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The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,067 posts.
Every artist, performer and creator on Patreon is about to get screwed out of 30% of their gross revenue, which will be diverted to Apple, the most valuable company on the planet. Apple contributes nothing to their work, but it will get to steal a third of their wages:
Recently I got a friend to finally join me on Signal. He asked something about whether or not Signal is truly secure and private, like if it was safe from US government surveillance. I told him: “Well, it’s end-to-end encrypted, so they don’t know what we’re talking about, but they definitely know that we’re talking…
It is the best of times for electronic ink but it is the worst of times for actually reading eBooks.
Note on Accessibility There has been some concerns about the contrast on this blog, unfortunately some find it hard to read light text on a dark background while others prefer it. I am looking into…
A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble. — Paul Graham, What You Can’t Sa…
Recently there have been heated complaints that the culture of programming unfairly excludes some groups. They want to join the programming elite and get a spot at the startup trough. More power to…
Learn why most websites don't need cookie consent banners and how privacy-first design can improve user experience while simplifying compliance with GDPR…
Dignity moves, the mission of survival, and $140 million across the river
So my copy of Norman Ohler’s splendidly-titled Blitzed showed up. This could have been a really disappointing book – in the acknowledgments, Ohler mentions a Berlin DJ friend who told him Nazis took masses of drugs, and I can well imagine going from that beginning to lurid Hitler Channel kitsch. But Ohler has achieved…
Monotropism was formulated as a theory of autism, but as time has gone on it has become clear that many diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) identify strongly with many aspects of the theory.
How Sandoz Pharmaceuticals produced the LSD that turned on the world
You're sat in a pub, chatting with your mates. You start to moan about how the cheap lager they serve gives you a headache. All of a sudden, a stranger runs up to you and says: "Oh no! Headaches? Have you tried the refreshing taste of Pepsi® Cola? It's the Flavour That Keeps Giving™!" I suspect you would complain to…
Many restaurants, theatres and offices are using infrared thermometers to get the country back to work. Multiple companies are advertising these as a way to ‘reassure’ employers and employees. In China, security guards have even been given infra-red spectacles in order to detect people with fever. But where’s the…
Human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of climate change. The world needs to decarbonize to reduce them.
On a small Japanese word that everyone has heard and almost everyone has misaddressed, and what changes when you find out who it is for.
Nym CEO Harry Halpin responds to Palantir manifesto with one that defends human freedom and privacy against techno-fascism.
er the first lockdown in Berlin this year I filed a public case in the Berlin Tribunal of Labour Court against the president of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Matthias Kirschner, for workplace...
Like a lot of people, I was intrigued by “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”, an anonymous New York Times op-ed written by a “senior official in the Trump administration”. And like many data scientists, I was curious about what role text mining could play.
For many, Los Angeles embodies car-culture—and the suburban-style development, freeways, traffic jams, and pollution that go with it. But it didn’t have to be that way. Turns out, LA was never designed to be a car city.
Pathological consumption has become so normalised that we scarcely notice it.
