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The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial
A few months ago, while dining at Veggie Grill (one of the new breed of Chipotle-class fast-casual restaurants), a phrase popped unbidden into my head: premium…
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 345 posts.
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The Internet of Things – A Disaster
It's bullshit, no question, let's get past that part. How did Nest screw up this finished product?
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Better than Free (2008)
[I’ve revised and condensed this short essay into an updated version, which you can read on my Substack here: https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/better-than-free] The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we … Continue reading →
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Crypto for kids
When, in the spring of 2030, he almost incidentally invented the most terrible biological weapon known to humanity it took him about three seconds to realize that should his invention fall into the hands of one of the superpowers -- or into the hands of any common idiot, really -- it could well mean the end of the…
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Programming won’t be automated, or it already has been
I’m afraid of a robot taking my job. I don’t care about the job part much, I’m afraid of the actual robot. To replace my job it’d need to exhibit human level intelligence. That’s scary. Before that happens though, maybe some of its infantile, and less scary, brethren can make my job a bit easier. […]
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Wading Through AccuWeather’s Response
AccuWeather issued a statement regarding the controversy over their app sending location-identifying information to a monetization firm. It’s a veritable mountain of horseshit
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“Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
“Side hustle,” “mom-tech,” and “the sharing economy” are covering up something sinister
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O'Reilly's Decision and Its DRM Implication
On Wednesday, I got mail from Laura Baldwin, President of O'Reilly, announcing that "as of today, we are discontinuing fulfillment of indiv...
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Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
Why your outdated brain is making you unhappy and how to hack it.
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Unexpected Consequences of Self-Driving Cars
Many new technologies have unexpected impacts on the physical or social world in which we live.
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Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”
(I wrote this in reference to this memo and the ensuing uproar) First off, his argument had some flaws. For example, even if he was correct about personality differences between men and women being…
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Peer-to-peer social networking with Rotonde and Beaker
A short introduction to p2p social networking with Rotonde & Beaker Browser.
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How Fact-Free Parenting Policies Rob Kids' Independence
I've been teaching my oldest kids (ages 7, 8, 9 and 11, as I write this) how to take the city bus to and from their school for the last two years. It's gone unequivocally well, with the kids slowly progressing from riding with me for the entire trip, to…
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Net Neutrality will die, so let’s take the profit out of killing it
Fighting the FCC is futile at this point, but Bob has a way to (in a way) save Net Neutrality
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Base-4 fractions in Telugu
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
The Paint.NET web site runs ads designed to lead naïve users to download unrelated adware. This needs to stop
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Bringing back the Somali shilling
Somalia has long played host to one of the world's strangest monetary phenomenon, a paper currency without a central bank. I explored the...
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To Serve Man, with Software
I didn’t choose to be a programmer. Somehow, it seemed, the computers chose me. For a long time, that was fine, that was enough; that was all I needed. But along the way I never felt that being a programmer was this unambiguously great-for-everyone career field with
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Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?
I’ve been reading a bunch of anecdotal reports that the TSA is starting to scan paper separately: A passenger going through security at Kansas City International Airport (MCI) recently was asked by security officers to remove all paper products from his bag. Everything from books to Post-It Notes, documents and more…
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Who controls your computer? and how to make sure it's you
Can you trust your computer? Can you control what it does and doesn’t? Or is someone else in control? How can you even know what it is or isn’t doing? Even if it tells you, how do you know it’s not lying? As computing systems become more complex, how can “Trusted Computing” be achieved, not (just) by big corporations…
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Net Neutrality Alive and Well in Canada
The CRTC today released the final chapter (for now) in its net neutrality governance framework, creating policy that establishes strong safeguards against net neutrality violations and severely restricts the ability for providers to engage in zero rating practices. When combined with the federal government's clear…
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Switching Jobs
When people move to different jobs, here’s where they go.
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The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
Tomorrow I head for “ Sci Foo ” at the Googleplex. I proposed a discussion session there, “Are We Becoming Less Cooperative? If So, Why?” and I’d like to use today’s blog to help…
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What should follow the web?
Design principles and an instantiation for a post webapp world
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An introduction to Stoic philosophy and resilience-building [video]
Your free ten-minute introduction to Stoic philosophy and its application to modern living