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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 666 posts.
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Tech takes the Pareto principle too far
There's a reason video games build what's called a 'vertical slice'. If you're not familiar, a vertical slice is a single playable area, with all mechanics, fin
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I kissed comment culture goodbye
It started out harmlessly, a comment on hacker news roughly 16 years ago.
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Bad Dye Job
It might have made some sense to bring someone from the fashion/brand world to lead software design for Apple Watch, but it sure didn’t seem to make sense for the rest of Apple’s platforms. And the decade of Dye’s HI leadership has proven it.
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AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2
Some (well-known) consequences of AI automating work
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Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment
And a plea to think seriously about climate change without getting distracted
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Possibly a Serious Possibility
How 'lurking weasel' phrases skewed Cold War intelligence
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Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity
For 16+ years, we master the rules of school. Study hard, get good grades, follow the formula and ultimately merit wins. Then we enter the workforce and none of it works quite like we thought. This becomes painfully obvious as you rise higher in the org. Even seasoned veterans forget
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Slowness is a virtue
... at least when you're doing research, not development
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Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown (2013)
Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house – and immediately he felt angry. Most people would have thought that the 48-year-old man had no…
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Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors
This is a furry blog, where I write about whatever interests me and sign it with my fursona’s name. I sometimes talk about furry fandom topics, but I sometimes also talk about applied cryptog…
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The internet is no longer a safe haven
A couple of days ago, the small server hosting this website was temporarily knocked out by scraping …
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AI's real superpower: consuming, not creating
Everyone's using AI wrong. Its superpower isn't writing for you. It's reading everything you've ever written and finding patterns you missed.
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Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?
I’m not saying this will definitely happen, but I think we could be on the cusp of a significant shift in Windows market share for consumer computers. It is not going to drop to 2% in a year or anything, but I feel like a few pieces are coming
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"Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit
I don't think that it's impossible for politicians, even nontechnical politicians, to make good tech policy. After all, the fact that no one in Congress is a microbiologist doesn't stop federal standards from delivering potable water (and it doesn't excuse the ghastly failures, such as Flint, MI):
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How friction is being redistributed in today's economy
AI Chatbots, Newark, and the West Village Girls
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An opinionated critique of Duolingo
beyond the green owl, from streaks and potions to pedagogy and politics
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Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
This week's bankruptcy of iRobot, the maker of the Roomba vacuum, is about more than a robot cleaner. It's about monopolies, Wall Street, and economists leading America on a path of destruction.
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Is there a half-life for the success rates of AI agents?
Building on the recent empirical work of Kwa et al. (2025), I show that within their suite of research-engineering tasks the performance of AI agents on longer-duration tasks can be explained by an extremely simple mathematical model — a constant rate of failing during each minute a human would take
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How did sports betting become legal in the US?
In 2018, the Supreme Court repealed a 26-year federal ban on sports betting. This ruling unleashed the biggest gambling boom in America’s 249-year history. How did that happen?
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GPTs and Feeling Left Behind
Every time that I read some blog post about “coding with AI”, or how cool new models write entire libraries by themselves, I feel like I’m lagging behind, like I’m missing out on some big, useful tool, and my skills are about to become obsolete very soon.
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Where is London's most central sheep?
» email me » follow me on twitter » follow the blog on twitter » follow the blog on Bluesky » follow the blog on RSS
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Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1
We are building a comprehensive archive and analysis project examining published documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Our methodology involves systematically reviewing each available document with particular attention to small details and information that has received little or no public attention since the initial…
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CDC officials’ resignation emails
The end of an era.
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The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
The demo scene was recently proclaimed a UNESCO Living Cultural Heritage in Sweden, following several other European nations. As a scener, I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. It's amusing on some level, there's maybe even a bit of pride involved, but also fear that it might bring unwanted attention to a Good…
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Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses
Why being popular is not the goal of most small businesses
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Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits
A friend recently asked how to get started watching Gundam, and as I tripped all over myself, equal parts excitement and not wanting to sound like a
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America's future could hinge on whether AI slightly disappoints
If the economy's single pillar goes down, Trump's presidency will be seen as a disaster.