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I finally understand methane lifetimes
How to arrive at a number you can trust
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 700 posts.
332
Notable items missing from English Wikipedia
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics
Report back on how it goes
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Re: Moxie on Web3
On decentralization, servers and cryptography
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The Casino-Chip Society
Why learning to see the layers of money will reveal the politics of 'cashless society', and much more
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PayPal’s Objectionable Terms Are Back, $2500 Fines for Content They Don’t Like
Two weeks ago Paypal introduced language into its terms and conditions that allowed them to withdraw $2500 from your account for each time they believed you "promot[ed] misinformation" or you sent, posted or published "messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene…
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Web3 doesn’t care about privacy
In web2, we are beholden to centralized entities that monopolize and profit off of our data. Web3 promises to release us from these shackles by enabling everyone to access data living on the blockchain. While it is certainly appealing that institutions no longer have the power to hold our data hostage, it is still…
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Fake emergency search warrants draw scrutiny from Capitol Hill
On Tuesday, KrebsOnSecurity warned that hackers increasingly are using compromised government and police department email accounts to obtain sensitive customer data from mobile providers, ISPs and social media companies. Today, one of the U.S. Senate’s most tech-savvy lawmakers said he was troubled by the report and…
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An argument for a return to Web 1.0
The web was established with the best of intentions. The basic idea was that if everyone could share their thoughts and ideas with the world, the best ones would be vetted and float to the top. The bad ones would be ignored and pushed to the bottom.
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The New York Times is wrong about Haiti
The New York Times recently published a series of articles about the history of Haiti.
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Criticizing Computers
Do you ever get really mad at your computer?
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Google's AI doesn't understand restaurant menus
In the glorious future, every website will be chock-full of semantic metadata. Restaurants won't have a 50MB PDF explaining the chef's vision for organic cuisine - instead, they'll have little scraps of data on the HTML page like: Copied JSON to 📋⧉ JSON"hasMenuItem":{ "@type":"MenuItem", "name":"Dodo In A Bun"…
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Meta Meets Microsoft
Meta’s new hardware is more impressive than expected, and the Microsoft partnership makes a lot of sense. The question is if Meta will capture enough value to outweigh their costs.
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USDA ignoring the science on low-carb diets
Since 2014, the US Dept. of Agriculture has a record of "burying" the science
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The phones of Ukrainian president Zelensky
Interesting telephone equipment in the offices of Ukrainian president Zelensky
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Nuclear power is too slow
One common and plausible argument against nuclear power is that it is too slow.
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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next (2020)
If you follow Gamefromscratch on Twitter, you may have already seen this tweet I put out last night about a blackmail demand that was made against our YouTube channel:First off, I really want to give a gigantic shout out to all of the people that helped get the message out, the tweets, retweets and even [...]
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The Charisma Machine: The life, death, and legacy of One Laptop per Child
Winner, 2020 Best Information Science Book Award Winner, 2020 Sally Hacker Prize Winner, 2021 Computer History Museum Prize
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Vanced Discontinuation
Since many users are having trouble understanding the reason for the discontinuation of vanced, we wanted to brief you on all the expected theories with their answers. Vanced NFT/LTT theory: 1. Vanced NFT:- Some users believe that Google had sent cease & desist letter because the Vanced Team had posted NFT to earn…
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On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days
culture by algorithm in the 21st century
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Mortgages are a manufactured product
Mortgages are popularly thought of as loans, but to understand the industry, it's better to model them as complex manufactured products.
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Some people want to run their own servers
Open Source Freelancer
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The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
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Australia's weird little time zone (2008)
One tiny corner of Australia recognises "Australian Central Western Standard Time" (ACWST), an unofficial zone based on the quarter hour.
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Scam Alert: Fake DMCA Takedown for Link Insertion
There are a lot of scams out there, but one that's been plaguing bloggers like me lately is a novel twist: A fake DMCA takedown notice that's actually a link insertion scam! Beware: The notices I'm getting are very convincing-looking, complete with a fake law firm website!