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Why I don't love Light Rail Transit
Snippets 2, Episode 22
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 390 posts.
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Randomize HN: Removing the vote threshold for getting to the front page
You ever notice that there's this funny threshold for getting to the front page on sites like HN? The exact threshold varies depending on how much traffic there is, but, for articles that aren't wildly popular, there's this moment when the article is at N-1 votes. There is, perhaps, a 60% chance that the vote will…
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Fukushima 8 years on – photo essay
Fukushima 8 years on
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Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?
Exercise in pointing out the obvious: Greenland has been, is, and will be indefinitely, a white elephant. Denmark turned down 100m USD from the USA in 1946; I discuss how this was a bad idea—America got what it needed anyway while Denmark kept control of a loser.
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The Acid Farmers
How Sandoz Pharmaceuticals produced the LSD that turned on the world
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Is it creepy when brands pester you on social media?
You're sat in a pub, chatting with your mates. You start to moan about how the cheap lager they serve gives you a headache. All of a sudden, a stranger runs up to you and says: "Oh no! Headaches? Have you tried the refreshing taste of Pepsi® Cola? It's the Flavour That Keeps Giving™!" I suspect you would complain to…
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What did Google+ get right?
Google+ got some things awfully wrong. They lost and they were hated. But many of us thought it was the best social network that existed...
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Programmer Migration Patterns
I made a little flow chart of mainstream programming languages and how programmers seem to move from one to another. There's a more common...
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Fortnite and the Good Life
Create beautiful emails, automate campaigns, and track performance. Try it now and see how our tools can drive your business.
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Ransomware, Data Breaches at Hospitals Tied to Uptick in Fatal Heart Attacks
Hospitals that have been hit by a data breach or ransomware attack can expect to see an increase in the death rate among heart patients in the following months or years because of cybersecurity remediation efforts, a new study posits. Health industry experts say the findings should prompt a larger review of how…
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The APA Meeting: A Photo-Essay
The first thing you notice at the American Psychiatric Association meeting is its size. By conservative estimates, a quarter of the psychiatrists in the United States are packed into a single giant…
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Capitalism and Inequality
I was talking to a friend about AOC’s proposal to increase marginal federal rates to 70% to fund investments in fighting climate change. My friend said he was disappointed that she didn’t propose a top federal rate of 83.25% so that the marginal rate in NYC would be 100%. He was joking but his remark […]
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Dating: A Research Journal, Part 1 (2016)
My journey to finding love using science and data. Part 1 – how to own online dating.
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Abe’s New Word Order
The days when the typical foreigner in Japan was a tall Caucasian with a big nose are long gone
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Digital pollution
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
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“That Deep Romantic Chasm”: Libertarianism and the Computer Culture (1999)
"THAT DEEP ROMANTIC CHASM": LIBERTARIANISM, NEOLIBERALISM, AND THE COMPUTER CULTURE
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Chickens Are Bullies – Can Their Behavior Teach Us About Our Own?
When I was growing up in a suburb of Austin, Texas, the neighbor across the street had a small flock of backyard hens that were a…
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Groups of Homeless People
After modest amounts of research, here is how I am currently categorizing the homeless problem. This should be taken as a snapshot of my thoughts, not information for people who have actually thoug…
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A Ring of Controversy Around a Black Hole Photo
[Note Added: Thanks to some great comments I’ve received, I’m continuing to add clarifying remarks to this post. You’ll find them in green.] It’s been a couple of months si…
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Where Has the Magic Gone?
A big change that I’ve realised during undergrad is that engineering doesn’t feel ‘magical’ anymore.
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Servants Without Masters
When I visited Singapore a few years ago, I kept noticing novel bits of social technology that managed to solve problems that I didn’t ev...