541
Gatekeepers of Law: Inside the Westlaw and LexisNexis Duopoly
Ever since a spate of mergers in the 1990s, Westlaw and LexisNexis have dominated legal research. And that might be why searching legal cases is so costly, even in the age of AI.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 715 posts.
542
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...
543
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.
544
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.
545
The Future of AI
The Parents’ Paradox: AI, Ethics, and the Limits of Machine Morality This post is based on a talk I gave at The AI & Automation Conference in London on February 25, 2026, and my slides. A…
546
“CEO said a thing” journalism
"CEO said a thing!" journalism involves parroting the claims of a business leader or executive with absolutely no context, correction, or challenge whatsoever, no matter how elaborate the delusion.
547
Somebody please stop the spam texts
I complain about spam texts and consider why I’m so hesitant to just reply STOP to unsubscribe.
548
Cloudflare CEO is lying to you about the bot traffic jump
A magic trick is a trick. It misrepresents reality. What the Cloudflare CEO published as bot traffic increasing, is a trick. He misrepresents reality.
549
Long Island's decommissioned nuclear power plant
Driving on Route-25a through East Shoreham, you’d never guess there was anything unusual about the gated road heading off toward the coast. But go down a ways… …and suddenly, it’ll appear through the trees… Long Island’s only nuclear power plant, closed and shuttered since it was decommissioned in 1994. Today, it sits…
550
Pseudpocalypse
Here’s a conjecture: If you put any significant amount of text on the internet under different names, those identities can be linked using only the text itself.
551
Technofascism
In July 2016, Peter Thiel walked onto the stage at the Republican National Convention and told the crowd three things. First: “I build things.” Second: “I’m proud to be gay.” Third: “I’m proud to be a Republican.” What he did not say was that he had spent years funding a blogger named Curtis Yarvin, who wrote under…
552
America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice
Call you Congresspeople, right now.
553
Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed
A barbarian heretic kept the Roman state running for thirty-three years
554
To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks
I know the technology, I understand what it's doing and I know the impact, so I am vehemently anti-AI. I do not believe any positive out...
555
Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
I wanted Book Corners to contribute newly submitted public bookcases back to OpenStreetMap. After researching the operational and community requirements, I decided not to implement it.
556
I hate you Microsoft
The rare moment when I need to open a powerpoint document is here. As usual, I have my institutional account logged into their “services”, because my university pays microslop something in the ballpark of hundreds of thousands of euros in contracts with this large software provider.
557
Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
What exists is a matter of public opinion
558
A Rant About “Technology” (2005)
Ursula K. Le Guin on the presence of technology in her work
559
Telescope Ranchers
Rockwood, Texas is home to a unique business, Starfront Observatories. Owner/operator Bray Falls hosts hundreds of other people’s telescopes in perfect conditio
560
AI helps add 10k more photos to OldNYC
Over the past two years I’ve quietly rebuilt major parts of the OldNYC photo viewer . The result: 10,000 additional historic photos on the map , more accurate locations, and a site that’s cheaper and easier to run—thanks to modern AI tools and the OpenStreetMap ecosystem.
561
How much of F-Droid is LLM generated?
Investigating the use of LLMs in the Android FOSS community
562
Buy Your Friends Batteries
Pool your money and give your friends batteries that lower their electricity bills and keep essential devices running during outages.
563
What the fuck happened to nerds
I've befriended some of the most thoughtful, brilliant, curious, eccentric, and sincere people I've ever met in the tech industry. Many of my dearest friends...
564
Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers. Oh My Alternative Internets Beyond HTTPS
Finger from 1971, Gopher from 1991, and Gemini from 2019. These protocols offer decentralized, terminal-based alternatives to the modern web. The small web…
565
The View from RSS
What the web looks like when you subscribe to 2,000 RSS feeds.
566
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.”
567
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...
568
The Duty of a Scholar
There was a joke at the time that although the National Security Agency had opened up in recent years and started taking their defensive role more seriously, the one aspect of cryptography which they would never discuss publicly was side channel attacks — and this itself constituted a side channel, revealing the…
569
The Social Smolnet
The Social Smolnet par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.
570
Canada
I've been visiting the US a lot these days: for work, for conferences, and simply to see friends. Commensurately, I've been also thinking more about what Can...