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Floating megabomb heaves to near the English coast
The MV Ruby, a ship carrying a highly explosive Russian cargo, is damaged and looking for a port. The threat is clear.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 694 posts.
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The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan
A personal perspective on the complex role English plays in Japan.
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RIP botsin.space
There's no easy way to put it, so here goes -- after a lot of consideration, I've made the hard (frankly, painful) decision to shut down botsin.space. TLDR: here's the plan:
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Cory Doctorow on Kagi Search
Remember the first time you used Google search? It was like magic. After years of progressively worsening search quality from Altavista and Yahoo, Google was literally stunning, a gateway to the very best things on the internet.
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Final Decision on Chromebook Case in Denmark
The Danish DPA issues an injunction in the Chromebook case
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Do U.S. ports need more automation?
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily dockworkers on East and Gulf Coast ports, went on strike after failing to agree contract terms with USMX, an alliance of port operators and employers.
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Self-control signals and affords power
New research from the UC San Diego Rady School of Management and Texas A&M University finds that having self-control is often what leads to power.
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Controversial pesticide research all but vanished from a major conference
During hundreds of sessions, a significant topic went missing: scholarly research on one of Corteva’s products – neonicotinoids.
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Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem
With the rise of 'okupación' in Spain, property owners and individuals alike are seeking to navigate the legal landscape and social implications of squatting.
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MKBHDs for Everything
Marques Brownlee has tremendous power because he can go direct to consumers; that is possible in media, and AI will make it possible everywhere.
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We have surpassed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries that sustain human life (2023)
The planetary boundaries framework highlights the rising risks from human pressure on nine critical global processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth
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All I want for Christmas is a negative leap second
I just want to see it. Just once. I want to watch that earthquake ripple through all of global electronic timekeeping. I want to see which organisations make it to January morning with nothing on fire. You know what a leap second is. The short version is that planet Earth ...
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De-googling, so far
Over the past few years, I have tried to gradually reduce or eliminate my use of Google products and services. It has been difficult to ditch Google’s products in some categories, and in some others, it has been nigh impossible. Here, I list the services I have tried to find alternatives for, discuss the ease (or lack…
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Microsoft's Xandr grants GDPR rights at a rate of 0%
noyb has filed a GDPR complaint regarding transparency issues, the right of access and the use of inaccurate information about users
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Understanding how bureaucracy develops
understanding how actions taken with the best of intentions can put your organization in a straightjacket
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A Lego model of financial capitalism
Unboxing the dark arts of finance
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Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)
[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal] A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid a…
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Let Readers Read
Ask publishers to restore access to the 500,000 books they've caused to be removed from the Internet Archive’s lending library. Sign the Open Letter I’m Chris Freeland, a librarian at the Internet Archive. The lawsuit against our library—Hachette v. Internet Archive—is fast approaching the oral argument stage of its…
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Google Scholar search: "certainly, here is" -chatgpt -llm
Searching Google Scholar for "certainly, here is" turns up a huge number of academic papers that include parts that were evidently written by ChatGPT - sections that start with "Certainly, …
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On the new Dutch intelligence and security law
13th of June UPDATE: The Dutch government has failed to hire and house the promised new 10 oversight staff. Yet, the new law will be enacted July 1st, passing oversight to people that don’t exist. I surely enjoyed living under the rule of law, but it appears it was a passing thing. “The Netherlands hosts some of the…
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The European regulators listened to the Open Source communities
Open Source communities defended developers and foundations against risks posed by the CRA to Open Source development, and their voices were heard. Workshops being offered at FOSDEM offer a chance …
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Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
I recently built a website that breaks down the cost of a UK electricity bill. It's interactive, and I'd recommend visiting it before reading this post. Check it out here: electricitybills.uk Here are three interesting things about the data. #1: The wholesale power cost is only one third of
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LLMs aren't "trained on the internet" anymore
A path to continued model improvement.
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Influencer cartels manipulate social media
Social media influencers account for a growing share of marketing budgets worldwide. This column examines a problem within this rapidly expanding advertising market – influencer cartels, in which groups of influencers collude to increase advertising revenue by inflating each other’s engagement numbers. Influencer…
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I won't be renewing my Pinboard subscription
A personal blog of diverse opinions.
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The Tale of Daniel
It’s April Cools! It’s like April Fools, except instead of cringe comedy you make genuine content that’s different what you usually do. For example, last year I talked about the strangest markets on the internet. This year I went down a different rabbit hole. Daniel has been a top 5 baby name twice since 2000. There…