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You are the scariest monster in the woods
We shouldn’t worry about AI destroying society because there’s something scarier out there (it’s us)
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 666 posts.
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Kakizome: Japanese way of new-years resolution
Kakizome, Japanese way of new-years resolution
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A Map of British Dialects (2023)
This map took me a long time to make, and is very detailed, but will always be incomplete and inaccurate due to the nature of language. Why this map is so detailed The diversity of English dialects in the United Kingdom is enormous. It’s common for people from either side of a river, mountain, or […]
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U.S. Government Disclosed 39 Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in 2023, First-Ever Report
What the government didn't reveal is how many zero days it discovered in 2023 that it kept to exploit rather than disclose. Whatever that number, it likely will increase under the Trump administration, which has vowed to ramp up government hacking operations. In a first-of-its-kind report,
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How Obama’s BlackBerry got secured (2013)
A weblog about Signals Intelligence, Communications Security and top level telecommunications equipment
337
Why Koreans ask what year you were born
Why age is crucial in Korea, affecting language, respect, and social relationships. What is Korean & international age?
338
Is software abstraction killing civilization? (2021)
Or: Jonathan Blow is wrong but also right and we still need to prevent the collapse of civilization
339
My sourdough starter has twins
A couple of years ago, I participated in a study of the HealthFerm Citizen Science group in …
340
Seth Rogen Speaks Truth to Billionaires, Gets Censored for It
For the past 11 years, the Breakthrough Prize awards have “celebrated outstanding scientific achievements, honoring scientists driving remarkable discoveries in
341
How I Left YouTube
What was the road like when I left?
342
The contrarian physics podcast subculture
This is the story of how a circle of popular science communicators, who built their brands on championing free inquiry, worked to suppress scientific critique. Of how Eric Weinstein, the man who co…
343
Programming peaked
It helps, of course, that I still consider many of the people I worked with friends, and I know some of them even still read this blog. (Hi!)
344
State Terror, American Style
Forget about “soft autocracy”
345
Lead is still bad for your brain
Wait, wasn't this solved by the Romans? Anyway, my grandma ate lead paint and she was totally fine.
346
LLMs Are Not Fun
I got into programming because it let me turn thought into reality. If I could reason precisely, then a computer could carry out my thoughts unerringly. I could step away from tiring, ambiguous human interaction for a while.
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The cultural decline of literary fiction
What happened?
348
The Hollow Men of Hims
An admittedly partial - but deeply troubling - case against America's most brazen medical grift, involving Chinese knockoffs, subscription traps, and prescription gas station sex pills.
349
Peep Show is the most realistic portrayal of evil I have seen (2020)
Peep Show, a British tv series running from 2003 to 2015, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb as a pair of miserable, co-dependent roommates living in Croydon, London, is the most realistic por…
350
Everything is Ghibli
When we got “create anything” and all made the same thing
351
When DEF CON partners with the U.S. Army
DEF CON has alienated many hackers by officially aligning its geopolitics with those of the U.S. military and announcing partnerships with the authoritarian countries of Bahrain and Singapore.
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The Internet Slum: is abandoning the Internet the next big thing? (2004)
The Internet Slum
353
How many artists' careers did the Beatles kill?
The sinister side of rock 'n' roll
354
Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
IRB you kidding me?
355
I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone
One of my weirder hobbies is trying to convince people that the idea that companies are listening to you through your phone’s microphone and serving you targeted ads is a …
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Hidden Messages in Emojis and Hacking the US Treasury
On December 30th, while most of us were preparing for a New Year’s Eve celebration, the US Treasury was prepping a notice to lawmakers to notify them that their systems, which (obviously) contain highly sensitive, confidential data, had been compromised.
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Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
Flock's 'licence plate readers' read much more than license plates. A judge says what they record must be released.
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The Banished Bottom of the Housing Market
How America Destroyed Its Cheapest Homes