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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 1,045 posts.
The CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic have both claimed that human-level AI is just around the corner — and at times, that it's already here. These claims have generated enormous public attention. There has been some technical scrutiny of these claims, but critiques rarely reach the public discourse. This piece is a sketch…
Many people in the U.S. believe that their statistical knowledge is limited, but they would rely on statistics for decision-making more if they understood statistics better, according to a new study led by a Penn State researcher.
It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things. Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy…
You can still discover stuff, I promise
Withdrawing its opposition under behind-the-scenes pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawless threats from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the California legislature has agreed to fund and revise state law to authorize the upload of information about all driver’s licenses and ID cards issued by the…
Researchers at the Rijksmuseum have demonstrated that the painting Vision of Zacharias in the Temple (1633) was made by Rembrandt. They examined the work with the same advanced techniques used in Operation Night Watch , and closely compared it with other paintings by Rembrandt from the same period. Materials analysis…
Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military
The cryptocurrency industry super PACs dumped $14.2 million into the Illinois primaries. 90% of that – $12.8 million – was wasted, in that it went to opposing Democratic candidates who won their primaries (Stratton in the Senate race, Ford in H-07) or supporting their opponents. The PACs' only victories in the state…
The Jazz of Physics: Albert Einstein and John Coltrane had a lot in common. The so-called “Coltrane circle” or “Circle of Fifths,” but incorporates Coltrane’s own innovations. Coltrane gave the drawing to saxophonist and professor Yusef Lateef in 1967, who included it in the Repository of Scales and
Natalie Shapira 1 Chris Wendler 1 Avery Yen 1 Gabriele Sarti 1 Koyena Pal 1 Olivia Floody 2 Adam Belfki 1 Alex Loftus 1 Aditya Ratan Jannali 2 Nikhil Prakash 1 Jasmine Cui 2 Giordano Rogers 1 Jannik Brinkmann 1 Can Rager 2 Amir Zur 3 Michael Ripa 1 Aruna Sankaranarayanan 8 David Atkinson 1 Rohit Gandikota 1 Jaden…
It is with great sadness and shock that we must announce that Erich von Däniken passed away on January 10, 2026.
How a Hertfordshire research lab quietly transformed an iconic British staple food, and the complexion of the countryside - without anyone actually noticing
The pale is growing
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers, along with Mass General Brigham researchers from the Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation, and the Broad Institute, have uncovered biological clues to why colorectal cancer can behave more aggressively in younger people. Published today in Nature Medicine, the…
I was lucky enough to witness the beginnings of social media, working on the platforms that made it happen. I’ve also seen the decline of its first iterations and products. Currently I am witnessing the idea of a social web being perverted, weaponised and automated out of any trace of human or social aspect…
Have you heard? There's map news!
Of all the LLMs I’ve used and driven daily, Claude is the one that absolutely contradicts my instructions.
I think I have an idea why we're so extremely divided on AI: it's because we have an intuitive sense of who it stands to benefit, and who stands to pay the costs. I think whether you see reason for optimism has a lot to do with which group you see yourself in.
A core tenet of the enshittification hypothesis is that all the terrible stuff we're subjected to in our digital lives today is the result of foreseeable (and foreseen) policy choices, which created the enshittogenic policy environment in which the worst people's worst ideas make the most money:
I once overrode my own website blocker for 444 minutes. After that I stopped relying on willpower and started making the internet boring: app deletions, LeechBlock, grayscale mode, and a custom userscript.
How the commercial spreadsheet reshaped America
What’s going on with the AI builder community right now?
He may have had tailoring from Hawkes of Savile Row, but Withnail’s coat has a more complicated history.
I see a lot of posts about people leaving platforms. This one about leaving Reddit, this one about leaving WordPress, and a bunch of others about leaving Dis...
RAND researchers present a strategy for the United States to prevent the creation of mirror life by anyone, anywhere.
With heavy hearts, we announce that Felix “FX” Lindner —a cherished friend, and the founder and owner of Recurity Labs—passed away on 2026-03-01.
The Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford brings together the best minds from different fields to tackle the most pressing issues of the 21st…
Why AI doom rhetoric from Anthropic, OpenAI and other tech leaders functions as hype, regulatory strategy, and a distraction from present harms.
