571
An investigation into egg prices
'More hens, less income!' So said the United Egg Producers' economist Donald Bell in 1994. The industry has gotten more consolidated ever since. And avian flu is just the latest excuse to hike prices.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 992 posts.
572
PRC elites voice AI-skepticism
Executive Summary: Rapid advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) has become a point of national pride in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), driven in part by a cohort of accelerationist advisors who view technology as a transformative solution to the country’s economic ills. Lauding it as a “new productive…
573
A glitch in an online survey replaced the word 'yes' with 'forks'
Dating back to at least early 2023, a bizarre and alarming technical glitch started popping up in some organizations’ online surveys and forms.
574
Electrolysis can solve one of our biggest contamination problems
ETH Zurich researchers have developed a process that can be used on site to render environmental toxins such as DDT and lindane harmless and convert them into valuable chemicals – a breakthrough for the remediation of contaminated sites and a sustainable circular economy.
575
How Spotify Killed Lo-Fi Hip Hop
AI and Corporate Interests Gutted an Artist's Oasis
576
The behavior of LLMs in hiring decisions: Systemic biases in candidate selection
Hints of discrimination and lack of principled reasoning in frontier AI systems
577
We got hit by an alarmingly well-prepared phish spammer
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
578
Kerosene did not save the sperm whale (2024)
How we carried on exploiting sperm whales long after the conventional wisdom said we'd stopped. Forgotten Material #1
579
Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
=== This is a free online edition of Bruce Sterling's anthology Mirrorshades. === Coverted to webpage by Rudy Rucker, posted September 2022, and updated November 2023. === Each story is Copyright (C) 2022 to its original authors, and all rights are reserved. The book is not public domain, nor is it Creative Commons…
580
The Great Barefoot Running Hysteria of 2010
The year was 2010. “Ke$ha's Tik Tok” was topping the Billboard charts. Steve Jobs has just introduced a goofy new oversized iPhone called an “iPad”.
581
Bye, Prime
Why? · As I wrote in Not an Amazon Problem (and please go read that if you haven’t) I don’t see myself as an enemy of Amazon, particularly. I think the pressures of 21st-century capitalism have put every large company into a place where they really can’t afford to be ethical or the financial sector will rip them to…
582
Gemini figured out my nephew’s name
I wrote an MCP server to give LLMs read-only access to my emails. Here is the chat log.
583
Solar-plus-storage technology is improving quickly
On how plummeting battery prices make 24/7 solar power a reality today.
584
Signal – An Ethical Replacement for WhatsApp
Moving from WhatsApp to Signal is an important action, right now. WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, has been involved in several cases of election interference: America in 2016, Trinidad and Tobago …
585
The Hobby Computer Culture
[This post is part of “A Bicycle for the Mind.” The complete series can be found here.] From 1975 through early 1977, the use of personal computers remained almost exclusively the province of …
586
Why does Britain feel so poor?
Plus chaos chasers, ghost motorways, the secret symbols hiding in your street, and a rationalist death cult.
587
588
Harvest the sun twice: Agrivoltaics promises sustainable food, energy and water
Combining solar power production with agriculture can significantly boost crop yields, conserve water and generate low-carbon electricity for areas particularly vulnerable to climate change, a new study has shown.
589
Open source can't coordinate?
I was taking a shower this morning, and was pondering yesterday's problem, where I suspect that I have an outdated version of hotspot Linux profiler, but I can't just go and download a fresh release from GitHub, because hotspot is a KDE app, and I use NixOS. And NixOS isn't a problem --- it's a solution.
590
The good times in tech are over
For most of the last decade, being a software engineer has been a lot of fun. Every company offered lots of perks, layoffs and firings were almost unheard of…
591
The Zizians and the rationalist death cult
What is the deal with Rationalism and cults?
592
Real Chilling Effects
A extraordinary pattern of government censorship and threats to speech
593
Era of U.S. dollar may be winding down
Economist Kenneth Rogoff’s new book entwines currency’s ascension, his own experiences, and looks at what looms ahead.
594
AI Responses May Include Mistakes
The other day I wanted to look up a specific IBM PS/2 model, a circa 1992 PS/2 Server system. So I punched the model into Google, and got this:
595
Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
Wise has stolen more than $60,000 AUD from us, and refuses to let us access it. We’ve had a Wise account for around 5 years (since they were called TransferWise). It’s been a really useful …
596
Software is eating the world, all right (2024)
I retired from my IT career a couple of months ago after 43 years of commercial software product development and transitioned to the real…
597
Mapping connections of anti-offshore wind groups and their lawyers
Today we released a new CDL report: “Legal Entanglements: Mapping Connections of Anti-Offshore Wind Groups and their Lawyers in the Eastern United States,” a deep look into litigation efforts against offshore wind in the Northeast.
598
AI Angst
My input stream is full of it: Fear and loathing and cheerleading and prognosticating on what generative AI means and whether it’s Good or Bad and what we should be doing. All the channels: Blogs and peer-reviewed papers and social-media posts and business-news stories. So there’s lots of AI angst out there, but this…
599
Benefits of choosing email over messaging
My colleagues and friends know that I prefer to communicate with them via email rather than chat messaging. There are many benefits in such a choice. You may want to consider them and adopt the same stance.
600
I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype
I truly and passionately hate hype. From the fakeness of it to the sheer stupidity it represents, but perhaps most of all, because of the devastating consequence it often results in.