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iPhone dumbphone
I used Apple Configurator to turn my iPhone into a dumb phone. I can only access the apps and websites I want to use, and it’s feeling great!
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 666 posts.
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It's time to make computing personal again
Adventures in vintage computers and retrogaming. Includes articles on classic games and obsolete computers.
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Auto-grading decade-old Hacker News discussions with hindsight
A vibe coding thought exercise on what it might look like for LLMs to scour human historical data at scale and in retrospect.
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What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the world?
Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people, in pursuit of a contrived-to-be-fun mission, turns out to be, well, fun.
66
The Rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
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The demoscene as a UNESCO heritage in Sweden
The demoscene has become a national UNESCO-heritage in Sweden, thanks to an application that Ziphoid and me did last year. This has already happened in several European countries, as part of the international Art of Coding initiative to make the demoscene a global UNESCO heritage. I think this makes
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Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites
Save and Share: Click. Ugh. Another one. You know the drill. You land on a new website, eager to read an article or check a product price, and before the page even finishes loading, it appears: the dreaded cookie banner. A pop-up, a slide-in, a full-screen overlay demanding you “Accept All,” “Manage Preferences,” or…
69
Greenland is a beautiful nightmare
Greenland is a complicated topic here in Denmark. The former colony that is still treated a bit like a colony is something that inspires a lot of emotions. Greenland has been subjected to a lot of unethical experiments by Denmark, from taking their kids to wild experiments in criminal justice.
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Accountability Sinks
Accountability engineering in institution design
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A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
The issues described in this article were resolved after this article was posted.
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“Super secure” messaging app leaks everyone's phone number
You can be, do, and have whatever you want, except for not spilling user information
73
Time to start de-Appling
I ‘ve done such a thorough job of de-Googling that I forgot to show up for a meeting with someone, because I hadn’t checked my Google calendar in ages. (No, they were not amused.) In my defense, I proceeded to explain to them that having de-Googled, I was also in the process of de-Appling, which is a special bonus…
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AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time
All the same privacy harms with online tracking are also present with AI, but worse.
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I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric
This is a story that started back in 2022, but I think its a perfect time to reflect on the impact that it has had on my friend group still to this day. Update (2/7/2025): I'm genuinely blown away by the response to this post. This hit the
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Secret Documents Show Pepsi and Walmart Colluded to Raise Food Prices
The Trump FTC tried to hide a complaint showing Pepsi forced shoppers to pay higher prices everywhere but Walmart. But now it's unsealed. And the politics of affordability are explosive.
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Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me
“Bro, ban me at the IP level if you don't like me!”
78
Chat Control proposal fails again after public opposition
The European Union’s controversial Chat Control proposal has been withdrawn once again following intense public pressure. This marks another defeat for legislation that would have mandated scanning of encrypted messages across the EU.
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“The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”
This write-up was originally posted on reddit , though I've cleaned things up specifically for this post. Due to reasons discussed towards the end of this post, I'm not entirely happy with the results and intend to take another shot at it in the near future.
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Being poor vs. being broke
The more I speak about being poor, the more I realize how fundamentally other folks misunderstand what it means to be poor versus being broke.
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Death by AI
One man's struggle with his mortality.
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Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden
AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden.
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Start your own Internet Resiliency Club
Thanks to war, geopolitics, and climate change, Europe will have more frequent and more severe internet disruptions in the very near future. Governments and businesses need to prepare for catastrophic loss of communications. Unfortunately, the necessary changes are risky and expensive, which means they won’t do it…
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The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press
Most websites can't tell you about them. But I can.
85
The Tsunami of Burnout Few See
That's the problem with deploying play-acting as "solutions:" play-acting doesn't actually fix the problems at the source, it simply lets th...
86
I feel Apple has lost its alignment with me and other long-time customers
A reaction and assorted observations about Apple's September 9 Awe-Dropping event.
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Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore
If you are a current or former career Bureau of the Fiscal Service Employee, especially if you’re a legacy IT programmer with years of experience and especially if you are a COBOL programmer currently working on the PAM, SPS or any other adjacent team, contact me over email or
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Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels
We are products with labels
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Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did
At FTX, Frank, and Pollen, software engineers were asked to do something potentially illegal, or to go along with what looked like fraud. They obliged in two out of three cases, landed in hot water, and now face jail time. A reminder why it’s never a good idea to go along with such requests.