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Manufactured consensus on x.com
How algorithm-driven influence quietly replaces genuine discourse with engineered popularity.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 666 posts.
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IP blocking the UK is not enough to comply with the Online Safety Act
A follow up to The Ofcom Files. Some notes on Ofcom’s strategy to date. As many of you know, I represent the U.S. website 4chan, pro bono, in its U.S. federal lawsuit against the UK…
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The decline of deviance
Where has all the weirdness gone?
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Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop "act of kindness"
Rob Pike (that Rob Pike) is furious. Here’s a Bluesky link for if you have an account there and a link to it in my thread viewer if you don’t. …
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Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
How the redesign of a street in a walkable college town reflects our broader values for cars over people.
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The indieweb doesn't need to “take off”
There's a corner of the Internet where people have been reclaiming their digital independence by hosting their own websites and promoting the idea of owning your own content. It's called the IndieWeb. The community has its own website , IRC channels, social media presence, etc. as well
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When did AI take over Hacker News?
One in three top 10 Hacker News posts in August 2025 were AI-related. Can we pinpoint when this trend started?
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I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs
And the results surprised me
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The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly
in an era where tech giants increasingly control our digital experiences, the Steam Deck stands as a beacon of user freedom
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Feed the bots
A week ago , I set up a dynamically generated nonsense maze to catch LLM scrapers. Now, requests to it make up 99.9% of my server's traffic, but my total request volume did not increase. The bots didn't come to my site because of the trap.
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FBI Agents Visit Anti-ICE Protester: "Your name was brought up."
“Your name was brought up.”
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The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed
Last week the Department of War finally killed the last vestiges of Robert McNamara’s 1962 Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). The DoW has pivoted from optimizing cost and performa…
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I'm done with social media – Or: why I have a blog now
Or: why I have a blog now.
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Recovering Anthony Bourdain's Li.st's
Loved reading through GReg TeChnoLogY Anthony Bourdain’s Lost Li.st’s and seeing the list of los...
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I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
Not only did I give internet strangers unrestricted access to send me completely anonymous physical messages, but I also self-hosted the entire site on a Raspberry Pi
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Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”
The popular book from the "world's most famous living psychiatrist" is riddled with blatant misrepresentations
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They made computers behave like annoying salesmen
They made computers behave like annoying salesmen | exotext
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Lessons from Growing a Piracy Streaming Site
A personal account of building HeheStreams, facing the consequences, and going to prison as a startup founder who had a piracy website.
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Our efforts, in part, define us
What happens when something we enjoy doing that took effort becomes effortless? And what happens if that original effort was a foundation on which we saw value…
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Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing
I really like Ted Chiang’s writing.
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The origin of the cargo cult metaphor
The cargo cult metaphor is commonly used by programmers. This metaphor was popularized by Richard Feynman's "cargo cult science" talk with a...
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American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana
Conservation group opens gated road and tears down "no trespassing" signs with purchase from Texas billionaire brothers.
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The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence
The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence.
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Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?
A Bed Assembly Drama
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Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables
Before we go any further, one thing that I want to make clear is that the word assume is going to be doing some heavy lifting throughout this post. This was a rabbit hole that I recently went down …