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How Block Blast harvests its players for ad money
Rules downloaded from their server decide your pieces, your score and your ads. One waits for an expensive ad, then asks for a hand you can’t place.
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,066 posts.
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Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence
Steven Pinker believes deeply in the power of reason to understand the world and ourselves. But can he convince Tyler?
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AAAS Blocking Access to the Scientific Literature When They Say It Is “Free”
A blog about microbiology, genomics and metagenomics, sequencing, evolution, ecology, and open science.
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It’s time to bring more realistic models of human behaviour into economic policy
David Halpern. The Centre for Central Banking Studies recently hosted their annual Chief Economists Workshop, whose theme was “What can policymakers learn from other disciplines”. In this guest po…
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Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi (Chancellor of UC Davis)
18 November 2011 Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi Linda P.B. Katehi, I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in th…
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Deterministic thinking: a problem in how we think, not just in how we act
– Basketball Stats: Don’t model the probability of win, model the expected score differential.
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Making sure AI serves people and knowledge stays human
Today we’re sharing a human rights impact assessment on AI/ML to help Wikimedia understand effects on human rights.
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Every fucking website: 2026 edition
Every AI-generated landing page, all at once, labelling itself as it goes.
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Against Murderism
[Content warning: discussion of racism. Comments are turned off due to bad experience with the comments on this kind of material.] I. A set of questions, hopefully confusing: Alice is a white stay-…
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We want your old T-shirts
The Internet Archive is headquartered in a building that used to be a Christian Science church. The great room includes a gorgeous stained glass dome, a pipe organ, and graceful wooden pews. We seat 400+ people in this space to show movies and to host conferences on a regular basis. The room is beautiful, but those
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A moonlit tribute to a moon landing icon
As the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approaches, we honor Margaret Hamilton’s contribution with a portrait made of moonlight.
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Rat Park drug experiment cartoon
Comic about a classic experiment into drug addiction science: Rat Park. Would rats take drugs if given a stimulating environment and company?
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Why the Facebook Experiment Is Lousy Social Science
Facebook is grappling with its impact on our social and emotional lives — and that’s a good thing. But it has to get the research right. Why Facebook did the experiment, and how to make it better.
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Report on FBI’s Use of Patriot Act Highlights Need for Intelligence Reform
The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) yesterday released another report on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s use of Section 215 of the Patriot Act between 2007 and 2009. The report was long delayed due to declassification and redaction issues, but the timing is...
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Entitlement issues (2009)
I am home. My dog is happy to see me. The world is a good place and I am behind on work because American Airlines doesn't have proper power ...
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Stuxnet was embarrassing, not amazing (2011)
As the New York Times posts yet another breathless story about Stuxnet, I’m surprised that no one has pointed out its obvious deficiencies. Everyone seems to be hyperventilating about its pur…
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Measuring political bias in Claude
We introduce and open-source an automated evaluation for political even-handedness, testing six models across 1,350 prompt pairs.
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San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?
I lived in New York City for 8 years and never had anything major stolen. In San Francisco, it took 2 weeks…
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I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one
I don’t want a new phone, but I’m probably buying one.
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How Georgists Valued land in the 1900's
The lost art of the "Somers System" of land valuation
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Do We Need Central Banks? (2017)
Paper presented at the 14 th Rhodes Forum: Dialogue of Civilisations Research Institute, Panel 2: Economic Alternatives when Conventional Models Fail, Rhodos, Greece, on 1 October 2016
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Education is Our Generation's Big Problem. Let's Fix it.
Build practical, job-relevant skills with ready-made learning pathways and custom programs from Chegg Skills for employers, higher education, and government.
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The Rise of the $8 Ice Cube
At $8 a piece (or $325 for 50), luxury ice cubes probably cost more than whatever you're drinking.
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The road that killed Legend Jenkins was working as designed
When a child is killed on a street like West Hudson Boulevard, it’s not a tragic fluke. It’s the outcome we designed for.
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Cottagecore Programmers
Every programmer I know has at some point longingly expressed how “[they] want to work with [their] hands”. Some say they wish they were a carpenter, some want to be in the fields on a farm, some want to raise chickens, or milk cows. It is however inevitable that I either hear someone say it or agree with it at some…