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Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 1,045 posts.
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The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing
The Stringer Bell rule is obsolete, as Trump and state attorneys general let the egg producers off the hook for a brazen conspiracy. Still, egg prices did drop as a result of the investigation.
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Tech companies shouldn't be bullied into doing surveillance
The Secretary of Defense has given an ultimatum to the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an attempt to bully them into making their technology available to the U.S. military without any restrictions for their use. Anthropic should stick by their principles and refuse to allow their...
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Disagreement among frontier LLMs on real-world fact-checks
63% of real-world claims expose disagreement among the five top frontier LLMs. Methodology, breakdowns, and data CSV.
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The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level
A look at the decline of the labor share of income that occurred post-COVID, comparing its dynamics to declines in earlier periods.
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65% of Hacker News posts have negative sentiment, and they outperform
Sentiment analysis of 32,000 Hacker News posts shows 65% skew negative and earn 27% more points. Six transformer and LLM models tested, full data included.
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The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing
California’s bill, AB 2047, will not only mandate censorware on all 3D printers; it will also criminalize the use of open-source alternatives. Repeating the mistakes of DRM won’t make anyone safer, but it will hurt innovation in the state and risks a slew of new consumer harms ranging from surveillance to platform…
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Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
I don’t think there’s compelling evidence that using AI makes you less intelligent overall. However, it seems pretty obvious that using AI to perform a task…
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What shall I teach my son?
Yesterday, the title The End of Education by Neil Postman called to me from my bookshelf, whispering that it might be the right book at the right time. It was. Published in 1995, it was surprisingly appropriate balm for the soul of a confused programmer and soon-to-be father.
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The case for physical media ownership
An overview of physical media ownership, streaming shutdowns, content removals, and the limits of digital licenses.
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An Alien Mind
Jakub Pachocki reflects on increasingly capable AI and the challenge of keeping it aligned. He calls for stronger safeguards and international coordination.
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Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanethem Pillay
The Nobel Peace Prize 2026 was awarded to Navanethem Pillay "for her efforts to promote peace and international law"
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There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing
Man, I was just trying to relax and (have my agent) code on a Friday
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macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
In June 2008 Apple announced Mac OS X Snow Leopard, proudly boasting that it would have "no new features". Instead of piling on new things, Snow Leopard aimed to build on the success of its predecessor, Leopard, opting to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements throughout the system.
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US boy names that became girl names and vice versa
Explore 125 baby names that shifted between boys and girls, from Leslie to Ashley. See how each one’s split between boys and girls changed from 1936 to 2025.
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Elon Musk Just Gave Europe a Reason to Replace American Technology
I’ve been in London for the last month and have heard policymakers react to the wake up call Elon Musk just delivered. The decision of the U.S. to shut off intelligence and throttle the military v…
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The Eternal Sloptember
I’m calling it now, the adoption of AI agents into software development will be one of the most costly mistakes in the field’s history. Agents cannot program, and it’s taking longer and longer to realize that they can’t. They are a highly sophisticated statistical model designed to mimic the distribution of…
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Roblox downloaded 145GB models from us (including adult content) without asking
On 15 and 16 October 2026, a crawler that said it belonged to Roblox walked through almost every project on Open3DLab, SFMLab and SmutBase, and proceeded to download complete copies of 1,027 files from 712 projects. 145.5 GB of our creators' work, downloaded for what we assume are AI training purposes.
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I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M
Datatilsynet just fined Elkjop NOK 20 million (€1.8m) for the forced consent in its loyalty club — five years after I told their DPO it was unlawful.
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Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
The new class of weight-loss and diabetes drugs are changing not just how much American households are eating, but even precisely what they buy at a supermarket or restaurant.
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AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it
You're using AI to be more productive. So why are you more exhausted than ever? The paradox every engineer needs to confront.
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The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy
The Free Press has documented a closed-door Pentagon meeting in which a senior Trump official lectured Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador on American military supremacy.
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The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
The United States Army spent the last two decades optimizing sustainment for permissive environments defined by uncontested supply lines, contractor support, and static forward operating bases. As the National Defense […]
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I have a theory that software drives people insane
I have a little pet theory that software drives people insane. Not in the "wash your hands every thirty minutes like Howard Hughes" kind of way, but more ...
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Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public
ACLU documents how surveillance camera company Flock has lied to local officials about its operations
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AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making
Note: This has been cross-posted to my company's blog, in case you think there is some use in sharing with someone in a format that looks more authoritative. Link here .
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Claude mixes up who said what
Claude sometimes sends messages to itself and then thinks those messages come from the user. This is categorically distinct from hallucinations or missing permissions.