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Technical Debt
Technical Debt is a metaphor for the consequences of cruft. You either have to accept a drag on further features (paying interest) or fix the software (paying the principal)
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 8,981 posts.
Tech Industry & Business
Any year
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Ubiquiti all but confirms breach response iniquity
Last year, I posted a series of articles about a purported “breach” at Ubiquiti. My sole source for that reporting was the person who has since been indicted by federal prosecutors for his alleged wrongdoing – which includes providing false information to the press.
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Apple broke an essential presentation feature of iPads
If you teach or present with an iPad, avoid iPadOS 27.
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Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
A timeline of founding a company in Germany: €11,800 spent, two companies registered, 203 days to a VAT ID, and a registration nobody mentioned.
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Publishers Haven't Realized How Big a Deal GDPR Is
Baekdal is your premium site for media reports and trend analysis. Subscribe from €7.55/month
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Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?
This site is hosted with Cloudflare Pages and I'm really happy with it. When I explored how to create a site like mine in 2025, I wondered why there's an abundance of good, free hosting these days. Years ago, you'd have to pay for hosting,…
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Building a data team at a mid-stage startup
You are brought into a startup to run their three-person data team. This is a story about teams and organization, and how you spend a year getting the team to a good place.
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Free Wolfram Engine for Developers
Full engine for the Wolfram Language can be deployed on any system--and called from programs, languages, web servers. Available for anyone to download, for free, to use in their software development projects.
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“Your frustration is the product”
The people making these decisions for these websites are like ocean liner captains who are *trying* to hit icebergs.
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My Thoughts on Oracle v Google
As you've probably heard by now, Oracle has decided to file suit against Google, claiming multiple counts of infringement against Java or JVM patents and copyrights they acquired when they assimilated Sun Microsystems this past year. Since I'm unlikely to keep my mouth shut about even trivial matters, something this…
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Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat
I feel it’s time to revisit the web vs. native debate, and concede defeat — or, at least, concede that the web cannot, and should not , compete with native when it comes to complex, app-like structures.
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Seeing like a bank
The structural reasons why banks sometimes behave bizarrely in interactions with customers, like forgetting things which customers tell them.
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Most data work seems fundamentally worthless
After going viral, there is one comment I'd like to address. One guy pointed out how comfortable this work seemed, how high the pay was, and said I am out-of-touch and privileged. To that I say, yes, obviously . I moved to the first-world to have first-world problems. Mission accomplished.
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Bring Back the SE
Today Apple is going to announce three new iPhones. One of them should be a small form factor like the old SE. Apple discontinued the iPhone SE at the tail end of 2018 and has stated that the next iOS update will not run on the old SE hardware. I have a number of friends […]
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Cheap Beijing Flights With a Dangerous Catch
A startup called Airmule has recently made a big splash by offering $99 flights to Beijing. Obviously there’s a catch. The catch in this case is that you have to give up one of your checked bags (they appear to book you on carriers that allow two checked bags), and your other checked bag is a courier shipment. So…
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Schlep Blindness
January 2012 There are great startup ideas lying around unexploited right under our noses. One reason we don't see them is a phenomenon I call schlep blindness . Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. It means a tedious, unpleasant task. No one likes schleps, but hackers…
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Giving a shit as a service
A mental model for service businesses.
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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
When good ideas make bad business
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Amazon's Fake Review Problem
Update – the fake reviews featured below were removed shortly after this post blew up on Hacker News.
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Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing
Back in 2005 I suddenly found myself sitting on a big pile of money after the Google IPO so I did what any young nouveau-riche high-tech dil...
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The deception of “buying” digital movies
World of Matthew is a personal website, like few others. Not just a blog but also provides reviews and video content
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Secret Documents Show Pepsi and Walmart Colluded to Raise Food Prices
The Trump FTC tried to hide a complaint showing Pepsi forced shoppers to pay higher prices everywhere but Walmart. But now it's unsealed. And the politics of affordability are explosive.
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On Leaving Facebook
After 8.5 years at Facebook I joined a small startup called Replit. Leaving wasn't easy, and during the process I've talked to half a dozen friends who were ...