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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,149 posts.
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Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
Back to: The myth of heroism | Forward to: A footnote about the publishing industry
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French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?
A complete explanation of how e, è, é, ê, and ë are used in French, with rules, examples and pronunciation.
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Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal
Using your phone as a dumb terminal with a Bluetooth keyboard
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Guys, unless you are really hot you are just wasting your time on Tinder
by Worst-Online-Dater
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Taking a Look at Mastodon
I’ve been a Twitter user and fan since 2007. With Twitter’s future looking a bit grim, I started looking around if there’s another place to go.
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I don't trust Signal
I don't trust Signal because it pretends to be things which it provably isn't and forces use of their controlled the network. This means that if Signal wanted to, they could intercept messages. In this article I show receipts, that while each individual issue is not back-breaking: casts huge doubts to me on if i…
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Twitter Killing Its Mac App
Holy smokes: For the full Twitter experience on Mac, visit Twitter on web. ???? https://t.co/fuPJa3nVky — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 16, 2018 I’m glad Twitter got rid of all of the Nazis and Russian bots on their platform before this.
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One item purchased, ten emails
A single online order now generates ten emails. A look at how retail email got this far out of hand.
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"TLDR" is unnecessary
If you summarize your idea in your first sentence, writing "TLDR" is superfluous. The English Language already has tools to summarize and communicate your thoughts. Leverage existing conventions, which are accepted by a larger population, and you will engage more users and succeed in communicating your idea. "TLDR"…
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The Economics of Sex Robots
This is a lightly edited version of an article I wrote that first appeared in Jacobite. I had a great conversation about this article and evolutionary psychology more generally (link here) with Joh…
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The continued relevance of Weizenbaum’s warnings
“The computer has long been a solution looking for problems—the ultimate technological fix which insulates us from having to look at problems.” – Joseph Weizenbaum (1983) Trying to kee…
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Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines
The unusually long sentences criminalize being an anti-fascist activist, reading the wrong zines, and using the wrong communication apps. They're incredibly dangerous.
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Is it the “New York Review of Each Other’s Books”?
Measuring the extent of self-reviewing at the New York Review of Books from 1963-2022
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Apple fears the killer app
Ok, so were finally getting down to it. On at least two fronts, Apple has now essentially thrown out its draconian rules on what developers can and cannot do on its platform, and replaced them with essentially, no rules. The new “rules” appear to be, “its OK to do what you want in your app if we say so. And we’ll…
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The Other Internet
And how to break free from the grift.
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Cutting their own throats
Back to: World building 201: Heuristics | Forward to: Upcoming reading in Edinburgh
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The Worst (2012)
I don’t really know who Dustin Curtis is, but he blogs a lot, and those blog entries often end up onHacker News. Not too long ago, he wrote a blog post titled “The Best,” in which he explains that he has nice stuff. That in fact, everything he owns is actually the very best of its kind.Dustin’s...
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The fifty shades of Latin
In the bird’s-eye view, one might have the comforting illusion that country borders are also language borders. Especially where the bor...
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What were the earliest laws like?
Hammurabi’s code doesn’t tell the whole story
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Dear Google, am I pregnant?
Here in the UK, we are a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, which among other things includes an explicit right to privacy (considerably stronger than the implicit privacy rights acknowledged in the US, which are not enumerated directly by the US constitution).
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Cyberpower crushes coup
Rewriting the rulebook on coups, time to add cyberpower
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Processed meats as bad as cigarettes: bad reporting on good science
Today, the WHO issued a report that says, in essence, processed meats and red meats are carcinogens. This has been reported in a variety of…
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Cake or death: AMP and the worrying power dynamics of the web
Web developer, standards and engineering nerd, cocktail enthusiast, maker.
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If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter (2012)
Blaise Pascal? John Locke? Benjamin Franklin? Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac? Abraham Lincoln ? Henry David Thoreau? Cicero? Mark Twain? Woodrow Wilson?