “ Gheymati nadore, it does not cost anything”, the old taxi driver spreads his arms...
11803
The time I yoga-balled an Apple store employee
My personal website and blog
11804
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NSA E-Mail Eavesdropping
More Snowden documents analyzed by the Guardian—two articles—discuss how the NSA collected e-mails and data on Internet activity of both Americans and foreigners. The program might have ended in 2011, or it might have continued under a different name. This is the program that resulted in that bizarre tale of Bush…
11806
Why Dole owns container ships
Dole operates the largest refrigerated fleet, or reeferships, in the world. Here's why it makes sense for a major importer to operate its own ships.
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New phones aboard Air Force One
A weblog about Signals Intelligence, Communications Security and top level telecommunications equipment
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Jean Bourgain
I have just learned that Jean Bourgain passed away last week in Belgium, aged 64, after a prolonged battle with cancer. He and Eli Stein were the two mathematicians who most influenced my early ca…
11812
The wanton destruction of a creative-tech era
Fastly, you killed glitch.com and ruined your karma for 10,000 years. You have “betrayed yourself for nothing.”
11813
Private equity looting public health in a pandemic
During a 2007 trip to NYC, while taking long walks from one indie bookstore to the next, lugging increasingly heavy bags of pressed vegetable matter, I stumbled on Simon Lovell's How to Cheat at Everything at the St Mark's Bookshop.
11814
Why Mitch McConnell Cannot Be Allowed to Decide the Fate of the Patriot Act
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear this week that, while the Senate is rapidly approaching recess, the Senate “will stay in [session] until a deal is struck to extend” the Patriot Act. McConnell has also introduced legislation for both long-term and short-term reauthorization...
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Vaccines and our return to office plans
An update on Google’s return to office plans, including vaccine requirements and extending voluntary work from home.
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Grade inflation at UC Riverside, and institutional pressures for easier grading
Recent news reports have highlighted grade inflation at elite universities: Harvard gave 79% As in 2020-2021, as did Yale in 2022-2023 , compared to 67% in 2010-2011. At Harvard, the average GPA has risen from 2.55 in 1950 to 3.05 in 1975 to 3.36 in 1995 to 3.80 now. At Brown, 67% of grades were As in 2020-2021, 10%…
11819
The digital natives are not who you think they are
I have heard the term "digital natives" applied to todays youth, but when it comes down to the meat and potatoes, they do not know jack shit.
11820
The Monks in the Casino
A brief theory of young men, "the loneliness crisis," and life in the 21st century