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AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
Tonight, I took the time actually to read DeepMind’s AlphaCode paper, and to work through the example contest problems provided, and understand how I would’ve solved those problems, and how A…
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 1,047 posts.
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Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
Your email provider owns your online identity by controlling your email address. You can’t port your email address to another provider as with phone numbers.
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Be critical or be corrupted
I recently rewatched "The Wire". The show's central theme is about counter-productive metrics and their corrupting influence on institutions. I've noticed hints of this pattern in software engineering, too
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Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
Explore the diversity of wildlife across the planet. What are species threatened with? What can we do to prevent biodiversity loss?
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Antitrust lawsuit says Apple and Amazon colluded to raise iPhone, iPad prices
SEATTLE – A new antitrust class-action lawsuit accuses Apple Inc. and Amazon.com of colluding to raise the price of iPhones and iPads, according to Hagens Berman, the law firm representing consumers against two of the world’s largest companies in today’s filing.
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U.S. Army Chooses Google Workspace
Google Public Sector will provide 250,000 active-duty enlisted members of the U.S. Army with Google Workspace.
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The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter
Up until a few years ago, I used to feel good when sharing Twitter links. Compared to the other handful of websites that now make up our entire lives, it was the best option: Not a walled garden like Facebook or Instagram where you either don’t see any content at all or are bombarded with “sign up to continue” popups…
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Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views
A peek behind the curtain into the struggles of the Chinese censorship office
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Record labels dig their own grave, and the shovel is called TikTok
It's not just the music biz—legacy media outlets everywhere are playing the same dangerous game. Here's how it will play out.
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The silent majority in software
I was re-reading Nixon’s 1969 “silent majority” speech last week (Smithsonian ran a good breakdown in 2017), mostly because YouTube’s algorithm
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Why are semi trucks in the US and Europe so different? (2018)
American and European semi-trucks are very different. You don‘t have to be a truck enthusiast or have brilliant understanding of the mechanical part of these machines to see that semi-trucks used in USA and Europe look very different. But why? Why different ideas about what the truck should look like prevailed in…
313
Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C
The W3C Member review of the Decentralized Identifier (DID) 1.0 Proposed Recommendation concluded with Formal Objections from three organizations.
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Dutch schools must stop using Google's email and cloud due to privacy concerns
Dutch Personal Data Authority raised concerns about Google's GDPR compliance.
315
We can do better than “same, but electric”
We've been making compromises to the limits of fossil fuels for so long that we've forgotten they're compromises.
316
TikTok’s Poison Pill
Just a few months ago, it seemed that the biggest social media news of the year would be Elon Musk’s flirtations with buying Twitter (see, ... Read more
317
Calling for Antitrust Reform
Mozilla supports the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). The time for change is now. It’s time for governments to address the reality
318
Publicity Stunt Fallout
Update (Dec. 6): I’m having a blast at the Workshop on Spacetime and Quantum Information at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. I’m learning a huge amount from the talks and …
319
LibGen's Bloat Problem
Edit: I feel compelled to make a small clarification; I'm not arguing for purging all files greater than X MiB (even though I still think LibGen has a non-negligible amount of junk and duplicate content but neither are easy to remove without significant manpower and LibGen lacks mechanisms to crowdsource the work)…
320
Mental illness, attention deficit disorder, and suffering
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
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Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports
Hertz announced a $168 million settlement covering 364 claims against them, at an average of just over $460,000 per customer. There are perhaps a dozen more customers who are suing Hertz, that are not a part of the settlement. I have to think that in many of those cases the customers believe the egregiousness of their…
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Russian Ruble just lost ~30% of its value
Find information for Russian Ruble RUB/USD Quotes provided by CME Group. View Quotes
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What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?
The old economic world may be leaving us, but its pathologies stubbornly remain.
327
Housing in Tokyo is cheaper and more spacious than people think
It's myth-busting time! The world's richest and largest city is cheaper and roomier than you think.
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Forgetting the Asbestos – how we lose knowledge and technologies
Or, how we lose knowledge and technologies. And what we can do about it.
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Test scores are not irrelevant
Some claims that test scores don’t predict college success don’t add up.