Best of 2023

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2023. 518 posts.

Tech Industry & Business
337

Do we need copyright? (2012)

The concept of property is a social construction. Animals, such as cats, can own a piece of food, or a territory, but only as long as they are able to personally maintain a credible threat of violence. And animals can only defend concrete, physical properties, such as an area, a dead bird or a tree. … Continue reading…

349

There is no hard takeoff

Back in 2014, Elon Musk referred to AI as summoning the demon. And it wasn’t hard to see that view. Soon, Go agents would beat top humans learning from self play. By the end of 2017, the same algorithm mastered Chess and Shogi. By 2020, it didn’t even need tons of calls to the simulator, and could play Atari too.