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Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,064 posts.
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Sweden's cashless society is no longer a utopia
Switching fully to card and app payments would put access to our money in the hands of private organizations for the first time in history.
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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future
Some thoughts on Mozilla for people who don’t know Mozilla.
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The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines
Based on its own charter, OpenAI should surrender the race
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United States vs. Google
The Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google is appropriately narrow, and if it fails it gives a template for Congressional action.
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Fukushima
When I visited Chernobyl 7 years ago, I didn’t think that a similar disaster could take place anywhere ever again, and certainly not in Japan.
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Netscape Meteors
I went on a small journey the last couple days to find the original Netscape Navigator “meteors” animation. This one has a special place in my head and heart because it is so clearly connected to my memories of discovering the web as a kid. Here it is in its original 60×60 px glory:
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Cloudflare's abuse policies and approach
Cloudflare launched nearly twelve years ago. Over that time, our set of services has become much more complicated. With that complexity we have developed policies around how we handle abuse of different features Cloudflare provides
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As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail
Tomorrow, two high-speed rail lines open in France, providing new corridors for trains to slice through the countryside at 200 mph (320 km/h). One is a 302-kilometer link that will connect Paris to…
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Young women earn more than young men in several U.S. cities
The gender wage gap is narrower among younger workers nationally, and the gap varies across geographical areas.
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Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down
After several intense and incredible years building Bluesky from the ground up, I've decided to step back as CEO and transition to a new role as Bluesky's Chief Innovation Officer.
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Usenet – Let's Return to Public Spaces
Usenet was what the Web is missing nowadays: a genuinely public space, with unclear ownership
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The Alpha Myth: How captive wolves led us astray
A wolf paces in captivity, teaching us all the wrong lessons about power
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New AI classifier for indicating AI-written text
We’re launching a classifier trained to distinguish between AI-written and human-written text.
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How Germany is able to run the world’s second largest export economy
How Germany Is Able To Run The World’s Second Largest Export Economy In The Post-Industrial Era “ The Germany Shock ” describes European growth & the efficiency-maximizing centralization of European manufacturing activity after the launch of the Single Market and the Euro . Two questi
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Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)
SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION, 17th Annual EOS/ESD Symposium THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1995, 8:00 am SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION: ELECTROSTATIC CONSIDERATIONS IN INDUSTRY MODERATOR: D. Swenson, 3M 7.7 CASE STUDY - LARGE PLASTIC WEB ELECTROSTATIC PROBLEMS, RESULTS, AND CURE, D. Swenson, 3M Company Tremendous static charge…
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Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII
Germany set to vote on the Unitary Patent Court (UPC), a proposal that would kill jobs and innovation in software. Open Letter to the Bundesrat: “Germany will violate 3 international agreements with the Unitary Patent” Dear Members of the Bundesrat, Tomorrow Friday 18 September 2020, the Bundesrat will be asked to…
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Laws of Tech Economics: Commoditize Your Complement
A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.
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The FCC responds to my ATSC 3 encryption complaint – they want to hear from you
The FCC reached out to me and is asking all of you who signed the petition to also file a comment in their docketing system for the ATSC 3 petition. This is very easy to do and will just take a few minutes. So far there are only about a dozen or so complaints filed. … Continue reading The FCC Responds to my ATSC 3…
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The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle
Reader warning: there's gonna be a lot of pretend puke photos in this post. If you've fired up HBO Max recently, you've probably seen that o...
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Compound pejoratives on Reddit
What can Reddit comment data tell us about the rules governing the formation of insulting compound words like 'fartface', 'scumwad', or 'assgoblin'?
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When hardware goes end-of-life, companies need to open-source the software
Blog post by Marciano Planque: EOL
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Assange Trial Day 18
It is hard to believe, but Judge Baraitser on Friday ruled that there will be no closing speeches in the Assange extradition hearing. She accepted the proposal initially put forward by counsel for the US government, that closing arguments should simply be submitted in writing and without an oral hearing. This was…
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What can a technologist do about climate change?
Frustrated by a sense of global mispriorities , I blurted out some snarky and mildly regrettable tweets on the lack of attention to climate change in the tech industry (Twitter being a sublime medium for the snarky and regrettable). Climate change is the problem of our time, it’s everyone’s problem, and most of our…
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Almost 80% of Private Day Traders Lose Money
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about how penny auction sites make you money. As a reaction, some readers sent me links to day trading brokers that promise easy returns. These brokers allow private investors to hold stocks or currencies positions for a short time which makes it possible to speculate on small…
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CowToilet, a Toilet for Cows
If you are a dairy farmer looking for ways to reduce your environmental impact, Hanskamp's CowToilet may be for you. This innovative system is designed to…