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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 8,148 posts.
This is a defense of the most prolific and dedicated public servant that has graced the world in my lifetime. One man has added hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of value to the global economy. This man has worked tirelessly for the benefit of everyone around him. It is impossible…
Take your class action suits filed four days after we released the goddamn thing and stick them up your fucking asses.
Crypto is known for its toxicity towards outsiders. Similar attitudes are emerging from some who oppose crypto.
Since around 2009, methamphetamines have been made with phenylacetone (P2P). Is there a chemical different causing schizophrenia?
"Wet Putty" whips are everywhere. What’s behind it? ... a BBSP investigation
I discuss several commonly held perspectives on the complex numbers and explore how their differences engage with several aspects of structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics.
A personal look at the return of excitement in technology, from the gadgets of the 1990s to AI tools and a break from the tech monoculture.
This image was created by an AI, MidJourney. All I had to do was type in a prompt (“wildfire”) and aspect ratio. This AI is pretty good, but nowhere near the state of the art, and AI like it are, over the next few years, going to make art like this available within seconds at […]
Why is there almost nothing on the left hand side of the USA? Water scarcity! We’re missing 300 million Americans. We’re missing 30 global cities west of 100 degrees longitude. We shoul…
(Big issue 7-9-2019)
The US House reading Dutch emails shows digital sovereignty is about who can access data, not just where it is stored.
We are building a comprehensive archive and analysis project examining published documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Our methodology involves systematically reviewing each available document with particular attention to small details and information that has received little or no public attention since the initial…
How the computer killed capitalism.
I don't think I've ever had more distrust and as a consequence distate for software than in recent years. I don't think its just me as a tech-nerd with artisanal tech-carpentry aspirations. I want people to build well, treat their users right and generally exercise some actual restraint. I see it very clearly and I…
The end of an era.
It is astonishing how often one still hears well-informed, otherwise reasonable people say about Julian Assange: “But he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy in London.” That short sentence includes at least three factual errors. In fact, to repeat it, as so many people do, you would
Who can punch themselves in the face with reality the most? This is who will win in the age of AI.
I stopped working at Google in 2006 but I only stopped loving it this month. I’ve frequently defended the company in public, explaining unpopular actions from what I imagine their side is. Google has often been in the right but the company is terrible at explaining itself. I felt with my understanding of the company I…
Why we can’t go home again
The three companies (along with Mozilla, which is on one of their “ad features in the browser” kicks again) are drawing up a built-in advertising measurement system, called Attribution Level 1 , as a standard feature of web browsers. The system is intended to measure the effectiveness of advertising by enabling…
Publishing is central to Academia, but its publishing system is outclassed by what Open Source software developers have in GitHub
TL;DR: AI-assisted coding is revealing a split among developers that was always there but invisible when we all worked the same way. I've felt the grief too—but mine resolved differently than I expected, and I think that says something about what kind of developer I've been all along.
Analysis of various approaches to monetizing the Twitter hack
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
