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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Brian Aldiss has died
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Patents and innovation
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
200 Journalists Applaud the Internet Archive's Role in Preserving Public Record
Journalists are thanking the Internet Archive for their respectful preservation of news and history and for being an important resource for journalists. This letter is coming at a time where many major media outlets are questioning whether to allow the Wayback Machine to continue to preserve journalism.
Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
Texts on this and that.
Can growth continue?
A five-minute talk for Ignite Long Now
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…
On iPhone sideloading: it’s ok, I’m changing my mind
An explanation on why I’m ok now with the sideloading of apps on the iPhone, plus, a quick interview with one of the most vocal App Store critic — Kosta Eleftheriou.
An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
I just ran across a wretched, unfortunate looking man while walking through the Tenderloin. If you've spent any time here, you know this is nothing out of the ordinary. It made me sad.
Diversity and Startups
Sexism in tech is real. One of the most insidious things happening in the debate is people claiming versions of “other industries may have problems with sexism, but our industry doesn’t.” Both men and women claim this, even though it keeps getting harder to do in the face of shocks like the Tinder texts. We know there…
Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster
Breaking through the illusion of convenience that's used to sell us automation
Liu Cixin's Technologies of the Future
Highlight of cool technologies mentioned in "The Dark Forest".
Boeing 737 MAX crash and the rejection of ridiculous data
“Boeing 737 Max: What went wrong?” (BBC) contains a plot showing the angle of attack data being fed to Boeing’s MCAS software. Less than one minute into the […]
China is catching up to the USA, while Japan is being left behind
I have previously reported that there has been a silent revolution in science where countries like China, India, South Korea... that previously contributed few research articles... have started to catch up and even exceed the productivity of the western world. The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US has…
John Gruber: I'll Tell You What's Fair
What’s goofy is the idea that Google would do this — to aggressively change Android from a BlackBerry/Windows Mobile competitor into an iPhone competitor — and that anyone would expect Apple not to retaliate, to instead just sit there and take it and allow all other aspects of their previous buddy-buddy corporate…
UC Berkeley makes course video content unavailable to public
Here is additional information about upcoming changes to UC Berkeley’s library of legacy public Course Capture (classroom lecture) content
Owe your banker £1k you are at his mercy; owe him £1m the position is reversed (2019)
Question for Quote Investigator: The relationship between bankers and borrowers is symbiotic and occasionally counter-intuitive. Here is a pertinent adage:
HTML is done
Item: The W3C HTML Working Group charter is expiring . Item: Discussion on what to do is inconclusive . Item: Things are pretty quiet in the WhatWG. Conclusion: The best thing to do about HTML is nothing .
Amazon’s HR Failures
The cruelty is the point