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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
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Yik Yak Hack
Yik Yak is an anonymous, controversial social media application that allows people to make posts that are visible to other users within ~2 miles. Often landing a top 10 spot in the iOS App Store, this app has become increasingly popular with high school and college students. Due to the anonymous nature of the app…
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Prediction Markets: When Do They Work?
Epistemic Status: Resident Expert I’m a little late on this, which was an old promise to Robin Hanson (not that he asked for it). I was motivated to deal with this again by the launch of Augu…
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The most expensive four words in the English language: “This time is different”
There are currently a number of attempts to deploy a cryptocurrency-based decentralized storage network, including MaidSafe, FileCoin, Sia a...
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If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
There’s now an open letter arguing that the world should impose a six-month moratorium on the further scaling of AI models such as GPT, by government fiat if necessary, to give AI safety and …
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The Decline of Usability: Revisited
Three years ago, I wrote a rant about the problems of our current UI paradigm. The complaints I voiced were hardly new or unique, neither was the text what I'd consider my best writing. It was, honestly, mostly a way to blow off steam. It seems I struck a nerve, though, because it's proven to be one of the most…
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Without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—A Review
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Where did the old web go? We followed 657,607 links to find out
A complete crawl of every restored link from 2009 to 2014 found that 76.7% no longer return a loading page.
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Internet centralization and the original sin of NAT
How NAT broke the concept of an internet connection
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Humanising LLM Outputs Is Dumb
The largest tell for me to tell where culture and sentiment is shifting for AI tools is usually X, viral GitHub repositories and Hacker News. One of these tells I’ve been seeing a lot lately is skills like I have ADHD and Agents.md instructions such as giving outputs in only ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English.
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Google Apple Contact Tracing (GACT): a wolf in sheep’s clothes?
I wrote a critical piece about the Google Apple Contact Tracing (GACT) platform a few days ago . This resulted in quite some discussion, which brought some more arguments to the fore, that I would like to address and clarify here. Here I focus on my area of expertise: privacy. My colleague Tamar Sharon wrote an…
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Why Telegram had to follow Apple and Google when they suspended a voting app
telegra.ph/why-telegram-had-to-follow-apple-and-google-when-they-suspended-a-voting-app-09-252021229 points168 comments details
Telegram gives its users more freedom of speech than any other popular mobile application. Unlike other apps, Telegram can't be pressured by shareholders, cloud providers or advertisers into unjustified censorship. Telegram doesn't exist in isolation, however. It depends on other companies to function, from banks and…
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The integrated timetable of Switzerland
When people talk about great nation-wide public transit systems, names such as Japan or Switzerland are often mentioned. In this article I will show what makes Switzerland’s network so unique and why it is has become so popular.
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The A2 motorway no longer divides Maastricht
Not too long ago the A2 motorway split the city of Maastricht in two. The internationally important road connection cut off the east of the city from the centre. The space where the road once was i…
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Your face is not a bar code: arguments against automatic face recognition (2001)
An abridged version of this article appeared in Whole Earth 106, Winter 2001, pages 74-77.
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What does the NSA think of academic cryptographers?
Brighten Godfrey was one of my officemates when we were grad students at Berkeley. He’s now a highly-successful computer networking professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, …
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Discovering the indieweb with calm tech
Blog Quest and StreetPass help you discover the independent web
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Just how complicated could it be to register a German company?
Have you heard that it is complicated to start a business in Germany?
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‘Return to the office’ rhetoric needs to end
Disclaimer: I know not all jobs can be done from home. This article is aimed at the ones that can be done remotely yet have ‘management…
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AI is making us work more
How tools that were supposed to free us up to find meaning work have exacerbated the rat race.
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My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post
Bottom Line Up Front: Frances, if you read this, do please tell the DCMS committee up front (and don’t let them distract or dissuade you) that people need the privacy which end-to-end encrypt…
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Money lessons without money: The financial literacy fallacy
Financial literacy without real-world money experience is as ineffective as teaching swimming with PowerPoint slides. A critical look at classroom finance education.
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Access to frontier AI will soon be limited by economic and security constraints
Soon, access to frontier AI will be scarce and selective
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Financial systems take a holiday
Ever wondered about what happens when banks are closed or why some apps have operating hours? It's fascinating.
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Tech companies are irrational pop cultures
How to make better software with systems-thinking
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Own-goal football (2022)
In a 1994 qualifying match for the Caribbean Cup, both Barbados and Grenada attempted to score deliberate own goals – because it was the best strategy available.