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404 Deno CEO not found
The one where I mourn the best runtime and speculate idly.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 8,981 posts.
Tech Industry & Business
Any year
392
The bespoke software revolution? I'm not buying it
A bespoke software revolution? I don't buy it. It'll exist. It already exists. Small consultants and big consulting firms have made custom software for years. It almost always sucks. It’s bloated, confusing, and because the client pays, it’s built in all the wrong ways. Who’s excited about bespoke software? Software…
393
Delve – Fake Compliance as a Service
How Delve managed to falsely convince hundreds of customers they were compliant and then lied about it when exposed and called out
394
How to defer US taxes
Your government wants you to create taxable wealth.
395
“Your frustration is the product”
The people making these decisions for these websites are like ocean liner captains who are *trying* to hit icebergs.
396
A sufficiently detailed spec is code
Specifications do not address the limitations of agentic coding
397
Warranty Void If Regenerated
Tom Hartmann had not planned to become a Software Mechanic.
398
OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that leadership wants OpenAI, the company, to focus. Seems like a plain old business strategy story. Nope! First, in more prosaic terms, the all-hands and …
399
The pleasures of poor product design
A brilliant project cleverly sabotages everyday objects to reveal how much we take for granted about them — and about the design process.
400
Silicon Valley's "Pronatalists" Killed WFH. The Strait of Hormuz Brought It Back
On the Strait of Hormuz, fertility research, and the millions of dollars bet on artificial wombs that missed the point
401
Every layer of review makes you 10x slower
We’ve all heard of those network effect laws: the value of a network goes up with the square of the number of members. Or the cost of commun...
402
Nasdaq's Shame
How to rig an index to appease a billionaire
403
The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure
How early-stage clinical trials became unnecessarily expensive and inefficient—and how we can fix them, inspired by a recent story about a dog treated for cancer.
404
The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
I was a pretty avid reader as a kid, but as I transitioned to adulthood, my ability to focus on the written page withered. It seems I’m not alone: PISA reports reveal unprecedented drops in reading ability , professors in elite universities claim that humanities students can’t finish books , and looking around me, it…
405
LotusNotes
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly in the early days of digital computing, the military was a key customer, and fundamental concepts of modern computing arose in universities and laboratories serving military contracts. Of course, the war would not last forever, and…
406
The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify's AI DJ
Am I naïve in expecting Artificial Intelligence to be smart? Is my interpretation of the word “intelligence” too literal? And when an AI behaves stupidly, who’s to blame? The programmers or the AI entity itself? Is it even proper to make a distinction between the two? Or does the AI work in so mysterious a way that…
407
UBI as a productivity dividend
Why Universal Basic Income (UBI) Is the Only Way to Share AI and Productivity Gains With Everyone
408
ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did
There's a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks
409
I'm glad the Anthropic fight is happening now
“Preface to the highest stakes negotiations in history.”
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The MacBook Neo
May the MacBook Neo live so long that its name becomes inapt.
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No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user
The viral claim that Anthropic loses $5,000 per Claude Code subscriber doesn't survive basic scrutiny. Let's do the actual maths.
413
The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist
How did we get here? And how do we get back?
414
The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to “The Office” (2009)
My neighbor introduced me to The Office back in 2005. Since then, I've watched every episode of both the British and American versions. I've watched the show…
415
The worst acquisition in history, again
Warner Bros.
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The Self-Help Trap: What 20 Years of "Optimizing" Has Taught Me
“We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.” — Aldous Huxley, Island It was cold out, but none of us were cold. I sat with five men in the mountains of Montana. As the sun set, the fire […]
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In 1985 Maxell built a bunch of life-size robots for its bad floppy ad
A rough start to what would later become one of my favorite tech ads from the 80s.
419
Nobody gets promoted for simplicity
We reward complexity and ignore simplicity. In interviews, design reviews, and promotions. Here’s how to fix it.
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Don't make me talk to your chatbot
It's fine that people talk to chatbots, but they shouldn't expect me to listen to theirs.