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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 913 posts.
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Ozymandias
Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those…
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Visa and MasterCard Are Trying to Dictate What You Can Watch on Pornhub
Pornhub is removing millions of user-uploaded videos. This action comes after a New York Times column accused the website of hosting sexual videos of underage and nonconsenting women. In response to the Times’ article, Visa and Mastercard cut ties with Pornhub, making it impossible for Pornhub to...
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Longbets: A bioerror will lead to one million casualties by Dec 2020
Biotechnology is plainly advancing rapidly, and by 2020 there will be thousands-even millions-of people with the capability to cause a catastrophic biological disaster. My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual weirdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses. Even if all…
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The social side of science seen in the research on programming language quality
I love science. Not the “space is beautiful” faux-science, but the process of doing science. Hours spent calibrating equipment, cross-checking cites of cites of cites, tedious arguments about p-values and prediction intervals, all the stuff that makes science Go. And, when it does happen, the drama. I also want us to…
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Lost Advanced Civilizations
Did life on Earth start on Earth, or did it start on Mars and move to Earth?
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Pattern Matching, Racial Diversity and the Hypocrisy of Big Tech Media
It’s Time to Watch the Watchmen – The Diversity Report of TechCrunch, Recode, The Information, Business Insider and Protocol. Prelude I have been writing about Diversity in Tech for over a decade now – a long time. However, my self-published posts have never really got the audience it was targeted
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The Purpose of Writing
Get full access to this domain. Easy, seamless transactions. Zero percent financing available.
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A global reforestation project is how we fix climate change
An In-Depth Overview of Key Technical Factors
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Let People Move to Jobs
When I argue that we should bring rents down by building more housing, one kind of response I've gotten is: Why are you trying to move more people into cities? There's lots of housing available in the US, it's just not in the currently trendy cities. Instead of moving people we should be moving jobs. Why couldn't…
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The internet needs our love
It’s noisy out there. We are inundated with sensational headlines every minute, of every day. You almost could make a full-time job of sorting the fun, i
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ActivityPub Could Be the Future
You’ve heard of stuff like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Make an account on one, and it only works there. You can’t send a DM to your friend on Twitter from Facebook Messenger. You can’t browse your friend’s Instagram feed from Twitter. Each one is closed off
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Fuck Cloud Messaging
Ever tried to send a push notification to your phone? How hard can it be? I was surprised when I tried to push a simple push notification without involving a third party. It's not just hard they have made it near impossible to send a simple push notification without subscribing to their service. Moreover it doesn't…
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An Inside Look at CloudKitchens
A co-working space for restaurants of the future.
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The Antitrust Hearing, the Role of Congress, CEO Questions
Congress is exactly where discussions about tech and society should be happening. Then, a list of questions for every tech CEO.
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Half the world is now middle class or wealthier (2018)
Just over 50 percent of the world’s population, or some 3.8 billion people, now live in households with enough discretionary spending to be considered middle class or rich.
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Off-Facebook Activity Is a Welcome but Incomplete Move
Today Facebook announced the roll-out of its Off-Facebook Activity tool (initially introduced as “Clear History” nearly two years ago). The tools shows you a list of apps, websites, and businesses that Facebook knows you have visited through its business tools (including Facebook Login, Facebook’s...
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Only distributed fact-checking can keep up with democratized distribution
Tragedy of the comments
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Statement by Jeff Bezos to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary
Testimony before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law
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Today is Earth Overshoot Day – (08/22)
Learn how past Earth Overshoot Days are calculated based on the Ecological Footprint and see how the date has changed over the years.
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China's social credit system is both unique and part of a global trend
China's Social Credit System is bad: It's both unique and part of a global trend. This should freak you out.
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The Economics of Sex Robots
This is a lightly edited version of an article I wrote that first appeared in Jacobite. I had a great conversation about this article and evolutionary psychology more generally (link here) with Joh…
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