9 ms·

Ask HN: What are some blog posts that you have enjoyed going through?

• smokel 4y ago
  Not sure if this counts as a blog, but I really liked Distill: https://distill.pub/ https://distill.pub/ The articles explain machine learning concepts in a very clear and sometimes interactive way.
• ghgr 4y ago
  Playing to Win: https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/minecraft.html https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/minecraft.html A beautifully narrated real story about hacking the economy of Minecraft.
• asicsp 4y ago
  https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/03/08/tiny-programs/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/03/08/tiny-programs/ - makes you fired up to do some projects https://x.st/visual-sum-of-cubes/ https://x.st/visual-sum-of-cubes/ - nice visualizations https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/ https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/ - amazing presentation of porting desktop game to phone
• rurcliped 4y ago
  https://blog.miki.it/2014/7/8/abusing-jsonp-with-rosetta-flash/ https://blog.miki.it/2014/7/8/abusing-jsonp-with-rosetta-fla... (this was somewhat more exciting when Flash still existed)
• thr0wnawaytod4y 4y ago
  all my real oauth knowledge came from this https://labs.detectify.com/2022/07/06/account-hijacking-using-dirty-dancing-in-sign-in-oauth-flows/ https://labs.detectify.com/2022/07/06/account-hijacking-usin...
• reducesuffering 4y ago
  https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ Is a classic for the combination of eloquent writing and inspecting how the world works. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic... is underrated for its playful insight on governance.
• superdisk 4y ago
  https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ba... Perennial classic.
• rado 4y ago
  The 100% correct way to do CSS breakpoints https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-100-correct-way-to-do-css-breakpoints-88d6a5ba1862/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-100-correct-way-to-do-... Still needed 5 years later, yet ironically soon breakpoint will be gone
  • jpnc 4y ago
    > soon breakpoint will be gone First I've heard of it. Any links? My search-fu seems to be lacking.
    • selectnull 4y ago
      I guess they said breakpoints would be gone because of css container queries. Nothing else comes to my mind. Technically, that means media size queries will be gone, and not the breakpoints themselves.
    • rado 4y ago
      It's called "the intrinsic web". Things like flexbox and grid with content-aware sizing will eventually make the breakpoints obsolete. https://adactio.com/links/19047 https://adactio.com/links/19047
• bubblicious 4y ago
  whenever someone new arrives on the team and starts complaining about how terrible the codebase is, and how we should just rewrite everything: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
• nicbou 4y ago
  https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-broker https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-brok... - Someone put into words my business strategy https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr... - Essential advice for anyone starting their career
• jjcm 4y ago
  https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbotts-passport-number-on-instagram https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minis... Security researcher finds the Australian prime minister’s personal info. Very much a love it or hate it writing style, but as someone who’s lived in Australia for a while I found it hilarious.
• fool1987 4y ago
  https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-already-over https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-already-over CW: gore in header image, about one page long. PgDn gets it out of view on a 1080p screen Posted on HN a while back. It's slightly bleak in outlook but it was what finally pushed me to take serious steps to reduce my presence online. Got rid of all my apps that weren't strictly for comms and deleted most of my socials accounts. I already feel better for the change.
  • LoganDark 4y ago
    CW: gore in header image, about one page long. PgDn gets it out of view on a 1080p screen (Just warning those who might not want to see it)
    • fool1987 4y ago
      Thanks, I have added this to my comment so it is more visible.
    • PostOnce 4y ago
      The "gore" in question being a 400 year old painting by Rubens which is world-renowned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(Rubens) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(Rubens) Does this really need a warning, or should you just avoid the internet entirely if a Rubens is too much to cope with?
      • hallomisky 4y ago
        It sounds like you think the painting's age means that it no longer has power, or at least, not power enough to warrant a content-warning. I would beg to differ, and argue that the fact that it still has the power to shock is what makes it "world-renowned".
      • fool1987 4y ago
        It doesn't bother me particularly and I must admit I barely noticed it (hence no original CW) but there is more to other people than I could ever understand; if I can take thirty seconds of my time to prevent someone seeing something that makes them uncomfortable (especially given it is not exactly expected in this context), why not do so? It costs me so little and could benefit others so much, the same as most other good manners in our culture, like saying "please," and "thank you."
• ricklamers 4y ago
  Understanding why Microsoft ploughs money into VS Code https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
  • poushkar 4y ago
    Sorry, I am still struggling to see what the VS Code is a commoditized complement to?
    • ricklamers 4y ago
      I would say GitHub and Azure
• TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
  Antirez, the creator of Redis, has a few great ones in his blog. One that comes to mind is "Writing system software: code comments." [0]. Previously discussed on HN [1]. [0] http://antirez.com/news/124 http://antirez.com/news/124 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157047
• billwashere 4y ago
  Nick Johnson's blog about damn cool algorithms http://blog.notdot.net/tag/damn-cool-algorithms http://blog.notdot.net/tag/damn-cool-algorithms
• jelicicm 4y ago
  This lovely presentation of how GPS works: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ Same website has several other, equally cool, blog posts.
  • sourcecodeplz 4y ago
    Almost each of his blog posts could have easily been made into a small book. Though his animations (canvas) would not have the same effect on paper/kindle obliviously. It's a great resource and kind of answers one of yesterdays question about posting consistent vs posting quality. Out of curiosity I googled "mechanical watch explained" and what do you know, he is the second result.
• ipnon 4y ago
  “Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future” by Tim Urban convinced me that neural laces and their development is feasible, probable and imminently worthwhile. It made it clear that visionaries like Musk seem like total lunatics unless you break problems down into their absolute atomic principles. His drawings are also really funny. He blows the brain up to the size of Madison Square Garden and shows that at this scale each cubic meter has 40,000 neurons in it, a complex system in itself that becomes near incomprehensible once you factor in the rest of the blown up cortex that would take half an hour to walk around. You get a sense for the immense difficulty and yet deterministic physics of the problem. https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
  • dmak 4y ago
    Wow thats cool!
  • ramraj07 4y ago
    Musk is the type of person you should be prepared to simultaneously deride but also learn from. The jackassery he’s up to now, and the abuse he inflicts on his workers everywhere, coexist with the fact that he single handedly transformed the space industry and accelerated EV adoption and made inroads in BCI. There are also then these self contradictory Elon hit pieces where they’ll simultaneously say he’s not responsible for the success of any of these companies, but also smart enough to invent hyper loop and boring company because he has an agenda to derail californias public transport infrastructure. Pick a side people!
  • yreg 4y ago
    Also his series on AGI: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... And perhaps a more controversial, take-it-with-a-grain-of-sand take on cryonics: https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html
• syliconadder 4y ago
  https://parmanu.com/2012/10/28/family-matters/#more-4671 https://parmanu.com/2012/10/28/family-matters/#more-4671 A meditation on immigration and the opposite, "why someone would leave a good job for no other reason than to be close to family". This is a rich piece that I've always gone back to over the past decade. The rest of the blog is equally as brilliant.
  • ramraj07 4y ago
    I’m Indian, moved a decade to the states and back in india for family reasons. I also love Tokyo Story. I’m not sure I learned anything profound from the article, it’s more like a superficial recollection of observations about family and different cultures maybe? I’m sure Germany is different from the States, so I’m not gonna say I’m an expert at German culture, but suffice to say that beneath the surface of whatever tapestry familial dynamics take in each culture, in the end there’s both rotten and good aspects to each family, often precipitated by the vagaries of human nature. The more I travel and experience new places and cultures, the more I realize absolutely nothing is that different in a fundamental level. By my estimation 80% of all people are fundamentally capable of great evil in the right circumstances, and no religion or family dynamic changes that, it can just successfully suppress it at best. The two great countries described in the article are also coincidentally the two countries attributed with some of the greatest atrocities in “developed world” history, for whatever that’s worth. A mother in law sending a tomato plant every year is no more or less loving than a mother who meets their son once a year for thanksgiving, or a grandma eagerly FaceTiming her grandkids across the world every weekend barely able to understand their fast American English. In the end, all we could wish for is a world where everyone minds their own business, forms whatever friends with whomever they want, and live and love they wish to without prejudice. That’s probably the best deal we can get from this world.
    • syliconadder 4y ago
      I think the superficiality is fair for a personal blog post. I don't think the author is criticizing the Indian family system as a whole (his other posts are an indication of the opposite) but is lamenting on the ease with which educated Indians find removing themselves from their family to be easy, which is not as prevalent (anecdotal) in Germany. It would make sense, because in the West people are where the opportunities are, unlike say an Indian or Chinese immigrant. > The more I travel and experience new places and cultures, the more I realize absolutely nothing is that different in a fundamental level. By my estimation 80% of all people are fundamentally capable of great evil in the right circumstances, and no religion or family dynamic changes that, it can just successfully suppress it at best. I agree with this on every level. The more I travel, the more I see that people are motivated by the same things beneath the veneer of culture and religion. This is a feature I believe, makes me empathize with people who are different from me rather than seeing them as "alien". > A mother in law sending a tomato plant every year is no more or less loving than a mother who meets their son once a year for thanksgiving, or a grandma eagerly FaceTiming her grandkids across the world every weekend barely able to understand their fast American English. This is a point I would differ with however. Being in close proximity with people does effect the nature of relationships we have with them. In the latter case, neither the kids nor the Grandma will have the emotional cohesion required to form a solid bonding. I can speak this through experience, video calls with relatives did not enhance my relationship with them but only deteriorated. Again, anecdotal but I think physical relationships fare better than emotional ones any day. > In the end, all we could wish for is a world where everyone minds their own business, forms whatever friends with whomever they want, and live and love they wish to without prejudice. That’s probably the best deal we can get from this world. Fair, but I don't think the author is passing any judgements. But most immigrants do not have a choice in the nature of their relationships, money is usually the motivator, not inter-personal relationships.
• tbassetto 4y ago
  A lot of articles from Josh Comeau are very good at explaining things and are quite interactive. Last one about CSS Flexbox for example: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/interactive-guide-to-flexbox/ https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/interactive-guide-to-flexbox...
• nickspicer1993 4y ago
  https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... A book review winner outlining "land value tax". Once you read it it's scary how many things you start to notice that it would solve, and how many inefficient policies are put in place but not required if you solve this ultimate underlying issue.
  • lannisterstark 4y ago
    >Once you read it it's scary how many things you start to notice that it would solve 0. It would solve 0 things. It'll just give the US govt for example, more money to bomb our villages and our people. I can't believe grown-up adults can be this naive.
    • nickspicer1993 4y ago
      I find the linked article pretty convincing but admit it's not my area of expertise at all, do you have any resources refuting it?
• iLoveOncall 4y ago
  I'm not sure what is the value of this post? HackerNews is literally all about sharing blog posts and upvoting the ones you enjoy. You're just reinventing HN on HN here...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • newsoul 4y ago
    Yes, I love recursion. Haha!
• clownshoez 4y ago
  I think all of https://www.gwern.net/ https://www.gwern.net/ is well written, interesting and unique.
• ramraj07 4y ago
  Dan Luu’s Nothing Works article is a must read for every tech person https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
  • scrollaway 4y ago
    Wow. What a post. Thank you.
    • ramraj07 4y ago
      Indeeed, I share it with as many colleagues as possible. I consider myself one of those insane engineers lol. So it helps show that perspective!
  • wizwit999 4y ago
    I can't disagree with this article more and it's exactly why Twitter is ridiculously over engineered. I remember chatting with a Twitter DevOps guy and there's multiple internal Grafana clones instead of just using Grafana.
• robin_reala 4y ago
  Charity Major’s posts on management, individual contribution, and the space between, are worth visiting: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/ https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum... https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pendulum-or-the-ladder/ https://charity.wtf/2019/01/04/engineering-management-the-pe... https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotion-then-engineering-isnt-a-demotion/ https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotio...
• marchie_uk 4y ago
  https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven... An inspirational anecdote that demonstrates the life-changing value of keeping information accessible to everyone.
• petercooper 4y ago
  Almost everything https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/ https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/ puts out. It is all very much about pushing around in protocols, devices, networking, and playing around with things that most people don't think about. There are very few blogs that hit the mark with most of the posts, but that's one that sticks in my mind. If you want some specific ones though: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dive-into-the-world-of-dos-viruses https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dive-into-the-world-of-dos-v... https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/traceroute-haikus https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/traceroute-haikus https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dell-switch-hacking https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dell-switch-hacking https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dns-filesystem-true-cloud-storage-dnsfs https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dns-filesystem-true-cloud-st...
  • dev_0 4y ago
• she11c0de 4y ago
  Lesswrong blog by Eliezer Yudkowsky - deep dive into biases, rational thinking and acting. "The sequences" is a series of posts that explore the topic in depth, definitely influenced me when I was younger. https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality
  • dev_0 4y ago
• thetoon 4y ago
  A lot from Dan Slimmons, especially : https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/08/02/stop-apologizing-for-bugs/ https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/08/02/stop-apologizing-for-... https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-the-key-to-gradual-automation/ https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-... or https://blog.danslimmon.com/2017/06/30/cap-your-ticket-backlog/ https://blog.danslimmon.com/2017/06/30/cap-your-ticket-backl...
• thedailymail 4y ago
  I'm going to hijack this post to ask for help locating a blogpost I read via an HN link a few (4ish) years ago. It was written by an academic studying infrastructure in the developing world. The subject was construction of a public transport network in a large city (Lahore? Lagos?), and his difficulties in obtaining reliable data from public sources on basic features like scale, budget, and schedule. What made the post interesting was how he drily cited multiple official sources to show that none were in agreement. Something like "The new trunk line will stretch 74 km." [link 1] "It cover 89 km end to end." [link 2] "All told, the line will add 107 km of new track." [link 3] etc. etc. So basically it functioned both as an account of his research and a tacit commentary on the problems that arise from dealing with unreliable official sources. If that rings a bell for anyone, I'd be very grateful for a link!
• Zecc 4y ago
  https://acko.net/blog/animate-your-way-to-glory/ https://acko.net/blog/animate-your-way-to-glory/
• canadianfella 4y ago
• data2data 4y ago
  https://www.adanguyenx.com/blog/partial-reprogramming https://www.adanguyenx.com/blog/partial-reprogramming I found this to be an excellent overview of cellular rejuvenation/longevity. Does a good job of explaining the current state of the field.
• mb-21 4y ago
  Several years ago the New York Times had a really cool visualization of Hurricane Harvey’s weather pattern; turns out the author published a guide of how they did it: https://roadtolarissa.com/hurricane/ https://roadtolarissa.com/hurricane/
• rkangel 4y ago
  Tailscale have some great posts on how aspects of our internet infrastructure work and how to work around them. They're all motivating discussions for the design of Tailscale but the background is excellent: The various techniques for negotiating NAT: https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ How DNS works and why it sometimes doesn't: https://tailscale.com/blog/magicdns-why-name https://tailscale.com/blog/magicdns-why-name
• tester756 4y ago
  https://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ https://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/ >Midori was a research/incubation project to explore ways of innovating throughout Microsoft’s software stack. This spanned all aspects, including the programming language, compilers, OS, its services, applications, and the overall programming models. We had a heavy bias towards cloud, concurrency, and safety. The project included novel “cultural” approaches too, being 100% developers and very code-focused, looking more like the Microsoft of today and hopefully tomorrow, than it did the Microsoft of 8 years ago when the project began.
• sph 4y ago
  "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb — https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict... "My favorite Erlang program" by Joe Armstrong — https://joearms.github.io/published/2013-11-21-My-favorite-erlang-program.html https://joearms.github.io/published/2013-11-21-My-favorite-e...
• saperyton 4y ago
  Matt Lakeman, Scott Alexander, Maciej Cegłowski, Wait But Why. Highly recommend the Thinking About Things newsletter which sends me individually interesting blog posts. https://www.thinking-about-things.com https://www.thinking-about-things.com
• imakwana 4y ago
  Derek Sivers: Cross the world four times https://sive.rs/4 https://sive.rs/4
• xaxaxb 4y ago
  Reading this on another open tab right now: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Like what I'm reading.
• themadturk 4y ago
  Jimmy Maher's in-depth, amateur history of adventure gaming (and the various systems that they ran on), The Digital Antiquarian, can be found at https://www.filfre.net https://www.filfre.net. (Several previous posts re: The Digital Antiquarian have appeared on HN).
• madhusree1209 4y ago
  [dead]
• lukaszkups 4y ago
  Everything at http://www.minimallyminimal.com/ http://www.minimallyminimal.com/ website - I wish Andrew Kim still maintain his blog as he used to be. Also I've learned recently about https://androidarts.com/ https://androidarts.com/ and still browsing through it - such a great inspiration source!