Top all-time · #1070
Alex Chan
Personal blog · alexwlchan.netprogrammingsystems
Alex Chan writes alexwlchan, a personal blog at alexwlchan.net about programming and systems. Since 2014, 62 different Hacker News readers have linked it 142 times, most often “A Plumber’s Guide to Git (2018)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (21) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link alexwlchan.net for practical tech write-ups: a Git internals tutorial, Kindle DRM and Safari webarchive notes, and digital preservation and error-message posts.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Git guide seen as first-principles learning; tutorial helped one commenter; look and feel inspired another.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 21 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Alex Chan’s personal website
Most-linked posts?
- A Plumber’s Guide to Git (2018)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-11-11
- Why can't you combine .tar.gz files with cat?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-08-20
- Watching for File Changes on macOS3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-11
- The Internet forgets, but I don't want to3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-08
- When square pixels aren't square3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-05
- Dreaming of a Ten-Year Computer3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-12
- Documenting My DNS Records3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-05-25
- Using static websites for tiny archives3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-17
- Take More Screenshots (2022)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-01-27
- A tale of two path separators2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-10
What Hacker News says?
Looks like it's: https://alexwlchan.net/theme/white-waves-transparent.png
Comment linking /theme/white-waves-transparent.png
on “Making a PDF that's larger than Germany”Submitted Making a PDF that's larger than Germany as a story · 712 points
HN discussionSee also: 'look for (nearly) empty directories and delete them' - https://alexwlchan.net/2024/emptydir/
Comment linking /2024/emptydir/
on “The Origins of DS_store (2006)”Submitted Take more screenshots as a story · 657 points
HN discussionhttps://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kind...
Comment linking /2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kindle-books/
on “Kindle collects a surprisingly large amount of data”Submitted A faster way to copy SQLite databases between computers as a story · 507 points
HN discussionExactly, Pinboard has a pretty good API, so you can handle the backups yourself without too much trouble. I came across a post [1] with a backup script. It refers to another link [2] that shows you can just use a simple curl and get all of your data. [1] http://alexwlchan.net/2013/03/pinboard-backups/ [2] http://supersoju.com/blog/2013/04/01/pinboard-backups-in-1-l...
Comment linking /2013/03/pinboard-backups/
on “Pinboard Turns Five”Submitted Falsehoods programmers believe about Unix time as a story · 442 points
HN discussionbig pdf: https://alexwlchan.net/files/2024/universe.pdf
Comment linking /files/2024/universe.pdf
on “Building SimCity: How to put the world in a machine”Submitted Using static websites for tiny archives as a story · 391 points
HN discussionThis was a twitter thread, so not too surprising, but the concluding tweet went there too: "Good error messages explain what’s gone wrong, and give clear instructions for what to do next – and being cutesy rarely helps." and there's a link to https://alexwlchan.net/2020/10/the-importance-of-good-error-... as the dedicated writeup (also from tweets) for that specific point.
Comment linking /2020/10/the-importance-of-good-error-messages
on “Cut the cutesy errors”Submitted Cut the cutesy errors as a story · 386 points
HN discussion> I think that all "photos" or "videos" are just a view of the underlying "photo or video object". If you crop a video, the full-size video will remain. Only if you export the video, it will be cropped and the smaller file size will manifest. Yup, the Photos app keeps the unmodified original file, and then any edits/crops are stored separately. You can always revert to the original file and redo your edits. So they…
Comment linking /2023/finding-big-photos/
on “Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript”Submitted Whose code am I running in GitHub Actions? as a story · 222 points
HN discussionRemoving drm from .azw3 is easy. [0] All you need is the ID of your kindle, since it's tied to your device. There is also a plugin for Calibre, although I haven't tested this myself. I'm not sure if it requires a device ID or not. [1] [0]: https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kind... [1]: https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/wiki/Exactly...
Comment linking /2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kindle-books/
on “Show HN: Epub.to – ePub to pdf, mobi, Kindle, and an API”Submitted Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line as a story · 178 points
HN discussionYou can download a complete archive of all the bookmarks and pages: https://alexwlchan.net/2017/07/backing-up-pinboard-archives/
Comment linking /2017/07/backing-up-pinboard-archives/
on “The Unreal Engine Wiki is now permanently offline”Submitted Resizing images in Rust, now with EXIF orientation support as a story · 78 points
HN discussionAre you able to seek and selectively extract from squashfs archives using range headers if stored in object storage systems like S3? Example: https://alexwlchan.net/2019/working-with-large-s3-objects/
Comment linking /2019/working-with-large-s3-objects/
on “Pack: A new container format for compressed files”Submitted Creating a static website for all my bookmarks as a story · 47 points
HN discussionThe author considered the proprietary nature of the webarchive format, and determined that it was readable without Apple software, and that it wouldn't be too difficult to create a tool to view or transform webarchive files if Safari were to disappear: https://alexwlchan.net/til/2024/whats-inside-safari-webarchi... Of course, without a working implementation, there could be hidden obstacles.
Comment linking /til/2024/whats-inside-safari-webarchive/
on “Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line”Submitted Two examples of hover styles on images as a story · 41 points
HN discussion1/ Why not wget? For this project I wanted a consistent file format for my entire collection. I have a bunch of stuff I want to save which is behind paywalls/logins/clickthroughs that are tricky for wget to reach. I know I can hand wget a cookies file, but that’s mildly fiddly. I save those pages as Safari webarchive files, and then they can drop in alongside the files I’ve collected programatically. Then I can deal…
Comment linking /til/2024/whats-inside-safari-webarchive/
on “Creating a Safari webarchive from the command line”Submitted Can you take an ox to Oxford? as a story · 35 points
HN discussionDepending on the parser, YAML can be used for execution of arbirtrary code: https://alexwlchan.net/2019/12/yaml-impossible/
Comment linking /2019/12/yaml-impossible/
on “Turing Incomplete Languages”Submitted Doing my own syntax highlighting (finally) as a story · 31 points
HN discussionTry this tutorial: https://alexwlchan.net/a-plumbers-guide-to-git/ It helped me to more fully understand Git.
Comment linking /a-plumbers-guide-to-git/
on “Git cherry-pick and revert use 3-way merge”Submitted Moving my website from Netlify to Caddy as a story · 29 points
HN discussionYes. https://alexwlchan.net/2026/glancecast/ Edit: same link, just fixed itself.
Comment linking /2026/glancecast/
on “Abusing ID3 chapters to turn videos into glanceable podcasts”Submitted Linking to text fragments with a bookmarklet as a story · 28 points
HN discussion
