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Why Northern England is poor
And why Thatcher is partly to blame, but not in the way most people argue.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 992 posts.
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Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
Email immutability matters even more in a world of AI. Here is how we enable your use of your data, in line with our values.
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ICE Is Buying a Tool to Track Phones, Without Warrants
Trump is quietly building a surveillance state, and almost no one is paying attention.
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I analyzed the lineups at the most popular nightclubs
A few years back I did a bit of dance music related data visualization over at Lazily Evaluated. My favourite was an analysis of clubs and their lineups using Resident Advisor / RA data, I called it Clubster Analysis. I always wanted to dig into the technical aspects of gathering the data, analyzing it and building…
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Gartner's grift is about to unravel
swyx recognizes $IT as a visionary short in the DX Tips Magic Quadrant of Boomer Relics That No Longer Make Sense
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Heroin addicts often seem normal
At least, they did to me ten years ago
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Criminal complaint against facial recognition company Clearview AI
Clearview AI is known for scraping billions of photos of people around the world on the internet – and selling its facial recognition system to law enforcement and state actors
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Welcome to the Public Domain in 2025
Celebrate the public domain with the Internet Archive in the following ways: Register for our Public Domain Day celebrations on January 22 - both virtual and in-person. Submit a short film to our Public Domain Film Remix contest. Explore the works that have entered the public domain in 2025, below. On January 1, 2025…
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A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union
In May 1991 a Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyev was sent into space. At the end of the year he was still circling around the Earth waiting for a spaceship to bring him back. He had left a Soviet Union that was still a superpower but would return to a world where there was no Soviet Union any more. The Soviet empire…
670
Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo
We have hundreds of easter-egg logos (featuring our friendly mascot Dax Brown) that surface when you make certain queries on our search engine. Our subreddit is trying to catch ‘em all. They’ve certainly caught a lot, currently 504, but we keep adding more so it’s a moving target. The total as of this post is 594. I’m…
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Apple's Unlawful Evil
Apple has removed ICEBlock, a totally legal app that helps people track the movements of the masked snatch-squads who illegally terrorize brown people in America's cities, capitulating to a warrantless demand from Trump's DoJ boss Pam Bondi:
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We are no longer a serious country
And the world is starting to notice
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AI, Heidegger, and Evangelion
Our brains, evolved for tribal politics and campfire stories, are ill-equipped for the moral ambiguity of a system with no soul to save or damn.
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The gaslit asset class
James Grant invited me to address the annual conference of Grant's Interest Rate Observer . This was an intimidating prospect, the previous...
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After the AI boom: what might we be left with?
Some argue that even if the current AI boom leads to an overbuild, it might not be a bad thing - just as the dotcom bubble left behind the internet infrastructure that powered later decades of growth. It’s a tempting comparison, but the parallels only go so far. The dotcom era’s overbuild crea
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All clothing is handmade (2022)
Writing about an art quilt I made with reused textiles and what I hope it reminds us about the clothing that we wear and the people who created it.
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12ft.io Taken Down
The News/Media Alliance has successfully secured the takedown of notorious paywall bypass website 12ft.io.
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Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions
A new Danish study finds no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions, including autism, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. The findings reaffirm the safety of Denmark’s childhood vaccination program.
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Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome (2008)
Alright, I’ve got another conspiracy theory misconception to dispel. :) After reading through the Chrome Terms of Service, some people are worried that Google is trying to assert rights on ev…
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Romhack.ing's Internet Archive Mirror No Longer Available
Classic game mods and resources
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Being fat is a trap
This has been a difficult article to write. Partly because this is a painful topic for many, and partly because I have to be completely open and vulnerable to write about it. I only write this in the hope it can help others in similar situations. Nothing in this article is meant to judge you. If someone judges you for…
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The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants
We document that, after remaining almost constant for almost 30 years, real labor productivity at U.S. restaurants surged over 15% during the COVID pandemic. This surge has persisted even as many conditions have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Using mobile phone data tracking visits and spending at more than 100,000…
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How to start a school with your friends
We've taught over 100 classes to over 1000 students 🤓
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Departing the New York Times
I left to stay true to my byline
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The origin and unexpected evolution of the word "mainframe"
What is the origin of the word "mainframe", referring to a large, complex computer? Most sources agree that the term is related to the frame...
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AI Slop Report: The Global Rise of Low-Quality AI Videos
Kapwing’s new research shows that 21-33% of YouTube’s feed may consist of AI slop or brainrot videos. But which countries and channels are achieving the greatest reach — and how much money might they make? We analyzed social data to find out.
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Abandoned land drives dangerous heat in Houston, study finds
Research highlights how a lack of vegetation and shade exposes vulnerable residents to heightened health risks.
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The Miracle of Wörgl
When entertaining the idea of communities issuing their own money (called complementary currencies ), people often wonder if that idea has been successfully done before. In doing our research into the concept, we encountered a number of stories where communities issued their own currency and produced a prosperity…