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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 1,047 posts.
What made TikTok such a success? A commonly given reason is that the app’s advanced AI is really good at figuring out what you want to watch. Many people say TikTok knows them better than they know themselves. Some users think of the algorithm as a divine force that guides them.
There are a lot of ludicrously terrible government laws, regulations and policies across all the domains of life.
Results suggest that pretend play provides similar social benefits to autistic children as it does to neurotypical children.
The “Dynamic Medium Group” led by Bret Victor which is developing “Dynamicland” is much admired and closely watched in the interaction design community. Yet the information about their work is closely-guarded and usually only available in a highly moderated form. The work of ethnographer Götz Bachmann, who spent much…
Ponder what a clawback of the $50 trillion might entail, and the immense benefits of returning to producing quality goods and services by co...
Consumption, brutality, and the cute
We should encourage more public disagreement.
Many people believe some transactions are final. The reality is a bit more complicated, and involves technical, social, and legal factors.
One of the current puzzles in economics is the recent worldwide slowdown in productivity, compared to the late 1990s and early 2000s. This productivity loss is economically large: if productivity growth had stayed at the same level as in 1995-2004, American GDP would have increased by trillions of dollars. In this…
Announcing the winners of MnDOT’s 2025-26 Name a Snowplow contest!
More and more websites have added an option to say “no” to cookies and other tracking- as foreseen by the GDPR. Where did this trend come from?
Europe’s top telecom regulator dealt a strong blow to Europe’s biggest telecoms in a report released in October, finding “no evidence” to justify the proposal from large broadband companies like Deutsche Telekom and Orange to force websites and apps to pay them. The report comes after European Commission
Longstanding fears that using mobile phones may increase the risk of developing a brain tumour have been reignited recently by the launch of 5G (fifth generation) mobile wireless technologies. Mobile phones emit radiofrequency waves which, if absorbed by tissues, can cause heating and damage.
All energy production takes up land, but which sources use the most land, and which use it most efficiently?
As Brave continues to grow, we find many users who haven't heard of us yet, so we try new marketing channels for efficacy, reach, affordability, and privacy.
What this report finds: Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1%. In 2021, we project that a CEO at one of the top 350 firms…
Editor's note – May 12, 2023Last year, we launched an important update to Location History. We remain committed to improving the experience and making it as helpful…
In the frenzy to attract venture capital funding and draw new users and investors into blockchain technologies, 'how will this technology be used to harass and abuse people?' is going unasked. While blockchain proponents speak about a 'future of the web' based around public ledgers, anonymity, and immutability, those…
Viewed in the proper light, influencer is a career path of tragic dimensions.
Can’t bring yourself to slaughter a nearby village, or a long-time associate?
We're making scientists and ghost-hunters kiss
A UCLA–MIT Press paper highlights a lack of data infrastructure and data strategy in U.S. higher education.
Does everybody get to coin one maxim in their lives? If so, here’s mine: Everything gets worse. Let’s say you’re shopping at the grocery, when you notice a new food product. It competes directly with
