Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 6,504 posts.

Tools & Productivity
Any year
1536

How to Learn Nix

It's like a Let's Play, but for obscure software documentation. I tried to learn Nix, and it was pretty hard. I kept a diary of every command I tried, every wrong assumption that I made, and every realization that I had along the way.

1541

Darktable 4.0

We’re proud to announce the new feature release of darktable, 4.0.0! The github release is here: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/tag/release-4.0.0. As always, please don’t use the autogenerated tarball provided by github, but only our tar.xz file. The checksums are: $ sha256sum…

1546

That's not how 2FA works

Another day, another high-profile website cloned to phish credentials. Tess Rinearson@_tessrIs this a phishing attempt? Goes to "githubverification.com" and asks for username and pw (if so, it nearly got me!) /cc @github pic.x.com/jgt4oNvjF2❤️ 2,243💬 111🔁 016:12 - Sat 16 January 2021 In the replies, you’ll see lots of…

1549

Tarsnap price cut

This will no doubt annoy my friends Patrick McKenzie and Thomas Ptacek , who for years have been telling me that I should raise Tarsnap's prices. But while Thomas accuses me of running Tarsnap like a public utility rather than a business, and thinks this is a characteristic to be avoided, I see this as a high…

1553

Protect your shed

Constructing a skyscraper is a massive undertaking. You need architectural blueprints, council permits, and safety audits before the first piece of steel is even ordered. It requires hundreds of people coordinating over months or years. You can’t just throw up some drywall and hope the building holds weight. Then…

1555

Deconstructing Kitty

So today we look inside these amazing cats that can somehow keep on wavin’ using less than 15 microwatts (!) of power. If you are into either ultra low-power or extreme design-for-manufacture, the you will want to see what is inside of these guys!

1556

Never update anything

Here's a fair warning: this article is reductio ad absurdum , therefore you shouldn't take it as gospel. However, i do believe that this point of view is extreme enough that it usually gets shut down immediately, yet doesn't have any frank discussion about it, which makes it the perfect subject for me to write about!…