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AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power
Best case: we're in a bubble. Worst case: the people profiting most know exactly what they're doing.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 666 posts.
92
Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids
Today, when my 1.9-year-old daughter tried to grab and eat an unwashed orange, I asked her to give it to me so I could wash and peel it if she could wait for a moment. She did. It got me thinking about the marshmallow experiment, where the idea was that patience equals success. But … […]
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Why I don't discuss politics with friends
March 2025
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How to live on $432 a month in America
(For All Expenses)
96
Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
In 2013, a failing founder posted their story on Hacker News (link). The responses were overwhelmingly supportive: "Failure is just an event, not who you are." "Get back up and try again!"
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The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
Antitrust critics say that homebuilding monopolies are the real culprit of America’s housing woes. I looked into some of their claims. They don’t hold up.
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Is the world becoming uninsurable?
You are receiving this email because you are a subscriber to Charles Hugh Smith / Of Two Minds.
100
In the belly of the MrBeast
what does MrBeast mean?
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Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
Gary K Wolf is the author of a fantastic 1981 novel called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? which Disney licensed and turned into an equally fantastic 1988 live action/animated hybrid movie called Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But despite the commercial and critical acclaim of the movie, Disney hasn't made any feature-length…
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The Demoralization is just Beginning
This is a map of primary trading partners, US vs China, and how it has evolved over the last 20 years. Think about it, and realize this probably reflects your experience.
105
The fuck off contact page
How to get people to NOT contact you
106
I don't care how well your "AI" works
The other day I was sitting on the doorstep of a hackerspace, eating a falafel sandwich while listening to the conversation inside. The topic shifted to the use of “AI” for everyday tasks, people casually started elaborating on how they use “chat assistants” to let them write pieces of code or annoying emails. The…
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Right to root access
right to repair laws should include provisions requiring manufacturers to unlock a device's bootloader (to provide root access) upon consumer request.
108
A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs
In many discussions where questions of "alignment" or "AI safety" crop up, I am baffled by seriously intelligent people imbuing almost magic...
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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine.
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The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss
What bothers me isn’t so much that Daring Fireball is shitlisted at Hacker News. What bothers me is that it’s unexplained.
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The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela
Imagine entering the biggest library in the world. You peer down an incredibly long aisle with wooden bookshelves brimming with books. You can see multiple such corridors, all lit with a comfortable warm light. There’s a rich smell of old paper. You can hear some muted voices, perhaps arguing in a whisper. It’s…
113
D4D4
A co-worker of mine (the incomparable Yohei Manabe) was looking at some disassembled ARM code the other day, and discovered something weird. Lots of d4d4 instructions, scattered about. LLVM’s objdump says this is a relative branch to -0x58 . The weird part is that they were always unreachable.
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Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity
I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post
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How the US defense secretary circumvents official DoD communications equipment
A weblog about Signals Intelligence, Communications Security and top level telecommunications equipment
116
You can't cURL a Border
Building a state machine for travel - tracking Schengen days, the 183-day rule for tax residency across countries, and visa thresholds when governments won't expose state.
117
Google shared my phone number
When people started calling my personal mobile number with questions about a voluntary organisation I'm involved with, I was confused: we weren't sharing that number. It turns out that Google had decided to take the number I used to verify my identity for Google Business some years prior and start putting it in Google…
118
4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence
Ofcom — driven by the letter of British law that they are bound to follow, but still Ofcom — are quietly making Britain look (a) very silly and (b) as if we haven’t yet shucked-off the Americ…
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I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too
I've been using Feeder to keep up with the news for awhile now. For a long time, I just checked AllSides. But then I found out NPR in my state supports ...
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Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)
Same people, 13 years later.