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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 992 posts.
I feel like I need to first defuse any idea of antagonizing Americans themselves. The people are never to blame. This isn't a post criticizing the American people, it's criticizing the state of things that makes it impractical to have any sort of economical relation with the country if you are an average Joe like me.
Apple bent the knee for months, leaving many commentators to ask why. But the reasons are not mysterious: Apple wants things that only the government can provide, things that will defend and extend its power to extract rents, rather than innovate. Namely, selective exemption from tariffs and an end to the spectre of…
A story with legal drama, a mystery, snow leopards, and, uh, naughty bits.
The death rate per mile driven has declined 22-fold since 1950.
It’s unfortunately not uncommon for pedestrians to be killed by cars in the US.
A 2026 Airline Water Study released today by the Center for Food as Medicine and Longevity reveals that the quality of drinking water varies significantly by airline, and many airlines…
I'm an Apple ecosystem user, owning an iPhone ever since a past employer got it for me to test our company app some 8 years ago. Over time, as I've upgraded, I'
A copyleft software license that restricts AI usage
On sharing more of yourself.
Trump imposed a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, raising costs for employers and reshaping U.S. hiring. Learn what it means for you.
A few decades back my teenage son and I approached Las Vegas at night while traveling south on Interstate 15. When the skyline of the city began sparkling into view, the kid said, “Wow. Think…
Even if you can’t stop Flock’s use entirely, you can still help protect civil liberties in your community.
(or actually they do, but they don’t use this knowledge effectively)Update, April 26, 2025: the address fix for W 6th Ave is live, mostly. Going forward I wish that Google Maps would make it harder…
your data is trapped inside the box that is your program. you can only see what the program author exposes.
I want a new protocol, tentatively called “Let Me Know” (LMK). The purpose is to provide someone an anonymous way to get notified when a singular, specific event occurs. Here’s a basic use case: Some random blog author has published Parts 1 and 2 of a series. You enjoyed it, and you want to know…
We raised over $1 million this year to directly support organizations on the front lines of the fight for online privacy and freedom.
The debate surrounding the Codes of Conduct (CoC) adopted by Open Source projects may be reaching a turning point. In September 2025, a controversy erupted over the governance of RubyGems, a corner…
The Research Pipeline is Stalling The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) froze all outgoing funding, including new awards and scheduled payments on active grants. Over 1,000 NSF research projec…
I've long had a fraught relationship with ToDo lists, because they're very much a double edged sword, but I'm convinced that much of the problem is t ...
Trump paralysed the "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board" (PCLOB), a key element of the EU-US data transfer deal that allows EU-US data flows.
Casey Handmer June 2025 Download a printable PDF. NASA was founded in 1958 in response to Sputnik and the emerging necessity of a robust, government supported space exploration and technology devel…
500 years before Polymarket, the Vatican fought to stop gambling on papal affairs. Should we worry that it’s back?
Forgotten musings on the economics of AI, an intelligence explosion, and machine consciousness
The DMCA online safe harbor is a notice-and-takedown scheme. Web hosts aren’t liable for copyright-infringing third-party uploads unless and until the copyright owner submits a proper takedown notice to the host, at which point the web host can remain legally...
Anthropic installed an AI-powered vending machine in the WSJ office. The LLM, named Claudius, was responsible for autonomously purchasing inventory from wholesa
Today, Stack overflow has almost as few questions asked per month, as when it launched back in 2009. A recap of its slow, then rapid, downfall.
A new Oceana analysis reveals the global scale of China’s visible fishing fleet
I replaced my ChatGPT personalization settings with this prompt a few weeks ago and promptly forgot about it: Be extraordinarily skeptical of your own…
Being "the enshittification guy" means that people expect you to weigh in on every service or platform that has been deliberately worsened to turn a buck. It's an impossible task (and a boring one besides). There's too much of this shit, and it's all so mid – a real "banality of enshittification" situation.
