Topics /

Society, Policy & Culture

The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 454 posts.

2013
311

Bitcoin is Worse is Better

2011 essay on how Bitcoin’s long gestation and early opposition indicates it is an example of the ‘Worse is Better’ paradigm in which an ugly complex design with few attractive theoretical properties compared to purer competitors nevertheless successfully takes over a niche, survives, and becomes gradually refined.

313

Anonymity Is Hard

Anonymity in the real world is very hard In late 2011 Hezbollah rolled up a CIA spy ring in Lebanon. This provides an interesting lesson in CIA …

323

Surveillance and the Internet of Things

The Internet has turned into a massive surveillance tool. We’re constantly monitored on the Internet by hundreds of companies—both familiar and unfamiliar. Everything we do there is recorded, collected, and collated—sometimes by corporations wanting to sell us stuff and sometimes by governments wanting to keep an eye…

325

Wild Ideas

A wild idea is one that many people think is obviously quite unlikely. I'd say at least a third of these wild ideas are likely true. (Parenthetic links are to more of my writings .)

327

Finding Sociopaths on Facebook

On his blog, Scott Adams suggests that it might be possible to identify sociopaths based on their interactions on social media. My hypothesis is that science will someday be able to identify sociopaths and terrorists by their patterns of Facebook and Internet use. I’ll bet normal people interact with Facebook in ways…