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The Waiting Time Paradox, Or, Why Is My Bus Always Late?
If you, like me, frequently commute via public transit, you may be familiar with the following situation:
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 302 posts.
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An OCR cliche: Into his/her anus (2009)
In order to improve the quality of my transcription of the 1879 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I collate the text against the Google Books version. Although the OCR is faulty, it is helpful fo…
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One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
The editorial department of well-known Dutch broadcaster RTL News recently asked for my assistance. Multiple tax files of Dutch citizens had been published via www.docplayer.nl and no one could explain – where did these files come from? Who would have thought that my research would lead to the discovery of one of the…
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The case for ending Amazon’s dominance
It should not be difficult to love Amazon. To consumers, it offers choice and convenience. Countless internet ventures have relied on its cheap, flexible cloud computing services to start and scale…
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Personalisation Is Asymmetric Psychological Warfare
Another privacy nightmare. An airline wants its cabin crew to know your birthday and favourite drinks order, to better personalise its service to you. My first instinct is to recoil in horror. It sounds like every dystopian sci-fi epic. But why do I feel this way? Partly it is the lack of genuine personality behind…
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What Was the Microsoft Network?
No, not that one . Or that other one . The letters "MSN" have meant so many things to so many people, a term that's been overloaded with a thousand different meanings. In the same way they throw the words "National Lampoon" onto any random movie to indicate that it claims to be a comedy, they slap the "MSN" label onto…
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At least it wasn't Oracle
What it was like for relatively new Red Hat employee, Chris Short, during the IBM acquisition announcement and the week that followed.
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New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
The new 25% tariffs announced by the USTR , set to go into effect on July 6th, are decidedly anti-Maker and ironically pro-offshoring. I’ve examined the tariff lists ( List 1 and List 2 ), and it taxes the import of basic components, tools and sub-assemblies, while giving fully assembled goods a free pass. The USTR’s…
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Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain
Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future. Its failure to achieve adoption to date is because systems built…
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Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction
The Chinese government has long been suspected of hiring as many as 2,000,000 people to surreptitiously insert huge numbers of pseudonymous and other deceptive writings into the stream of real social media posts, as if they were the genuine opinions of ordinary people. Many academics, and most journalists and…
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“Invisible Electrostatic Wall” at 3M adhesive tape plant (1996)
SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION, 17th Annual EOS/ESD Symposium THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1995, 8:00 am SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION: ELECTROSTATIC CONSIDERATIONS IN INDUSTRY MODERATOR: D. Swenson, 3M 7.7 CASE STUDY - LARGE PLASTIC WEB ELECTROSTATIC PROBLEMS, RESULTS, AND CURE, D. Swenson, 3M Company Tremendous static charge…
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The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands
How Colleges Make More Money Than God By Giving It Away
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StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migrated to Mix
Sixteen years ago, we started StumbleUpon to help people discover new webpages. The idea was simple: click a button to find a cool webpage…
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Facebook's Desperate Smoke Screen
Soros vs. Facebook One of the big headlines from last month’s World Economic Forum at Davos was a scathing speech delivered by George Soros. The ... Read more
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I fear Google's control of the web
The wonder of the web is that it is not subject to the whims of chaotic corporate management.
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Why the world needs OpenStreetMap (2014)
Every time I tell someone about OpenStreetMap, they inevitably ask "Why not use Google Maps?". From a practical standpoint, it's a reasonable question, but ultimately this is not just a matter of practicality, but of what kind of society we want to live in. I discussed this topic in a 2008 talk on OpenStreetMap I gave…
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Why I'm Ditching Android
I've been slowly de-Googling my life, so the next step is to get rid of Android, in favour of an iPhone.