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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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The TSA's Selective Laptop Ban
Last Monday, the TSA announced a peculiar new security measure to take effect within 96 hours. Passengers flying into the US on foreign airlines from eight Muslim countries would be prohibited from carrying aboard any electronics larger than a smartphone. They would have to be checked and put into the cargo hold. And…
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What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars?
Starlink is a point of departure to consider the costs of the unrelenting drive toward artificial illumination, a technological development most of us now take for granted.
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The Style Guide for America’s Highways
Driving across America, you will encounter a wide variety of cultures, landscapes, people and animals. But the one consistent thing that will stay the same from Maine to California are the signs you pass on the highway. That is because America’s roads and highways have a big, fat style guide.
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"Yes, but what are your credentials, Mr Stross?"
Normally I don't publish private correspondence, but sometimes — rarely — I feel like hanging someone out to dry ...
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Edward Snowden and Gen Y: a sign of leaks to come?
(Before I begin: there are participants in the discourse who would say that we're supposed to natter on about Edward Snowden , and not the contents of his disclosures, because turning it into a personal issue rather than a political one is useful to the machineries of state. But the point I'm about to make here is…
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Nonprofit boards are weird
With great power comes, er, unclear responsibility and zero accountability.
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An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
The following article, and the two addenda that follow, were written by an investment manager who works with very wealthy clients. I knew him from decades ago, but in 2011 he e-mailed me with some concerns he had about what was happening with the economy. What he had to say was informative enough that I asked if he…
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Good news: Mozilla fixed their damn browser
Firefox is getting snappier! Hooray
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Contra Grant On Exaggerated Differences
I. An article by Adam Grant called Differences Between Men And Women Are Vastly Exaggerated is going viral, thanks in part to a share by Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg. It’s a response to an e…
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How Bees Argue
The book Honeybee Democracy, published in 2010, has been sitting on my shelf for many years.
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Blocking Threads won't be enough to protect privacy once they join the Fediverse
At least, not with today's software.
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How much do construction costs matter to the price of housing?
One of the goals of this newsletter is to figure out ways to improve construction productivity and reduce the costs of construction, particularly residential construction (ie: housing) - if you could reduce the costs of construction, housing costs would fall as well.
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We don't know what makes things sentient–so let's stop acting like we do
Sentience is a neuroscience question, not a machine learning one.
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Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro
When you think Microsoft you probably don't think sense of humor. And yet, I'm convinced that Microsoft is going to do a very specific *very* funny thing within our lifetimes.
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MKBHDs for Everything
Marques Brownlee has tremendous power because he can go direct to consumers; that is possible in media, and AI will make it possible everywhere.
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Michael Lewis: shilling for the buyside?
Journalism, in the ideal world, is supposed to inform the citizenry of facts important to their well being. Modern journalism seems to involve issuing press releases from the oligarchical reptiles …
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Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention
I’m extremely excited about online education, but I’ve noticed that online education products have a really serious problem: low retention. I’ve used Coursera, EdX, Hack Design, Duolingo, Codecademy… and I’ve churned from all of them. I bet you did too!
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Firefox OS's story from a Mozilla insider not working on the project (2024)
I clearly remember, but can't date it. I was working for Mozilla messaging at the time ( momo ), being the QA lead for Thunderbird. It was at the end of one of the Mozilla All-hands, maybe in 2011 or 2012. At one of the ending keynotes, we were introduced to Boot 2 Gecko. A hack that would let US - Mozilla own the…
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Text only news websites (2022)
There's no BBC News text-only site, even though everyone comes here looking for one – more info
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Grading Trudeau on quantum computing
Update (4/19): Inspired by Trudeau’s performance (which they clocked at 35 seconds), Maclean’s magazine asked seven quantum computing researchers—me, Krysta Svore, Aephraim Steinb…
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Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks
We live in an era that devalues conformity, while simultaneously preserving it in many interesting ways. Everyone is allowed to have an opinion. Divergent views produce conflict, however, and disagreement, argument, and debate define our current moment. If we merely disagreed on matters of taste - our favorite color…
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The value of institutional memory
In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an …
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The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
A few months ago, while dining at Veggie Grill (one of the new breed of Chipotle-class fast-casual restaurants), a phrase popped unbidden into my head: premium…
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Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
Question for Quote Investigator: The host of a video on YouTube mentioned a remarkably prescient quotation from a New York book dealer in the 1960s who predicted that telephones would have screens, and people would read books on those screens selected from a large electronic library. Would you please explore this…
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160-Year-Old Documents Intentionally Destroyed in Franklin County, N.C.
I rarely re-blog, but this one deserves being spread far and wide. Timeline of the Destruction of 100 Year Old Franklin County, NC Records Please read the whole post included above – but the …