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The Internet and the Third Estate
Mark Zuckerberg suggested that social media is a “Fifth Estate”; in fact, social media is a means by which the Third Estate — commoners — can seize political power. Here history matters…
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
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You are committing a crime right now (2012)
Are you reading this blog? If so, you are committing a crime under 18 USC 1030(a) (better known as the “ Computer Fraud & Abus...
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The Democratization of Censorship
John Gilmore , an American entrepreneur and civil libertarian, once famously quipped that “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” This notion undoubtedly rings true for those who see national governments as the principal threats to free speech.
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Interpreting 9/11 commemorative Afghan carpets (2011)
The most controversial and confronting of the many categories of Afghan “war carpets” made since the Soviet invasion in 1979 were those which first appeared in early 2002 and which memorialized the…
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Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism
Rare is the person who could expertly comment – in a single interview! – on the rise of NFTs and their origins in the virtual worlds of gaming, the logic of the emerging regime of techno-feudalism, and the folly of El Salvador’s Bitcoin-heavy negotiating tactics with the IMF. Luckily, we have found this person in […]
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Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf
How far is too far when it comes to including people with different beliefs?
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Why most people don't like jazz
The current market share of jazz in America is mere 3 percent. That includes all the great ones like John Coltrane and the terrible ones like Kenny G (OK, this is just my own opinion). There are many organizations and individuals like Wynton Marsalis who are tirelessly trying to revive the genre,…
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The Heart of Deterrence (2012)
Nuclear strategy is one part cold logic, one part emotional terror.
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It's Time to Nationalize and Then Break Up Boeing
If America wants to make civilian airplanes here, the government must step in, take over Boeing, and then design a competitive industry.
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Vitamin D: the New Covid-19 Chloroquine?
Welcome to this post, in which we’ll be taking a trip through the wild and bumpy ride that has been Vitamin D & sunlight research over the past few decades, and what it might mean for COVID-19. As with my previous post, before any non-specialist attempts to write something on COVID-19, we should wonder: are any actual…
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Assange Hearing Day 7
CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH This morning we went straight in to the evidence of Clive Stafford Smith, a dual national British/American lawyer licensed to practice in the UK. He had founded Reprieve in 1999 originally to oppose the death penalty, but after 2001 it had branched out into torture, illicit detention and…
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On privacy and control
I have 15+ years of software engineering experience across different parts of the tech stack including networking libraries, congestion control, performance improvements, Backend, and Android development.
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Where is my von Braun wheel?
In 1962. There — that answers the clickbaity title right away.
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Aligned to whom?
You are relying very heavily on the priors of the model to do a good job for you. What happens when you cannot judge whether those priors are good?
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Anatomy of an internet argument
Social media isn't toxic, most people just haven't figured out the game (yet)
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Remarks on AI from NZ
Last week I participated in a panel discussion on AI as part of a private event in New Zealand.
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Nobel Prize winning biochemist says all biofuels are nonsense
Similar posts from ClimateSanity Taking Measure of Biofuel Limits 9/24/2009 Biofuels Leading to Disasters 12/28/2011 Hartmut Michel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on photosynthesis. …
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Shitty Software Kills People
How the public healthcare system in Italy is using software to support the vaccination effort is appaling. I’ve spent a good part of the last 30 years trying to convince people that software is imp…
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On-demand learning comes at the cost of conceptual understanding
Everyone has heard about the so-called “types of learning styles” auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and so on. And almost everything has been said about it. But what if there is a different categorization of learning? Maybe one that gives more inside? Well, I think there is. This time we split the act of learning just…
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Where in the world are Trader Joe’s warehouses? (2015)
Personal website of Samuel Burer, Tippie Rollins Professor of Business Analytics, University of Iowa.
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Peer-to-peer social networking with Rotonde and Beaker
A short introduction to p2p social networking with Rotonde & Beaker Browser.
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