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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
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Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments
Everyone agrees that housing in San Francisco is expensive, and that the high costs are hurting the city. But there is a lot of disagreement...
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Interrail: 6,379Km and 13 Countries over 7 weeks
Last year, my wife and I went on a 5,025 Km Interrail adventure. We got the month-long unlimited pass and saw 10 Countries in 30 Days. That was a bit too intense. So this year we got the 15 travel days in 2 months package. We grabbed the 1st class tickets when they went on sale in December. Here's how our journey…
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When Interfaces Kill: What Happened to John Denver (1999)
How poor design killed John Denver dead.
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AT&T Learns Exactly the Wrong Lesson About Data Usage
AT&T says that 65% of its users use less 200 megabytes per month; a whopping 98% use less than 2 gigabytes. (NYT) AT&T looked at these numbers and concluded it was time for tiered pricing; …
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The Private Capture of Public Genius
Essay I of Upstream of Everything
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The Human Is the Loop
After a few weeks away from AI, I see my usage wasn't always productive or healthy.
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The New York Times uses the dark patterns it derides
New York Times op-ed recently decried tricks websites use to manipulate users… but have you ever tried to cancel your NY Times subscription?
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Obama Encryption Policy Rejects Laws Mandating Backdoors
Obama’s position on encryption is now public, as reported by the Washington Post. According to Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Peterson of the Post, Obama “will not —for now—call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement.” Instead, the Post reports, the “administration...
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Explain it to me like I'm ten
In 2012, the creator of the xkcd cartoon Randall Munroe unveiled Up Goer Five — a detailed diagram of the Saturn V rocket, annotated using only the most common 1,000 (sorry, “ten hundred”) words in…
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TACF is no longer supporting development of D58 American chestnut trees
In December 2023, The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) withdrew its support for SUNY-ESF’s Darling transgenic chestnut project. Since then, we’ve received questions about the decision and what’s next for the Darling line. We appreciate those questions because they indicate a deep interest in our mission and reflect…
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NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing
They want to shut down our right to be heard in the first place.
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Micropayments as a reality check for news sites
In Digital Media Lost the Newsstand. Micropayments Are the Obvious Way Back , Rick Bruner makes the case for giving micropayments another try.
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This time is different
3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and Safe Nuclear Reactors, Smart Glasses, Stadia, WiMAX. The problem is, the same dudes (and it was nearly always dudes) who…
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Nuclear power is the only green solution (2004)
We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources, writes James Lovelock – civilisation is in imminent danger. Published in The Independent , 24 May 2004.
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Why Online Voting Is a Danger to Democracy
A Stanford computer scientist says Internet voting would be "a complete disaster."
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China is the manufacturing superpower
The US is the world’s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined. China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined. This column uses the recently released 2023 update…
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On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days
culture by algorithm in the 21st century
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AI Makes Me Sad
Maybe it's because I'm writing this at 2:00 AM, which is about the only time I let myself experience sadness for a prolonged period of time, but every time I see a post on Twitter or LinkedIn about a new development in AI, I feel a sense of hopelessness.
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Mortgages are a manufactured product
Mortgages are popularly thought of as loans, but to understand the industry, it's better to model them as complex manufactured products.
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The Fediverse is an opportunity learned societies can't ignore
Björn Brembs argues that learned societies should lead developments on federated social media platforms, such as Mastodon.