Best of 2025

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2025. 602 posts.

Life, Learning & Writing
492

I miss using em dashes

I really miss using em dashes in my writing. Ever since content creators started using ChatGPT to help (or supplement) their writing, em dashes have become indicators of AI use. Students are routinely caught with their pants down as professors flag an essay as AI-generated based on the presence of lists…

499

Tarsnap is cozy

I have been aware of tarsnap for a long time, but only recently did I actually get around to using it for anything, as a result of my big personal digital resiliency audit for 2025. For those of you not in the know, tarsnap is “online backups for the truly paranoid”, and tarsnap the command-line program is the…