Top all-time · #2905
Alex Kras
Personal blog · alexkras.com · on HN as akras14programmingweb
Alex Kras's personal blog at alexkras.com covers programming and web. Since 2014, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 210 times, most often “Front Page of Hacker News”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Alex Kras's posts on Google AMP, mobile search and Google's control over publisher content, plus some tech book reviews and small projects like EZ News. HN commenters mostly cite them as background to AMP debates.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Front Page of Hacker News3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-09-12
- Firefox Launches a Marketing Offensive Against Chrome3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-07-04
- Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-10-18
- Please Make Google AMP Optional3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-06-10
- Copy Any API Call as CURL Request with Chrome Developer Tools2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-10-02
- Git Tips2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-09-08
- Simple Guide to Finding a JavaScript Memory Leak in Node.js2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-12-24
- All shared Google Photos are open to the public2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-01-02
- Maintainable JavaScript (2014)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-05-06
- Using Code Snippets in Chrome Developer Tools2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-07-29
What Hacker News says?
I don't Mozilla is limited: https://www.alexkras.com/firefox-launches-marketing-offensiv...
Comment linking /firefox-launches-marketing-offensive-against-chrome/
on “Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Windows 10 Insider build”Submitted Please Make Google AMP Optional as a story · 1146 points
HN discussionOne of the comments in Alex Kras's linked page asks "Can’t you make a direct link to your site’s page auto generated on your article templates?" [0] which seems a very reasonable, though perhaps not ideal, solution that doesn't require Google to make AMP optional, something I think Google is very unlikely to do. [0] https://www.alexkras.com/please-make-google-amp-optional/#co...
Comment linking /please-make-google-amp-optional/
on “Please Make Google AMP Optional”Submitted I decided to disable AMP on my site as a story · 665 points
HN discussionIt targets mobile browsers (the M stands for Mobile in AMP), so you won't see them on desktop. But if you search on a mobile device, you'll get this for the OP: https://www.alexkras.com/please-make-google-amp-optional/amp...
Comment linking /please-make-google-amp-optional/amp/
on “Please Make Google AMP Optional”Submitted Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic as a story · 533 points
HN discussionI replied to you on Twitter, but for the sake of discussion, there is a third option that may be worth exploring - using Chrome running in virtualized Windows Manager - https://www.alexkras.com/running-chrome-and-other-browsers-i...
Comment linking /running-chrome-and-other-browsers-in-almost-headless-mode/
on “Chrome 59 has cross-platform headless support”Submitted Git Tips as a story · 487 points
HN discussionThis might be worth reading: https://www.alexkras.com/i-decided-to-disable-amp-on-my-site... (on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14635013 )
Comment linking /i-decided-to-disable-amp-on-my-site/
on “European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance”Submitted I Tried to Virtually Stalk Mark Zuckerberg as a story · 349 points
HN discussionI wrote a similar(although not as concise) article about 3 month ago: https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-... After which I was invited to meet Google AMP team and to express my concerns, you can read my Q&A here: https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/ TLDR; A lot of concerns are getting addressed 1. Minor, but the bar at the top is now scrollable on all devices, including…
Comment linking /i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/
on “The Problem with AMP”Submitted Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic” as a story · 342 points
HN discussionA tech lead from Google wrote his response, if anybody is interested: https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-...
Comment linking /google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-traffic/
on “Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic”Submitted My Interview at Uber as a story · 233 points
HN discussionGlad to see it trending again. I raised the same concern years ago, and was mostly ridiculed. Nothing has changed since then. I’ve been using Google Drive integration to share photos securely, but Google just announced that this will be going away. In addition I realized that Google strips out metadata from my files during conversion. Common sense, but not something I thought about before. Time to switch. If anybody…
Comment linking /do-not-share-your-google-photos/
on “Google Photos is making photos semi-public”Submitted What is the best part about being a Software Engineer? as a story · 191 points
HN discussionIt's not new news, it looks like a rehashed version of this article I found https://www.alexkras.com/do-not-share-your-google-photos/ Reading that one closer I found https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google-photos-sec... Which is from 2015.
Comment linking /do-not-share-your-google-photos/
on “Google Photos is making photos semi-public”Submitted Using Code Snippets in Chrome Developer Tools as a story · 158 points
HN discussionI don't have a "source", but that is accurate from what I was told by the team behind AMP. In order to make it into carousel, AMP content has to be served from Google cache. https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/
Comment linking /i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/
on “Google AMP is bad for e-commerce”Submitted JavaScript Fatigue or My History with Web Development as a story · 157 points
HN discussionI think the 80/20 rule applies when it comes to mature products. 20% of redesign is useful and make products better. 80% are neutral at best, and breaking at worst. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. https://www.alexkras.com/death-by-redesign/
Comment linking /death-by-redesign/
on “UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time”Submitted One Year Without AMP as a story · 124 points
HN discussionIf you look at the AMP docs ( https://www.ampproject.org/docs/guides/discovery ), publishers use <link> tags to point to the AMP page. For the original article, the AMP version lives at https://www.alexkras.com/google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-... but the URL could follow whatever scheme the publisher wants. Since Google search is most likely discovering the AMP page via the <link rel="amphtml"> tag, they really s…
Comment linking /google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-traffic/amp/
on “Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic””Submitted Reverse Engineering One Line of JavaScript as a story · 114 points
HN discussionI call it Death by Redesign - https://www.alexkras.com/death-by-redesign/
Comment linking /death-by-redesign/
on “Please Google, let us revert to the classic Gmail look”Submitted Simple Guide to Finding a JavaScript Memory Leak in Node.js (2015) as a story · 104 points
HN discussion>However, there has been some misunderstanding about how AMP works. One widely circulated blog post written back in October claimed Google was stealing traffic from publishers via its AMP pages. I am really happy to see this change, as the author of said blog post :) > But that wasn’t true. Google does display the AMP URL in the search results, which serves up the page content from Google’s cache, but the traffic re…
Comment linking /google-may-be-stealing-your-mobile-traffic/
on “Google fixes a problem with AMP, lets you view and share publisher’s own links”Submitted Dear Twitter, Please Make AMP Optional as a story · 95 points
HN discussionThanks, Here is the blog post to go with it: Simple RSS Reader in 85 Lines of PHP - https://www.alexkras.com/simple-rss-reader-in-85-lines-of-ph...
Comment linking /simple-rss-reader-in-85-lines-of-php/
on “Text-only news sites are slowly making a comeback”Submitted Maintainable JavaScript (2014) as a story · 90 points
HN discussion
