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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
Social media businesses should not charge* for APIs. If a company like Reddit or Twitter derives most of its value from content that users write for free then it must provide APIs for anyone to download and manipulate that content. While an interactive API that enables third party applications is desirable, a simple…
Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life. It’s annoying, but thankfully I’ve avoided some of the more catastrophic outcomes when criminals begin impe…
Nearly 5 years ago, Paul Graham first proposed the founder visa. There has been a lot of discussion since, but nothing has happened. Maybe he was too ambitious in asking for 10,000 startup...
Before ‘HTTP’, whenever a new kind of application was invented (say ‘file sharing’, or ‘address book’ or ‘messaging’) someone would sit down with a bunch of others and would discuss this problem at some length. Then they’d draft up a document describing the problem they intended to solve and the protocol layer they…
It’s 1986 and you’ve got a 31 tons of copper, in the form of a giant 46 meter tall statue, that’s looking a bit worse for wear.
The photo to the right is of the Staples parking lot behind the York Road store in Baltimore, a classic example of a place that needs to be turned back to urban forest — or developed into a m…
Google's monopoly is going on trial starting September 12. This is the big one. Or rather, it's the start of a series of big ones.
Math professor David Edwards sent me this short essay on mathematical education. Printed with his permission. The Math Myth Themath myth is the myth that the future of the American economy is dependent upon the masses having higher mathematics skills. This myth goes back to at least Sputnik, when the Russians were…
In Saturday’s edition of the New York Times, Matt Apuzzo reports that the Department of Justice is locked in a “prolonged standoff” with WhatsApp. The government is frustrated by its lack of real-time access to messages protected by the company’s end-to-end encryption. The story may represent a...
Almost two years ago I noticed a strange multitouch problem in Mobile Safari with one of my games. This problem was new; it was introduced with the iOS 4.2.1 update and wasn't present on older iOS versions.
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Speaking on CBS This Morning today with Gayle King, Norah O'Donnell and John Dickerson, Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff called for a national
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Many years ago, my favorite podcast was The Totally Rad Show. It was a fun video podcast where the hosts reviewed movies, games, TV shows, and other general nerd stuff. The hosts were Jeff Cannata (who last year I called the podcasting GOAT), Dan Trachtenberg (who went on to direct
The cult-like battles between e/acc and doomers
How Companies Use Drip Pricing to Overcharge Consumers
When OpenAI released the first version of Sora, I was excited. For years, I'd had this short story sitting on my hard drive, something I'd written long ago and always dreamed of bringing to life as a
The rise and fall of yogh
Dropbox added some new AI features. In the past couple of days these have attracted a firestorm of criticism. Benj Edwards rounds it up in Dropbox spooks users with new …
