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How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties
The basic formula for Hacker News ranking has been known for years , but questions remained. Does the published code give the real algorithm...
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,147 posts.
212
Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
In 2022, I wrote about the damning fall of events tech company Pollen. The short of it: Pollen seemed to have pulled off the improbable feat of building a business in the notoriously low margin industry of events, surviving Covid-19, and building a solid software engineering organization. In April
213
We’re all just temporarily abled
That’s a quote from Cindy Li — “We're all just temporarily abled”. I first heard it in Sara’s course and it’s been on repeat in my mind ever since June 6th…
214
Your ePub Is fine
Adobe isn’t exactly a beloved company these days. People begrudgingly use their stuff, because the Creative Suite is an industry standard (read: monopoly) or there are simply no worthwhile alternatives,...
215
Barnes and Noble's surprising turnaround
Digital platforms are struggling, meanwhile a 136-year-old book retailer is growing again. But why?
216
Too much efficiency makes everything worse (2022)
This blog is intended to be a place to share ideas and results that are too weird, incomplete, or off-topic to turn into an academic paper, but that I think may be important. Let me know what you think! Contact links to the left.
217
I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer
What happens when you responsibly disclose a critical vulnerability exposing personal data - including that of minors - and the organization responds with legal threats instead of a thank you?
218
Network Solutions Auto-Enroll: $1,850
I got an email from Network Solutions — where I still have two domains, originally registered in the ’90s — that informed me I have been enrolled in their WebLock Program.
219
I am dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and potential treatments are out of reach
If you find this piece worthwhile, consider the Go Fund Me that’s funding ongoing cancer care. Alex Tabarrok writes about how “when the FDA fails to approve a good drug, people die but the bo…
220
Migrating to the EU
For various reasons, I have decided to move as many services and subscriptions as possible from non-EU countries to the EU or to switch to European service providers. The reasons for this are the current global political situation and improved data protection. I don’t want to go into the first point any further for…
221
Why Japanese companies do so many different things
The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations
222
We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
I don’t think people have thought hard enough about how bad this could get.
223
Who Owns My Name?
Does my name belong to me? Does my face? What about my life? My story? Why is my name used to refer to events I had no hand in? I return to…
224
If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
As I’m writing this, we’re in the middle of an AI-induced mass psychosis. People are literally token-maxxing themselves into hospital beds, scrambling to capture some of that market value before everything is automated away. I can’t blame them. Models keep getting better, programmers are being laid off left and right…
225
How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
Catalonia, with Barcelona as its capital, is currently one of Spain’s seventeen autonomous comunities. It has a long story of pro-independence movements, and has even declared itself independent in the past. Nowadays, the political climate is very heated up. A majority of catalan people want to hold a referendum for…
226
My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll
I’m declaring defeat. Infinite scroll has won. There is an endless supply of interesting things to consume online, and there are teams and teams of very smart people working very hard to get me to keep watching. One more video means one more metric counter incrementing, one more engagement click, one more step towards…
227
Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona
It was on the news this mroing, Mozilla will stop developing FirefoxOS phones , and the top Hacker News comment really resonated with me. Sure, IoT is the future, and it would be great if we had more nifty stuff there ( shameless IoT privacy plug ), but these headlines make the bad taste that I’ve had in my mouth ever…
228
Tim Cook’s Company-Wide Email on Hkmap.live Doesn’t Add Up
Link to: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1182348757360234497
229
Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
Here’s a little “fake stats in the wild” gem that I think you and your followers will find at the least somewhat amusing.
230
The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway
A weird thing is going on with Google search in Norway right now. Spammers are taking over.
231
I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora
I was browsing the web today, as I often do, with my iPhone on the can. (Yeah, ...
232
Let’s talk about usernames
A few weeks ago I released [django-registration](/projects/django-registration/) 2.4.1. The 2.4 series is the last in the django-registration 2.x line, and …
233
Don't you lecture me with your thirty dollar website
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234
Fight back against Google AMP (2018)
Let’s talk about Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP for short.AMP is a Google pet project that purports to be “an open-source initiative aiming to make the web better for all”. While there is a lot of emphasis on the official AMP site about its open source nature, the fact is that over 90% of contributions to this…
235
I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?
This is the story of how I found what I believe to be scientific misconduct and what happened when I reported it. Science is supposed to b...
236
Killing TurboTax
An API to compute the tax position in real time, reaching consumers via neobanks and challenger banks like Cash App, Chime and others.
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Cookie Warning Shenanigans Have Got to Stop
This will be short, ranty and to the point: these warnings are getting ridiculous: I know, tell you something you don't know! The whole ugly issue reared its head again on the weekend courtesy of the story in this tweet: > I’m not sure if this makes it better
239
Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
Old law proposes to turn the Bay Area's zoning system into something like Japan's in just two days.
240
Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
This is the text version of a talk I gave on October 29, 2016, at Web Camp Zagreb [ video ] (45 mins)