Topics /

Society, Policy & Culture

The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 1,050 posts.

2021
212

XMPP, a comeback story

Everyone loves a comeback story. Can a 20 year old overlooked technology make a comeback as a completely decentralized, free, and scalable technology for the growing masses of people who value freedom and privacy?

217

Windows Refund Day (1999)

Anyway, a few people from SVLUG , including Don Marti, Rick Moen (yes he was there ), Chris DiBona, the world famous Nick Moffitt, and Tabinda Khan, organized the Bay Area windows refund effort. Since at the Linux tea party , microsoft showed up at our meeting point to try to deter us from going to their offices in…

225

Europe's Software Problem

This article is part of a series on (European) innovation and capabilities. Europe’s communication needs are currently almost exclusively delivered by Chinese hardware that connects us to US-based platforms. For a variety of reasons, this is not a good idea. As stated recently by Charles Michel, President of the…

227

Peer-reviewed papers are getting increasingly boring

The number of researchers and peer-review publications is growing exponentially. It has been estimated that the number of researchers in the world doubles every 16 years and the number of research outputs is increasing even faster. If you accept that published research papers are an accurate measure of our scientific…

232

Dude, where’s my stuff

The global supply chain mess will require increased vaccination and acquired immunity, semiconductor capacity expansion and the end of extraordinary housing/labor supports to resolve. A close look at some very anomalous charts on shipping, semiconductors, inventories, labor shortages, foreclosures and mortality.

235

The high price of mistrust

When we can’t trust each other, nothing works. As we participate in our communities less and less, we find it harder to feel other people are trustworthy. But if we can bring back a sense of trust in the people around us, the rewards are incredible.