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What happens when housing prices go down?
A reflection on affordability, finance, and the deep contradictions we struggle to face.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
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Mea culpa: there is a crisis in the humanities
NOTE 8/23: I've written a more thoughtful version of this argument for the Atlantic. They're not the same, but if you only read one piece, ...
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The safest job from AI may be writing
Today, tech folk are scrambling to change their workflows to meet newly inflated 5X productivity quotas, while getting pummeled under the co...
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What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?
I replayed Warcraft III recently and was looking for other games I could play in the same genre. Turns out that outside of StarCraft 2, there are no recent games that are anywhere near as good. Wha…
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Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting
The new normal in tech recruiting
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'First to Do It' vs. 'First to Do It Right'
Apple wasn’t going to include a front-facing camera until they had software that made it useful in an iPhone-caliber way. HTC is happy to include a front-facing camera and leave its utility (and user experience) in the hands of third-party developers.
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Mag Wealth (2024)
Mag World: an intuitive sense of scale, using orders of magnitude
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People Hate AI Art
If your initial reaction to reading that and seeing that is some variation of "ughhh" or rolling your eyes or "fuck this guy" congrats. You are normal.
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How do poor countries get rich?
An overview of 4 theories
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The Great Bifurcation
Tracing the evolution of tech’s three eras, and why the fourth era — the Metaverse — is defined by its bifurcation with the physical world.
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Elite Biases Make Policy Biases
A 2014 paper predicted U.S.
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What could have been
Even if we manage to snap out of the AI bubble, we are never going to get these years back. I can only be left to wonder what could have been.
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The Myth of Bananaland
The marketing and reality of the United Fruit Company
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'Zero trust’ security is a poor choice of words
Consider the user's perspective when naming a security initiative
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Cybersecurity and the curse of binary thinking
Working in information/cybersecurity and technology risk is a fascinating and challenging career, as I’ve covered here. There is, mostly, a great spirit of sharing and collaboration among security professionals. However, I’ve observed one disturbing and growing trend in the past few years that might be characterized…
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SFO Quiet Airport (2025)
The airport targeted gate announcements, overlapping PA messages, and tenant music. Instead of blasting departure calls terminal-wide, messages are limited to each gate and their immediate surroundings. In 2020, they worked with airlines to centralize and reduce announcements, cutting 40% of the paging.
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France's largest semiconductor company got nationalized in plain sight (2022)
A power struggle was actually China encroaching on France's Largest Company. France decided to nationalize instead.
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The NSA Is Hoarding Vulnerabilities
The National Security Agency is lying to us. We know that because data stolen from an NSA server was dumped on the Internet. The agency is hoarding information about security vulnerabilities in the products you use, because it wants to use it to hack others’ computers. Those vulnerabilities aren’t being reported, and…
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The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
I recently listened to a discussion of knowledge work in the browser. Along the way people imagined idealized workflows and the tools that could enable them. This result felt familiar from concept videos since forever (such as this old Mozilla concept video ):
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EU DSA: Industry and government interests prevail over citizens’ digital rights
After 16 hours of discussion, negotiators from the European Parliament and EU governments have just made deal on a new EU Digital Services Act. Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer sat at the negotiating table as Rapporteur for the Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and summarises: "We were able to p
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The Melancholy of Subculture Society
Internet links small groups, helping dissolve big groups; good, bad? But a bit sad.
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Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads
Lessons from the plagiarists of the steppe