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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
One of my commenters reports that he showed my essay on evaluating the harm from closed-source software to Richard Stallman, who became upset by it. It shouldn’t be news to RMS or anyone else that I think he’s a fanatic and this is a problem, but it seems that every few years I have to explain the problem again. I…
[Epistemic status: fiction] Thanks for letting me put my story on your blog. Mainstream media is crap and no one would have believed me anyway. This starts in September 2017. I was working for a sm…
The mineral content of wheat and rice is lower today than sixty years ago. Why is that and what does it mean for how we eat?
Over the years, Apple has built up a portfolio of services and add-ons that you pay for. Starting with AppleCare extended warranties and…
Little by little, the government is opening up about its use of computer security vulnerabilities. Last month, the NSA disclosed that it has historically “released more than 91% of vulnerabilities discovered in products that have gone through our internal review process and that are made and used...
Based on two talks I gave in the spring of 2005—one entitled "Ontology Is Overrated", and one entitled "Folksonomies & Tags: The rise of user-developed classification."
Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted…
Using the Blurhash algorithm in Mastodon 2.8.1 to generate prettier previews for sensitive media
In passing the PATRIOT Act, Congress enacted a “solution” to preventing another 9/11-like debacle without having any evidence that a lack of surveillance powers was what allowed Osama bin Laden’s suicide hijackers to succeed in killing nearly 3,000 Americans.
Last week, I posted a visual demonstration of the sameness of AI-generated content.
Reading a good book is a great joy. And recommending a good book is almost as enjoyable. I’ve long been fascinated by books on espionage, and this contributed in no small part to me eventually joining the Dutch intelligence world, and later, rejoining it in some fashion. If you have favorite books that should be on…
When Prohibition began, anti-alcohol crusaders demanded that the St. Louis Public Library burn every book that explained "the home production of alcohol for drinks". The librarian insisted on keeping the books but agreed to hide them from the "general public".
Here are some of our favorite Hacker News comments from April and May. If you see something cool like this, email us at hn@ycombinator.com [mailto:hn@ycombinator.com] so we can add it to the next list. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HN users across countries discuss…
A work crane at the Clock site in western Texas. There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the … Continue reading →
Misguided modeling created a "physician surplus" narrative, the harmful consequences of which we are still dealing with today.
Readers with long memories may recall the brief, inglorious UK fuel shortage of a few weeks ago, which was mostly caused by the rush to refuel for fear the pumps would run dry. Some petrol stations…
Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) is a condition in which sexual function does not return to normal after the use of SSRIs and related antidepressants.
The US dollar lost 96.9% of its value since 1914. Four inflationary episodes spanning 29% of the time caused 72% of the destruction. Monthly dataset, 1,357 obs.
One is killed every minute
The way media piracy works is that one person or group purchases a work, and then shares it with millions of other people. This...
Hey folks! Fireside this week, but next week, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the blog (the first post went up May 3rd) we’re diving into a look at Helm’s Deep in both the book…
Do you remember the avocado toast guy? I read Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus recently (you should read it, it’s great), and I learned that someone1 has come up with a name for this sort of modern reinterpretation of “let them eat cake”: cruel optimism. Cruel optimism, the way Hari interprets it2, boils down to the folly…
I got into programming because it let me turn thought into reality. If I could reason precisely, then a computer could carry out my thoughts unerringly. I could step away from tiring, ambiguous human interaction for a while.
The EU is considering a draft law that has serious ramifications for the website security ecosystem. We have recommendations for how to fix it.
