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Low-background Steel: content without AI contamination
Somehow I forgot to blog my site: https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai/ . I created it back in March 2023 as a clearinghouse for online resources t...
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 666 posts.
152
Fewer Foreign Passengers Are Flying to the US
On using a new dataset and ensuring your analytic findings aren't a data reporting issue.
153
The Alpha Myth: How captive wolves led us astray
A wolf paces in captivity, teaching us all the wrong lessons about power
154
Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)
SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION, 17th Annual EOS/ESD Symposium THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1995, 8:00 am SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION: ELECTROSTATIC CONSIDERATIONS IN INDUSTRY MODERATOR: D. Swenson, 3M 7.7 CASE STUDY - LARGE PLASTIC WEB ELECTROSTATIC PROBLEMS, RESULTS, AND CURE, D. Swenson, 3M Company Tremendous static charge…
155
The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle
Reader warning: there's gonna be a lot of pretend puke photos in this post. If you've fired up HBO Max recently, you've probably seen that o...
156
I deleted my social media accounts
Retrogames revised.
157
Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big
Learn what triggers Germany’s exit tax for business owners, how it’s calculated, and why growing a profitable company can make leaving Germany costly.
158
Addiction Markets
Corporate gambling is economic coercion, a way to shift tax burdens away from the wealthy to the poor. It's been here since the 1970s, and now it's corrupting sports and young men. Abolish it.
159
The Moat of Low Status
It hurts, but less than you think
160
I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time
In 2003, I wrote a book called Crap Towns. It seemed funny at the time. But plenty of people say it would not be possible to publish it today. Is that a problem?
161
UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
This is deranged, each nation’s boomers and reactionaries attempting to outdo the others: “Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom” … th…
162
The untold impact of cancellation
Warning: towards the end of this post are references to suicide, which may be distressing to some readers. Discretion is advised.
163
LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
ChatGPT and LLMs amplify both insight and illusion. They are not knowledge engines, but confidence engines shaping how we think and learn.
164
Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate
The X account of a Turkish opposition leader with 9.7M followers is restricted in Turkey. Although his new account is not restricted, many users say they don't see his posts on their homepages.
165
Finding Shawn Mendes (2019)
In this day and age, celebrities have a lot of influence over our politics. Garthwaite and Moore estimated that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama in 2008 netted him an extra 1 milli…
166
Seeing like a software company
The big idea of James C. Scott’s Seeing Like A State can be expressed in three points: Modern organizations exert control by maximising “legibility”: by…
167
The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)
The Tyranny of Stuctureless by Jo Freeman
168
It's easier than ever to de-censor videos
Last month I asked people to hack part of my YouTube video, specifically to de-pixelate the contents of a folder I had pixelated starting at the 4:57 mark. Your browser does not support the video tag. For years, people have used the censor tool to blur or pixelate out parts of videos where there's sensitive…
169
Free software hasn't won
This is a translated version of a talk I gave at P.I.W.O in June, with cleanups and adjustments for the blog form.
170
What is going on right now?
What the hell is going on right now?
171
Facts don't change minds, structure does
Why do facts bounce off some people? It’s not about logic; it’s about structure. Your worldview isn’t a list of opinions—it's a living network. And right now, it's at war.
172
NCSC, GCHQ, UK Gov't expunge advice to “use Apple encryption”
This is some really embarrassing timing on the Home Office’s (HO’s) part: a few weeks ago when news first broke of the HO’s demand for a backdoor in Apple ADP, I pointed out to MP…
173
Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?
I have my suspicions
174
YouTube is a mysterious monopoly
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro computer repair channel I really enjoy. In the post, he points out a trend I didn’t know about: YouTube views seem to have fallen off a cliff recently.
175
Knowledge-based society, my ass
I've studied the effects of electromagnetic fields on patients with carotid stent implants during my PhD. I've never talked with any patient nor seen any such medical devices even to this day, fifteen years later.
176
Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House
I reverse-engineered Waffle House's website to build a live version of the (unofficial) Waffle House Index, and got a cease and desist for it.
177
The realities of being a pop star
According to my experience...
178
Will Smith's concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines
Will Smith is being accused of generating fake fans with AI, but it's complicated: the crowds are real, but the videos were manipulated by Smith's team and YouTube itself.
179
1910: The year the modern world lost its mind
What one of my favorite history books about my favorite historical period—turn-of-the-century American—tells us about technology, anxiety, and human nature
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