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Swearing
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 453 posts.
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British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today
In So Long and Thank for All The Fish, the elegiac fourth book of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, Douglas Adams gives us this conversation between Arthur, a very ordinary Earth…
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"Yes, but what are your credentials, Mr Stross?"
Normally I don't publish private correspondence, but sometimes — rarely — I feel like hanging someone out to dry ...
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Good news: Mozilla fixed their damn browser
Firefox is getting snappier! Hooray
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It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs
The majority of wealth is now concentrated at the top of the social ladder. This is particularly true in the US, and the gap is widening every year. This, I believe, is because of efficiency, not China. Today the best ideas can efficiently and quickly propagate worldwide, and everyone can…
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Petzl comes out against SOPA, after appearing on the list of supporters
New products, innovative equipment, tech tips and resources, adventure stories and trip reports, field insights, and more.
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Why Gas Is So Expensive Today (Hint: It’s Not Libya)
If you’re visiting this page it’s probably because you’ve come here to read my post about the impact of commodity speculation on oil prices.
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Klout Is Odious
The positioning of Klout is gross, turning ordinary social interactions into some sort of game with a competitive score. Of course there are meaningless achievements . But what’s most loathsome is the primary purpose of Klout is to offer “Perks” (aka “ads”) to you based on your Klout score. Yes, I can get a free…
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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.
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Mainstream Failure
The media’s telling of the Japan story has been inexcusably bad. I can’t count the number of pieces about confinement breaches and radiation surges; where they are not information-free they are wrong, and where they are not wrong, they bypass what matters. Here are a few specifics.
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Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook
It’s been about 30 days since I quit Facebook , so I wanted to share an update on what that’s been like. Many others also quit the service last month, and many more are on the fence as to whether they should do the same.
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An Idea for the Economy that will Freak Out a lot of People
The US Treasury is currently borrowing money at a Negative Real Yield . In any normal environment, if you can borrow money at a negative rate you should borrow as much as you can. The premise is that any idiot should be able to earn a return of greater than zero with the money. That’s a premise that should make the…
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Stanford CS enrollment increase "downright scary"
Eric Roberts just sent out a note of concern to the ACM Education Council, and he kindly allowed me to share it here as a guest post. When I read his note, I thought about my May 2009 CACM column …
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Facebook is a Ponzi Scheme
Quill Grid: The Starlink for AI becomes a network. An optional, opt-in distributed AI grid where idle Quill One devices share spare capacity, earn credits, and donate AI hours.
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Anonymous message to NATO
Greetings, members of NATO. We are Anonymous. In a recent publication, you have singled out Anonymous as a threat to “government and th...
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Facebook is what happens to the Web when you hit it with the stupid stick
A friend of mine noted recently that I seemed a little antagonistic about Facebook recently — mostly on my Facebook account, which is some irony for you — and wanted to know what I had …
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No Copyright Intended
On October 26, a YouTube user named crimewriter95 posted a full-length version of Pulp Fiction, rearranged in chronological order. A couple things struck me about this video. First, I’m surprised that a full-length, 2.5-hour very slight remix of a popular film can survive on YouTube for over six weeks without getting…