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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
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A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
Can urban intersections be designed in such a way that motor traffic, cycling and walking flow smoothly and that the potential conflicts of these very different types of traffic crossing each other…
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Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa.
Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. A…
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Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions
Why random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions
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Assange Hearing Day 6
I went to the Old Bailey today expecting to be awed by the majesty of the law, and left revolted by the sordid administration of injustice. There is a romance which attaches to the Old Bailey. The name of course means fortified enclosure and it occupies a millennia old footprint on the edge of London’s […]
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Book Review: “Viral” by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley
Happy New Year, everyone! It was exactly two years ago that it first became publicly knowable—though most of us wouldn’t know for at least two more months—just how freakishly horr…
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Let's Ban Billboards
Most improvements to cities are hard — they take millions of dollars and years of planning.
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EU Commissioner as double agent of foreign interference
Research published yesterday by several European media outlets has revealed that an international campaign in support of the EU's proposed child sexual abuse regulation has been largely orchestrated and financed by a network of organisations with links to the tech industry and security services. The
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I’m not convinced by the new lab leak debunking
It’s still an open question
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If nothing is curated, how do we find things
Bjork is currently promoting a new concert film being released called Cornucopia. She's been releasing new photoshoots and interviews almost every day for th...
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Enough's enough: Contract teaching at a Canadian University
Contract teaching at a Canadian University
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An analysis of the Google antitrust trial
We did an analysis of the Google antitrust trial. Last week, over half of the trial was held behind closed doors because the judge, Amit Mehta, is deferring to Google on the need for secrecy.
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In Praise of RSS and Controlled Feeds of Information
The way we consume content on the internet is increasingly driven by walled-garden platforms and black-box feed algorithms. This shift is making our media diets miserable. Ironically, a solution to the problem predates algorithmic feeds, social media and other forms of informational junk food. It is called RSS (Really…
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What Happens to Older Developers?
If you're here because you received a postcard by snail-mail, thanks for stopping by. To read a 57-page PDF that offers most of the story, use the link below:
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Firefox 115 can remotely disable any extension on any site
Firefox version 115.0 was released on July 4, but I'm not celebrating. I'm concerned about a new "feature" in the release notes .
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Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society
A playable post on how harmless choices can make a harmful world.
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The unreasonable fight for municipal broadband
I love Longmont’s municipal broadband, but we had to fight Comcast every step of the way to get it.
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Tynt, the Copy/Paste Jerks
Regarding Tynt, a service that breaks copy-and-paste on websites.
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Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
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We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
This is the Pentagon Papers for the UK address database
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