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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
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How Can the New York Times Endorse an Agreement the Public Can't Read?
The New York Times' editorial board has made a disappointing endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), even as the actual text of the agreement remains secret. That raises two distressing possibilities: either in an act of extraordinary subservience, the Times has endorsed an agreement...
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I will not log in to your website
Two or three times a day, I get an email whose basic structure is as follows: Prof. Aaronson, given your expertise, we’d be incredibly grateful for your feedback on a paper / report / gr…
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Django Awarded MOSS Grant from Mozilla
Posted by Andrew Godwin on Dec. 11, 2015
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Delta Variant
Cases are growing exponentially across the world. Again. If you don’t know where this is going, a historical refresher might help. India has suffered about two million COVID deaths, the majority of them during its latest surge caused by Delta.Victims of COVID-19 are cremated in funeral pyres in New Delhi.
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Sharrows, the bicycle infrastructure that doesn’t work and nobody wants
They seem dangerous and they are
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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"
The European Union’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a complex, many-legged beast, but at root, it is a regulation that aims to make it easier for the public to control the technology they use and rely on. One DMA rule forces the powerful “gatekeeper” tech companies to allow third-party app stores...
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RIP Culture War Thread
[This post is having major technical issues. Some comments may not be appearing. If you can’t comment, please say so on the subreddit.] I. I Come To Praise Caesar, Not To Bury Him Several yea…
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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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Pollution from fossil fuel combustion deadlier than previously thought
The latest public health news delivered right to your inbox.
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How Paul Graham Is Wrong
I love Paul Graham’s essays and his latest is no exception: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In. I agree that the US deserves dramatically better immigration policies, but in the meantime I’m…
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Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe
Hunting and habitat loss drove many large mammals in Europe close to extinction. New data shows us that many of the continent’s mammal populations are flourishing again.
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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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Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated
[press: boingboing] The Internet Archive is now leveraging a little known, and perhaps never used, provision of US copyright law, Section 108h, which allows libraries to scan and make available materials published 1923 to 1941 if they are not being actively sold. Elizabeth Townsend Gard, a copyright scholar at Tulane…
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Patent Owners Can Prevent You from Owning Anything
A “notice” slapped on the outside of a package saying “single use only” continues to ensure a manufacturer selling you the product can sue for patent infringement should someone dare reuse its goods. This is what the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Friday, reaffirming its previous...
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Trackers and bank accounts
A Finnish online bank leaked out user data by using a third-party tracker script.
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New York Times Election Day Crossword (2009)
I recently read a book called Pretty Girl In Crimson Rose (8) [1] , an autobiography interweaved with interesting stories about crosswords. ...
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Over-reliance on CGI in movies
On the digital void that is modern cinema
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We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
( This is the text of a talk I delivered at the Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in Stuttgart on Friday November 10th, 2023. Note: early draft, contains some typos, I'll fix them next week when I get home. )
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I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky
I downloaded all the posts on Bluesky as of 2023-05-01. Then I did some data analysis on the 1680399 posts from 45457 accounts.
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Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse
When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate what is or isn't misinformation they think they're the patricians of internet discourse. The reality is they're the plumbing. Meanwhile, most of the mainstream media coverage around the pandemic can be classified into five logical fallacies.
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Taylor Farms: How One Company's Reach Became a National Risk
Our report examines how Taylor Farms became one of the largest produce suppliers in the U.S. and what its power means for food safety, farmers, and workers.