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A modest proposal
AdamW on Linux and more
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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
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Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling
A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores.
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Officials Don't Get to Choose Who Gets to Receive, Comment, and Reply to Tweets
We’ve taken a stand for the First Amendment rights of individuals to receive and comment on social media posts from governmental officials and agencies. We’ve received a lot of good questions about why we believe that public servants—mayors, sheriffs, senators, even President Donald Trump—can’t...
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Beginner's Guide to Arguing Constructively
How to turn arguments from vicious battles into productive dialogues.
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Fictional Cryptocurrencies
I said they were fictional! Stop trying to invest in them!
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The invented Chinese names of the 2019 Canadian federal election – ranked
It’s been a long, confusing, exhausting federal election season. We’re all tired. But put aside your worries, fellow citizens; it’s time for the invented Chinese names of the 2019 Canadian federal …
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I finally understand methane lifetimes
How to arrive at a number you can trust
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LLMs Are Complicated Now
Back in 2022 and 2023 there were two big branches of machine learning happening at Meta1. The LLM work that led to Llama was a clean, smooth stack of repeated Transformer modules; the recommendatio…
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Birds make nests out of anti-bird pins
Biologists present the latest innovation in nest building: bird nests made from anti-nesting spikes.
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Taking FOSDEM online via Matrix
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
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Electronic Frontier Foundation Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations
EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 - 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil...
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I spoke with a Google worker fired for protesting $1.2B Israel contract
"It was a complete overreaction on their part to not only fire everyone who was and wasn't involved, but then also threaten everyone else in the company who would dare think to stand up against this...it feels like a very fascist environment."
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Does QE Cause Wealth Inequality?
Originally published: November 2021 One of the most polarizing topics today is wealth inequality. I think a better description is to refer to it as wealth concentration. Nobody should expect wealth to be equal in a society, but when wealth becomes extremely concentrated (way more unequal than usual), it’s often a sign…
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Layoffs Are Cruel and Don't Work
Imagine you had a dog. You got the dog when it was young, trained and raised it. This animal was a part of your family and you gave it little collars and cute little clothes with your family name on it. The dog came to special events and soon thought
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Banks, QE, and Money-Printing
Published November 2020 Lately, it has become fashionable to debate what is, or is not, “money-printing” by central banks. This debate is natural, due to the extreme policy nature of 2020, with massive fiscal expenditures, huge increases in central bank balance sheets, and changes in central bank inflation targets…
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