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The Reality of Missing Out
Tech is entering a period of inequality where the big winners lift the sector as a whole even as smaller companies suffer. The best example is Facebook, Google, and digital advertising.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
5402
A Statistical Analysis of All Hacker News Submissions
After downloading all 1,265,114 Hacker News submissions from the official Hacker News API, I gathered a few interesting statistics which show the true impact of Hacker News.
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Inequality, Interest Rates, Aging, and the Role of Central Banks
Bad things lead to more bad things. But (some) bad things can be fixed.
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Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
Reflections and community quotes from a decade in the Bay Area dating landscape.
5406
Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects
The debate surrounding the Codes of Conduct (CoC) adopted by Open Source projects may be reaching a turning point. In September 2025, a controversy erupted over the governance of RubyGems, a corner…
5407
What is the small web? (2020)
Updated June 19th, 2023 Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch it! You can download Small Is Beautiful #23 directly, and watch it with your favourite video player. Small Is Beautiful (Oct, 2022): What is the Small Web and why do we need it? Today, I want to introduce…
5408
Getting High-Speed Rail Wrong
Now that there’s decent chance of US investment in rail, Randal O’Toole is resurrecting his takes from the early Obama era, warning that high-speed rail is a multi-trillion dollar money…
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The OnlyFans Economy of American AI
“The dreamers look skyward with longing. The Internet hums with its usual promise — you will find your people, your myth, your wonder, and maybe your transformation.”
5410
Apple, What Have You Done?
I've been an Apple user for over a decade and generally very happy with that life choice, but since iOS / iPadOS 26 and MacOS Tahoe were released a few month...
5411
Where did software go wrong? (2020)
Software is broken, but it's not because of NPM, startups, AI, or venture capitalists. A deep dive into how we think about and produce code, and how our software systems reflect the manic state of the modern world.
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Scarcity Truthers
Artificial Scarcity and the Semmelweis Reflex
5413
Jeanne Calment’s 122-year old longevity record may be fake (2018)
Did Jeanne’s daughter get away with stealing her mother’s identity?
5414
Is Cyberpunk Dead? A Conversation with Bruce Bethke
Based on discussions with Bruce Bethke, creator of the word cyberpunk and author of its first story, Dr. Joseph Hurtgen and I discuss the future of the genre.
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Fossil fuels could have been left in the dust 25 years ago
Gordon Moore’s famous prediction about computing power must count as one of the most astonishingly accurate forecasts in history. But it may also have been badly misunderstood — in a way that now l…
5416
Ctcctcggcgggcacgtag is unique to both SARS-CoV-2 and Moderna's 2015/2016 patents
Using BLAST is easy. I'm going to show you how easy and how to prove that SARS-Cov-2 is man-made
5417
Peer review is an honor-based system (2008)
It would take too long to expose all of the flaws of peer review, here are some: some work is just flat wrong because the reviewers cannot analyze all of the mathematical results, and because they cannot redo the experiments; numerous researchers cheat, sometimes in small ways ("2 out of 3 experiments agree with by ……
5418
I'm calling this Bubble 2.0, and it's ready to burst
The smart, fashionable startup-people these days are all trying to come up with brilliant and innovative new business models that disrupt struggling industries and synergize for break-out growth potential forming new markets. (Ahem. At least that's what they say.)
5419
The game theory of seduction and marriage with Jane Austen
The enduring success of her early 19th century novels are in large part due to their persistent relevance
5420
Notes on AI Bias
Machine learning is the new centre of tech, and like all big new things there are issues. ‘AI bias’ is much-discussed right now: machine learning finds patterns but sometimes it finds the wrong one, and it can be hard to tell.
5421
Do open source licences cover the Ship of Theseus?
I recently downloaded a single-page HTML template for a project I was working on. I wanted a good-looking scaffold to help me getting running quickly. The code had an attribution licence which I was happy to comply with. I ended up removing about a whole bunch of the HTML that I didn't need. That also allowed me to…
5422
Want to help the poor and transform your economy? Give people cash.
YEA,GOVERNMENT,STOP BEING SO CROOKED AND PUTTING THE MONEY IN YOUR OWN POCKETS SHARE WITH THE POOR AND NEEDY PEOPLE LIKE ME. I HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR HELP TO GET A HOUSING GRANT AND I HAVE EMAILED THE CROOKED GOVERNORS IN NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA AND ALSO SENATORS,CONGRESSWOMEN AND MEN AND ALL YOU SNOBS CAN DO IS TO…
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“Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing and Expecting Different Results”
Albert Einstein? Al-Anon? Narcotics Anonymous? Max Nordau? George Bernard Shaw? Samuel Beckett? George A. Kelly? Rita Mae Brown? John Larroquette? Jessie Potter? Werner Erhard?
5425
Features Firefox should implement to weaken Facebook's stranglehold of the web
Merk: Denne teksten er mer enn ett år gammel. Jeg kan ikke garantere at alt som står her fremdeles er riktig eller det jeg mener. Les likevel og skriv en kommentar om du lurer på noe! English: Old post, might be outdated.
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Amazon Co-founder Mackenzie quietly gave over $4B to 384 organizations in 2020
“” is published by MacKenzie Scott.
5427
How to commit murder inside a locked room
Few genres are more preposterous than the locked room mystery. The premises are absurd and plot solutions ridiculous—but still I keep on reading.
5428
A myth called the Indian programmer
They are the poster boys of matrimonial classifieds. They are paid handsomely, perceived to be intelligent and travel abroad frequently. Single-handedly, they brought purpose to the otherwise sleep…
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Reading RSS content is a skilled activity
I've long had a fraught relationship with ToDo lists, because they're very much a double edged sword, but I'm convinced that much of the problem is t ...
5430
The Android Screen Fragmentation Myth
As someone who develops for Android and iOS I get asked the same question over and over again by people: "Is developing for Android screens a huge pain? How ...