Topics /
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,065 posts.
Americans are in general more worried about the prospects for boys than for girls, and for their own sons more than their own daughters, according to new data from the American Family Survey.
That mythology, in turn, has spurred a reactionary, perpetual spasm from people who are horrified by what they hear. You'll have a figure say, "The computers will take over the Earth, but that's a good thing, because people had their chance and now we should give it to the machines." Then you'll have other people say…
I used to work next to the center for nanotechnology. The first indication I had that there was something wrong with the discipline of “nanotechnology” is I noticed that the people who …
For the first time since the Henley Passport Index was created 20 years ago, the United States is no longer ranked amongst the world’s Top 10 most powerful passports.
Armed federal officers publicly threatening to defy orders from the President seems like it’s getting insufficient attention. The Biden administration largely continuing Trump’s border policies (he’s building the wall!) seems under-covered as well. The claim about vulnerable flights as a result is absurd.
Attempting to politely correct misinformation on Twitter can have negative consequences, leading to even less-accurate tweets and more toxicity from the people being corrected, according to a study co-authored by MIT scholars.
Once in a while I come across an animated debate on health benefits of sugar vs. high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It is enzymatically produced mixture of glucose and fructose that approximately matches the chemical composition of sucrose, aka sugar. It is not this debate that is my concern; rather,…
Using insights from three recent books, Wolfgang Fengler provides suggestions for creating more balanced and fact-based news.
Question for Quote Investigator: I was looking through a collection of woefully inaccurate pronouncements delivered by experts, and I saw a remark attributed to Ken Olsen, a prominent computer industry pioneer who founded the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) which built minicomputers. DEC was perfectly positioned…
Across the internet, users rely on browsers and extensions to shape how they experience the web: to protect their privacy, improve accessibility, block harmful or intrusive content, and take control ...
The Myth of the Lone Genius is a bullshit cliche and we would do well to stop parroting it to young people like it is some deep insight into the nature of innovation.
Technowoman, one woman and her travels through a career in technology
NorthStar Moving Company is the best mover in San Francisco, CA with a 4.66 out of 5 rating and 93% positive reviews. Compare top-rated companies, pricing, and get quotes.
This article previously appeared in War On The Rocks There was a time when much of U.S. academia was engaged in weapon systems research for the Defense Department and intelligence community. Some o…
People are right to be concerned about the centralisation of power on the Web — but we embrace blockchain at our peril
The converging interests of technocrats, media, and academia, as seen through the lens of the world's most deplatformed US-legal website.
Apple’s iPad ad might not have been good for Apple, but it was a profound encapsulation of what has happened on the Internet; the question is what it leads to next.
An in-depth look at the currently trending Arch Linux configuration that is Omarchy.
Some in detail analysis about what the end of safe harbor means for small companies, especially in Europe.
Status update Update (February 28, 13:20 UTC): Briar is available on Google Play again. Briar was briefly removed from Google Play because we didn’t provide Google’s review team with a username and password for testing the app. We provided Google with a username and password for testing and the app is now available…
In September 2020, the Tampa Bay Times revealed a destructive “data-driven” policing program run by the Pasco County, Florida Sheriff's Office. The program is misleadingly called “Intelligence-Led Policing” (ILP), but in reality, it's nothing more than targeted child harassment by police. Young...
A Caesar cipher is a reasonable transformation for a transformer to learn in its weights, given that a specific cipher offset occurs often enough in its training data. There will be some hidden representation of the input tokens' spelling, and this representation could be used to shift letters onto other letters in…
Unless an Agreement is Reached, IATSE Members Will Begin Nationwide Strike on Oct. 18 at 12:01 a.m. (PDT)
