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The internet wants to be fragmented
Throwing the whole world into a single room together doesn't work.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 598 posts.
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The EU's war on behavioral advertising
Meta recently conceded that in-app behavioral advertising in the EU can no longer be opt-in by default, marking the end of an era. The regulators won, at least for now.
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Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? (2003)
Try to spot who liked hacking away at corpses rather than computers
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Contracts you should never sign
There are types of contracts that you should be wary of signing, particularly in the software engineering and IT industry. There are potential pitfalls of non-compete clauses, confidentiality agreements, exclusive distribution agreements, and vague project-based agreements. It's important to understand the…
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They can and will ruin everything you love
by Miranda Reinert This was sent out as a part of today's Hell World newsletter. Find the rest here and please subscribe if you like what you read. The other teamToday’s main feature is Miranda Reinert writing about the sale of the beloved music site Bandcamp and the
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Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
How Historians (and Others) Make Themselves Stupid
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Epic Games, others accuse Sundar Pichai of violating retention obligations
Domain registriert bei united-domains.de
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Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
New disclosures released yesterday show Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other firms requesting foreign worker H-1B visas this year.
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New York Times Election Day Crossword (2009)
I recently read a book called Pretty Girl In Crimson Rose (8) [1] , an autobiography interweaved with interesting stories about crosswords. ...
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We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
( This is the text of a talk I delivered at the Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in Stuttgart on Friday November 10th, 2023. Note: early draft, contains some typos, I'll fix them next week when I get home. )
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I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky
I downloaded all the posts on Bluesky as of 2023-05-01. Then I did some data analysis on the 1680399 posts from 45457 accounts.
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What happened to Vivaldi Social?
A deep dive into the events of Saturday 8 July 2023, when user accounts started disappearing from the Vivaldi Social Mastodon instance.
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Medieval staircases were not built going clockwise for the defender's advantage
This story has been making the rounds on the internet with a claim that you’ve probably been told during visits to castles, but, there’s no evidence for it whatsoever. In short the idea…
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California needs real math education, not gimmicks
A guest post by Armand Domalewski.
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Car Bloat: “Huge Cars Are Terrible for Society”
David Zipper, who researches and writes about mobility and transportation, recently did a big thread on Mastodon (and Bluesky) about car bloat: the way in which
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Please Pay for a Year of Nothing
This morning, two emails came in from Apple. The first was about the upcoming renewal of my yearly subscription to Disney+ and the second email was about the price increase of my Disney+ subscription from $79.99 to $109.99. It took me all of 10 seconds to think about it, but I canceled my subscription. It’s not really…
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A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks
Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.
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Apple's Trademark Exploit
try to trade and you're marked
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I can tolerate anything except the outgroup (2014)
[Content warning: Politics, religion, social justice, spoilers for “The Secret of Father Brown”. This isn’t especially original to me and I don’t claim anything more than to…
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Certified 100% AI-free organic content
This is a last call to introduce a "made by an organically-sourced human" label.
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Albert Einstein in 1939 composed a message for the people of AD 6939
Preparing a time capsule in 1939, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company asked Albert Einstein to compose a message for the people of AD 6939. He sent this: Our time is rich in inventive minds, the inventions of which could facilitate our lives considerably. We are crossing the seas by power and utilize…
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Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
After the wave of layoffs at Meta (previously known as Facebook) in November of 2022, I recall messages in the Facebook group for former employees discussing how to handle elements of the redundancy process, like if it was possible to max out retirement saving contributions, or spending gym benefits whilst
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Netflix's New Chapter
Netflix waited out Blockbuster with better economics, and it’s seeking to do the same with its competitors today; the key to the company’s differentiation, though, is increasingly creat…
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Where have all the hackers gone?
A way to talk about programming languages, and a plea to Think Different™
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The presumption that computers are working correctly
The first in a series of posts on the Post Office Horizon prosecutions scandal
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First clean water, now clean air
Fin Moorhouse's website
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Not Using Zoom
Dear client, Setting aside the challenges of using Zoom under ChromeOS and Linux, I have mostly been declining invitations to Zoom calls...