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What happens when the NYT and New Yorker make mistakes
Most educated people believe that premier news outlets are inherently trustworthy.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 629 posts.
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American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday
Deep Black Horizon posted an air traffic control broadcast from American Airlines flight AA2292 on Sunday. The aircraft was flying from Cincinnati to Phoenix and at 1:19 p.m. Central time, while over the northeast corner of New Mexico at around 37,000 feet, radioed Albuquerque Center about "a long cylindrical object…
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When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?
Run on sentences, indiscernible insider nods and confusing narrative perspective plague major news publications
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Is your son a computer hacker? (2001)
As an enlightened, modern parent , I try to be as involved as possible in the lives of my six children. I encourage them to join team sports. I attend their teen parties with them to ensure no drinking or alcohol is on the premises. I keep a fatherly eye on the CDs they listen to and the shows they watch, the company…
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My experience of losing a friend to heroin (2020)
Note – This is a true story based on my own experiences and what I’ve heard from the people involved, but for privacy, all of the names have been changed. Note 2 – This is an old piece, repub…
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A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
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Why is China smashing its tech industry?
Maybe because what countries think of as a "tech industry" isn't always the same
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The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
As we head into another gifting season and more and more connected devices make their way onto gift guides, I want to offer a cautionary note. The smart home is like a cat — mostly self-sufficient and nice to have, but also possessing a mind of its own that can lead to frustration and confusion […]
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End of the line for Uber?
Uber is a bezzle ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"). Every bezzle ends.
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A catalog of wealth-creation mechanisms (2009)
One of the guest lecturers aboard the ship [1] (Donald Gibbs, of Pearl-Harbor conspiracy-theory infamy) gave a very interesting talk a few ...
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We need a new media system
If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences
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Debit cards are hidden financial infrastructure
Debit cards are a core piece of financial infrastructure and drive much of the innovation happening in fintech.
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Delta Variant
Cases are growing exponentially across the world. Again. If you don’t know where this is going, a historical refresher might help. India has suffered about two million COVID deaths, the majority of them during its latest surge caused by Delta.Victims of COVID-19 are cremated in funeral pyres in New Delhi.
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Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse
When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate what is or isn't misinformation they think they're the patricians of internet discourse. The reality is they're the plumbing. Meanwhile, most of the mainstream media coverage around the pandemic can be classified into five logical fallacies.
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Financial innovations brought by technology
Tech firms and financial institutions, working together, have in the recent past made core financial services much better for consumers.
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French Appeal Court affirms decision that copyright claims on GPL are invalid
This article follows the case of Entr’Ouvert vs Orange on a GPL copyright violation. The case went to the Tribunal de Grande Instance in 2019 and went to the Cour d’Appel recently in 20…
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The Texas power outage is a nation-wide problem
History is bound to repeat itself and it has almost every year
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What I Use Instead of Google
I made a goal for myself in January 2020 to stop using Google products by the end of the year. That might sound like way too generous a timeline, but…
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Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore
Ethereum isn't fun anymore. There I said it. And although, the last time I developed an app using it has been more than a year ago, I stand by my word. Developing dapps on Ethereum has become ann
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Windows 11 will create heaps of needless trash
The latest announcements for Windows 11 have revealed that the next version of the Windows operating system will have very stringent hardware requirements. Some of them are, in my opinion, quite reasonable. For example, they’re finally dropping support for 32 bit X86 and legacy BIOS boot. These make sense, because…
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Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
A collection of my personal work, including essays, projects, and photos.