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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 338 posts.
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Steve Jobs: 1955–2011
I didn’t know Steve. I never met him. I never worked for him. I never even got one of his famous one-liner email responses.
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The Clock in the Mountain
A work crane at the Clock site in western Texas. There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the … Continue reading →
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Sam Altman will clean your house for $5
That’s right, the CEO of Loopt will personally clean your house for $5. But only if 1,000 people sign up. Only, I haven’t told him about the deal yet. He may not agree, but I’m us…
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Learning from Twitter
An issue popped up on Twitter this past week that caused the web site to be generally unusable for many users. It appears as if attempts to scroll were unbearably slow and caused the site to be unresponsive.
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Swearing
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
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British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today
In So Long and Thank for All The Fish, the elegiac fourth book of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, Douglas Adams gives us this conversation between Arthur, a very ordinary Earth…
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"Yes, but what are your credentials, Mr Stross?"
Normally I don't publish private correspondence, but sometimes — rarely — I feel like hanging someone out to dry ...
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Good news: Mozilla fixed their damn browser
Firefox is getting snappier! Hooray
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It’s Not China; It’s Efficiency That Is Killing Our Jobs
The majority of wealth is now concentrated at the top of the social ladder. This is particularly true in the US, and the gap is widening every year. This, I believe, is because of efficiency, not China. Today the best ideas can efficiently and quickly propagate worldwide, and everyone can…
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Why Gas Is So Expensive Today (Hint: It’s Not Libya)
If you’re visiting this page it’s probably because you’ve come here to read my post about the impact of commodity speculation on oil prices.
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Klout Is Odious
The positioning of Klout is gross, turning ordinary social interactions into some sort of game with a competitive score. Of course there are meaningless achievements . But what’s most loathsome is the primary purpose of Klout is to offer “Perks” (aka “ads”) to you based on your Klout score. Yes, I can get a free…
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Leaving in a Huff
One thing you may not know about me is that I am a writer. More specifically, I'm a freelance writer. This means I can have several clients at once, work from home in my underwear, and set my own hours. It is basically like being a prostitute, but with less stringent hygiene requirements.
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Mainstream Failure
The media’s telling of the Japan story has been inexcusably bad. I can’t count the number of pieces about confinement breaches and radiation surges; where they are not information-free they are wrong, and where they are not wrong, they bypass what matters. Here are a few specifics.