331
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 470 posts.
332
333
"Dabblers and Blowhards" - hackers are nothing like painters [2005]
About two years ago, the Lisp programmer and dot-com millionaire Paul Graham wrote an essay entitled Hackers and Painters , in which he argues that his approach to computer programming is better described by analogies to the visual arts than by the phrase "computer science".
334
335
336
How Steve Ballmer told me what to do with my iPad
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see Steve Ballmer speak to two audiences, first at Microsoft’s Partner Briefing on transitioning to the cloud (#pbbcloud) and then at the UK TechDays Special Event on the future of cloud development (#uktechdays). I’m sorry I didn’t catch the name of the guy who asked Mr Ballmer a…
337
338
339
340
341
What Business is Wall Street In?
My last two posts were designed to stimulate discussion. But lets talk the real problem that regulators, public companies, investor/shareholders and traders face. The problem is that Wall Street doesn’t know what business it is in. Regulators don’t know what the business of Wall Street is. Investor/shareholders don’t…
342
343
344
345
Emotional Rescue
To discount the emotional appeal of Apple’s products is to ignore the entire point of Apple’s products.
346
347
348
Zawinski: iPad just-slightly insufficiently futurey
301 This blog has moved to jwz.org . This post has been archived here . Please update your links. 301
349
The monetization paradox (or why Google is not my friend) (Charles Stross)
The continual plaint in newspapers around the world is that the news media are in big trouble. Au contraire: what's in trouble is their monetization model.
350
351
352
Flattr, and Why It's Brilliant
Flattr is an exciting new social networking / micro-payment service that allows you to set a donation amount that gets divided among all the different content y
353
354
The Gervais Principle III: The Curse of Development
In the first two parts of this series, we talked about the archetypes that inhabit organizations (Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless), what they do (the Gervais…
355
Why Facebook never happened in the UK. The case of FitFinder.
Update: FitFinder has been Relaunched as Floxx with Doug Richards as an Investor. Good luck Rich! Back in April this year, I heard of a little UCL based startup (FitFinder) that was gaining ‘Facebookearlydayslike’ traction in some UK Universities. It was a location based public/flirting service. The founder pitch
356
357
2010 Nobel Prize for Peace Awarded to Liu Xiaobo
The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 was awarded to Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"
358
Ten Theses on Tablets
As of now, I’ve been carrying the Samsung Galaxy Tab for a month, using it every day; this has included two major road trips . I suppose there are a few other humans who’ve had this much hands-on with a 7" form-factor tablet, but I don’t know of any others with a blog and a free hand to write what they think.
359
Hacking the D.C. Internet Voting Pilot
The District of Columbia is conducting a pilot project to allow overseas and military voters to download and return absentee ballots over the Internet. Before opening the system to real voters, D.C. has been holding a test period in which they've invited the public to evaluate the system's security and usability. This…
360
