Top all-time · #6409
Bastian Grossenbacher-Rieck
Personal blog · bastian.rieck.me/blog · on HN as Topolomanceraimathscience
Bastian Grossenbacher-Rieck writes Ecce Homology on Bastian Grossenbacher Rieck's personal homepage, a personal blog at bastian.rieck.me about ai, math and science. Since 2018, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 182 times, most often “The Machine Learning Scientist as Toolsmith: An Homage to Fred Brooks”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-20, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bastian Rieck's blog for explanations of mathematics such as Morse theory and manifolds, posts on dotfiles with stow and Vim undo persistence, and some opinion pieces.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The personal homepage of Bastian Grossenbacher-Rieck, professor of machine learning at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Interested in, among other things, geometric deep learning, topological deep learning, topological machine learning.
Most-linked posts?
- The Machine Learning Scientist as Toolsmith: An Homage to Fred Brooks2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-06-06
- Societal Donatism2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-04-11
- Carthusian Citation Credits2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-28
- In defence of the boring web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-30
- Higher Education and AI: Some Musings2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-02
- The Power of Defaults2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-01-12
What Hacker News says?
Vim's persist undo is disabled by default, perhaps for privacy reasons. edit: I see sebzim4500 got there first. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867678 * https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/2015/persistent_undo_vim/
Comment linking /blog/2015/persistent_undo_vim/
on “On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted”Submitted The power of admitting ignorance as a story · 316 points
HN discussionstow has worked really nicely for managing my dotfiles. Here are two blog posts that helped me get my workflow down: https://alexpearce.me/2016/02/managing-dotfiles-with-stow/ https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/2019/dotfiles_stow/
Comment linking /blog/2019/dotfiles_stow/
on “Ask HN: What underrated open source project deserves more recognition?”Submitted We are all nerds: The literary works of Neal Stephenson as a story · 307 points
HN discussionThe original post says the following, with italics and explanation points: "Coming from mathematics, where one paper every few years (!) is considered the mark of a productive mathematician,". I spent decades in academic pure mathematics, and I've been on many hiring committees, and that assertion doesn't match my experience. Also, look at the original poster's own publication list at https://bastian.rieck.me/resear…
Comment linking /research/
on “T-Shaped People and Academia”Submitted What Is a Manifold? as a story · 283 points
HN discussionMassive thanks for article and more in particular this site. Ever since high school I have struggled with n-d space (for n>3), this site and previous article in the blog http://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2019/manifold/ is an amazing introduction.
Comment linking /blog/posts/2019/manifold/
on “A Visual Introduction to Morse Theory”Submitted In defence of the boring web as a story · 243 points
HN discussionSome links I've saved. That said, there's no accounting for taste: https://tylr.fun/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440123 https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-suffers-from-a-digital-petr... https://vpostrel.com/ https://h3rald.com/ https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2022/boring/ http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html https://moxie.org/stories.html https://trevorklee.com/my-terrible-plan-for-reducing-opioid-...…
Comment linking /blog/posts/2022/boring/
on “Ask HN: What are the best-designed personal blogs you’ve come across?”Submitted Who's Attacking My Server? as a story · 212 points
HN discussion>It turns out it’s all true. The cars are impressive and their flaws get covered up. Musk is a lying ignorant grifter and he has inspired innovation in the electric car industry. Understanding that these seemingly contradictory things can be true simultaneously is important, because societies who cannot hold these two ideas at the same time may end up following scam artists and false prophets off the cliff and into…
Comment linking /blog/posts/2021/donatism/
on “Surely We Can Do Better Than Elon Musk”Submitted Things you are allowed to do, academic edition as a story · 157 points
HN discussionHere's mine: https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/ I mostly write about academia and machine learning these days, but every once in a while, I also have the urge to write a really nerdy post on a more technical topic. Writing continues to be cathartic for me, and I hope to make a small difference when I discuss things that are not typically discussed openly (in an academic setting). Feedback is very welcome!
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Put it on the crazy pile: Ideas and creativity as a story · 123 points
HN discussionSubmitted T-Shaped People and Academia as a story · 118 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ideas and Creativity (2019) as a story · 113 points
HN discussionSubmitted A round-up of topology-based papers at ICML 2020 as a story · 106 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Visual Introduction to Morse Theory as a story · 106 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Is Gaussian Curvature? as a story · 94 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Meddling Middlemen of Academia as a story · 89 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using Topology to Classify Labelled Graphs as a story · 88 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Fulbright Program: Chock Full of Bright Ideas as a story · 71 points
HN discussionSubmitted Delayed gratification and gratitude as a story · 65 points
HN discussionSubmitted Keeping a Bibliography as a story · 52 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Have No Group, and I Must Scream as a story · 43 points
HN discussionSubmitted A meta-analysis of C++ projects as a story · 42 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rejections, resilience, and rejoicing: getting a tenure-track position as a story · 41 points
HN discussionSubmitted Some nice and accurate CMake tips as a story · 34 points
HN discussionSubmitted Carthusian Citation Credits as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted A guide for newcomers to machine learning as a story · 13 points
HN discussion