Best of 2025

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2025. 174 posts.

Web & Frontend
158

It’s OK to block ads (2015)

Over the past couple of months, the practice of ad blocking has received heightened ethical scrutiny. (1,2,3,4) If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “ad blocking” refers to software—usually web browser plug-ins, but increasingly mobile apps—that stop most ads from appearing when you use websites or apps that would…

163

Locality of Behaviour (2020)

Carson Gross explores the Locality of Behaviour (LoB) principle, which emphasizes making the behavior of code units obvious on inspection to enhance maintainability. He discusses the tradeoffs between LoB and other software design principles like DRY and SoC, offering insights on balancing clarity, abstraction, and…

165

Datastar response to misunderstandings

A recent blog post titled HTMX, Datastar, greedy developer and several Hacker News threads raised concerns about Datastar Pro, pricing, and whether features were “moved behind a paywall”. Here’s what has changed, who Pro is for, and how to achieve some of the same things with the free version.