481
Coordination Headwind: How Organizations Are Like Slime Molds
An emoji flipbook presentation by Alex Komoroske about how dysfunctional organizational dyanmics arise even when individuals are well-behaved
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 715 posts.
482
I'm Making Strandfall, a Solarpunk Orienteering Larp
Blending the real and digital worlds, once more.
483
How to defer US taxes
Your government wants you to create taxable wealth.
484
Incentives are for losers
OR: you must look at this fish and go insane
485
Julia
An aphasic space station monitors an anomalous object, while keeping the last two humans alive.
486
Why do commercial spaces sit vacant? (2025)
Understanding “extend and pretend”
487
Three Six Mafia – Data about "6/6/6 dating" (2024)
Most guys my age have "the chat". The one with your college buddies that only exists to share memes, argue, bully, and occasionally announce that you got a promotion or had a kid. I am like most guys.
488
Just say no to OpenAI and Anthropic
I recently read End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend that everyone read it. Tech oligarchs make up an important component of the end-times-fascist coalition. One thing that stood out
489
Last gasps of the rent seeking class?
Over the past fifty years, the U.S. economy built a giant rent-extraction layer on top of human limitations: things take time, patience runs out, brand familiarity substitutes for diligence, and most people are willing to accept a bad price to avoid more clicks. Trillions of dollars of enterprise value depended on…
490
491
The Test
Jensen Huang, the NVIDIA CEO and wearer of the most midlife crisis looking leather jackets in the world, was on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Now I don’t really want you do go through all of what was being said in that recording/writeup. It’s painful. You feel your mental capabilities decaying with every minute of listening ……
492
Hamburg's Stadtpark: A Park Built to Be Used
In 1914 Hamburg built a park for people to use rather than admire, and more than a century later that is still what it is.
493
America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
Zoning and food safety laws add up to outlaw tiny restaurants operated by one or two staff.
494
495
The Rise of the Bullshittery
A few thoughts on how the modern economy has stopped rewarding people who know what they are doing, and started rewarding people who know how to look like they do.
496
It wasn't AI that flipped Proton's charge
Proton's CEO called a request for security testing "loser thinking". Using AI to write code is fine, but for a privacy company, the guardrails around that code are the product.
497
Policy on the AI Exponential
In one of the side plots to The Lord of the Rings , two of the Hobbits attempt to rouse Treebeard—a wise but ponderous sentient tree—to defend his forest from an army that is cutting it down. The problem is that Treebeard operates at a very different speed than the Hobbits. It takes him a full day simply to say hello…
498
Fraud investigation is believing your lying eyes
The financial industry has paid tens of billions of dollars in tuition on fraud detection. Here are some observations for investigators with badges, press cards, or GoPros.
499
How the Military Will Hack the Election
Task Force Raider’s role in 2026 elections has military officers uneasy
500
Extinction-Level Capitalism
Matthew Butterick
501
502
Refuse to let your doctor record you
By: Emily M. Bender and Decca Muldowney At a recent appointment, Emily’s physical therapist (who knows some about her research) said, “Before we get started,...
503
504
Discord just killed anonymity
It finally happened. After months of speculation, Discord dropped the hammer: mandatory age verification for all users is rolling out next month. The era of anonymous gaming chats is officially over.
505
How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story
A Newspaper Classifieds Story
506
507
The Vibe Tax
Pol had 12 hours, a blank repo, and a fresh weekly quota. By morning, only one of those remained.
508
Petered
We’re looking in the wrong place for the imposters among us.
509
The death of the brick and mortar toy store
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why more and more local stores are going defunct. A …
510
My article on why AI is great (or terrible) or how to use it
Senior engineers are best positioned to benefit from AI. We're good enough to avoid slop, and there's so much we can accomplish. I wouldn't go back.