Best of 2016

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2016. 4,414 posts.

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91

Trackers

A couple of weeks ago I went to the local shopping centre looking for a thermometer. After entering one store upon leaving without buying anything a tracker was assigned to me. I didn’t think much of it at first, but he followed me dutifully around the shopping centre, took careful note of how I walked. Whenever I…

111

Taking PHP Seriously

Slack uses PHP for most of its server-side application logic, which is an unusual choice these days. Why did we choose to build a new project in this language? Should you? Most programmers who have only casually used PHP know two things about it: that it is a bad language, which they would never use if…

114

Save Netflix

Netflix is in terrible danger. In fact, these might be its last days. Oh, not today's Netflix. The Netflix you're using today is fine. It made it—got to do something daring and edgy, prove out its model, and become part of the establishment. But the next Netflix—the company so cool it makes...