Top all-time · #6235
A Tiny Revolution
Personal blog · tinyrevolution.comculturephilosophy
A Tiny Revolution is a personal blog at tinyrevolution.com about culture and philosophy. Since 2008, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link A Tiny Revolution for its funny, shrewd commentary on politics, institutions and economics, and for recurring short pieces such as the Iron Law of Institutions and a passage on enlightenment.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /mt/archives/001705.html2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-06-26
What Hacker News says?
"If you want to overkill, on November 1st you could read the election issue of The Economist cover to cover, whatever political posts are on the front page of HN, and the Wikipedia pages for the major issues. Then sit and think carefully for an hour. This would take about five hours, and I’ll bet $1 you’d vote for the same candidate you would have if you’d read five hours of political news per day for the last year.…
Comment linking /mt/archives/000436.html
on “Did You Hear We Got Osama?”Submitted The Lesson from Libya: Get Nuclear Weapons as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThis is my favorite description of enlightenment ever, taken from http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002883.html Here's a section from The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, describing what Mubarak's security services did after Ayman al-Zawahiri attempted to assassinate Mubarak in 1995: To deal with Zawahiri, Egyptian intelligence agents devised a fiendish plan. They lured a thirteen year-old boy named Ahmed i…
Comment linking /mt/archives/002883.html
on “Hosni Mubarak finally steps down”Submitted What's Wrong with Western Music? Part III. "Passacaglia in Cm" as a story · 32 points
HN discussionIron Law of Oligarchies (...Institutions, Companies, etc.): "...the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." http://ww…
Comment linking /mt/archives/001705.html
on “An interview with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis”Submitted Money is Not Real as a story · 18 points
HN discussion> systems of free enterprise allow people to build whatever charity they want, whatever church they want, whatever business they want, build a worker's cooperative if they want, or create an open source platform Kind of off-topic, but it's something that bothers me ... Some free software activists should also be reminded of this, since their agenda is getting rid of proprietary software which is considered to be imm…
Comment linking /mt/archives/003097.html
on “Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit”Off-topic but meh. The guy is a frighteningly funny and shrewd to boot. See any of his posts at A Tiny Revolution http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/ Oh a thanks for the heads-up on this data structure ljlolel.
Comment linking /mt/
on “What are the lesser known but cool data structures?”As was the case with the old Soviet Union, Microsoft decisions frequently only make sense when viewed through the lens of internal politics -- of one apparatchik trying to stick a knife in the back of another, in order to increase their own power. My guess on this one: the new Metro-style app platform was the work of Sinofsky's Windows Division, while traditional XAML app tooling belonged to some other division. In…
Comment linking /mt/archives/001705.html
on “How one announcement damaged the .NET ecosystem on Windows”One can legitimately be a terrorist and commit terrorism. The problem is that the popular definition of terrorism is so nebulous as to be useless. We've charged as terrorists people who have attacked soldiers stationed in a foreign invader's military base ( http://www.salon.com/2011/12/10/the_real_definition_of_terro... and http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000860.html for examples). Those are purely militar…
Comment linking /mt/archives/000860.html
on “Do you like online privacy? You may be a terrorist”This reminds me of the old joke about the two economists and the pile of dog poop: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000466.html
Comment linking /mt/archives/000466.html
on “Company with zero revenue and one employee currently worth 3.8B”Iron Law of Institutions: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html (ignore the partisan aspects)
Comment linking /mt/archives/001705.html
on “The TSA's Dumb Air-Security Rules Are Not Based on Science”Or don't believe me or Noam Chomsky (thanks down-voters), take it from their own words. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003512.html
Comment linking /mt/archives/003512.html
on “Social Media Guidelines for the Times Newsroom”Current systems emphasize short trips between generation and consumption to minimize line losses. Per your cite, Nigeria has a little over 5,000 miles of transmission lines. The US has over 450,000 miles. http://www.naruc.org/grants/Documents/Silverstein%20NCEP%20T... Neither of these systems transmit power from one end straight to the other end, but you can do neat things if you can increase your range. The losses…
Comment linking /mt/archives/003223.html
on “Let's Build a Global Power Grid”
