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Venture capital is going to murder Medium
It’s a crying shame, really. I love Medium. It’s the best writing environment on the web, and they sweat the details like nobody else. The community too is just peach. This could have been a love s…
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,067 posts.
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Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech
How could something as inanimate, mass-produced and commoditized as a cellphone get people worked up enough to send hate mail to a tech reviewer?
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Why Can't I Take an Orange Through Customs?
Fruit flies, agroterrorism, and how a healthy snack became a threat to national security.
11374
The iPhone obsession
Since my attempts at capturing web developers’ hearts and minds by publishing fundamental research have failed miserably but my thirst for attention continues unabated, today I will once more shout at iPhone developers. That’s proven to work .
11375
Herd Mentality
It’s not just that Apple *is* different among computer makers. It’s that Apple is the only one that even *can* be different, because it’s the only one that has its own OS.
11376
Facebook is ruining Instagram
I always loved Instagram. It's been my favorite social network since I had a smartphone. I was happy when it was purchased from Facebook…
11377
Have I reached the Douglas Adams Inflection point?
The all-knowing sage Douglas Adams had this to say about technology: Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can…
11378
Mastodon Is Awesome
A hastily written guide for data science folks trying to navigate the fediverse.
11379
Don't bet on the joys of pokies (2011)
When I was working in the Cairns Casino I’d often arrive on the floor to replace a guy who had been in the industry as long as casinos had b...
11380
Death by Bureaucracy
I’ve been an anti-death penalty activist for 10 years. In this time, I’ve tried my best to observe and document the application of capital punishment in Singapore, and to support the families of death row inmates as they navigate the system. When people ask me about this
11381
Model built by researchers suggests coronavirus outbreak began in November
The coronavirus epidemic started one month earlier than is commonly reported and has yet to be brought under control, a new disease-transmission model created by University of Toronto researchers suggests. Using open access data that are updated daily, the model replicates epidemiological scenarios and allows…
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OpenAI's comment to the NTIA on open model weights
OpenAI’s comment to the NTIA on open model weights This comment was submitted by OpenAI in response to NTIA’s March 2024 Request for Information on Dual-Use Foundation Models with Widely Available Weights.
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And then the music stopped
Remember way back to, oh, six months ago when champagne was popping and markets were roaring? Back when companies with no or few profits could premiere on the world stage to grand applause by merely converting a dollar into fifty cents? Those were the good times of boom, boom, pow. It’s am…
11387
Dating: A Research Journal, Part 1 (2016)
My journey to finding love using science and data. Part 1 – how to own online dating.
11388
What is Programmer Anarchy and does it have a future?
A developer I know recently told me that he wasn’t interested in any new opportunities in the short term because his team were about to adopt Fred George’s post-agile concept of Programmer Anarchy…
11389
Abe’s New Word Order
The days when the typical foreigner in Japan was a tall Caucasian with a big nose are long gone
11390
The software engineer’s guide to asserting dominance in the workplace
As a software engineer, changing jobs is a way of life. Every day, beautiful recruiters from top tech companies reach out to you on…
11391
Sand trafficking in Latin America
Criminal mafias are making massive profits from the illegal extraction and sale of sand for construction purposes.
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All-natural geoengineering with Frank Herbert's Dune
Can We Terraform the Earth Using Life Itself?
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Visions of Alt-Berlin in “Man in the High Castle” (2017)
An MIT urban planner looks at the alternative vision for a Berlin that was designed to last a thousand years, but never built.
11397
Endemic Pathogens Are Making You Crazy and Then Killing You
In February 2022, Jim Keller organized a scientific anarchism event in Woodside, California. Scientific anarchism, a term borrowed from the controversial philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, concerns the way science is performed in the laboratory and the way that ideas are generated, refuted, and incorporated into…
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Digital pollution
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
11400
The Most Incompetent TSA Story Yet?
The storyline: TSA screener finds two pipes in passenger’s bags. Screener determines that they’re not a threat. Screener confiscates them anyway, because of their “material and appearance.” Because they’re not actually a threat, screener leaves them at the checkpoint. Everyone forgets about them. Six hours later, the…