Top all-time · #336
Ben Kuhn
Personal blog · benkuhn.netcareerstartupsprogramming
Ben Kuhn's personal blog at benkuhn.net covers career, startups and programming. Since 2013, 157 different Hacker News readers have linked it 248 times, most often “Your room can be as bright as the outdoors (2019)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 6 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ben Kuhn for practical writing on learning and understanding systems, startup equity and compensation, and lighting and productivity at home. Commenters mostly cite his posts as sources or further reading.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- One commenter 'really like[s] this article'; another says 'I quite like Ben Kuhn's discussions' of equity; one calls a post 'the best advice'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ben Kuhn's personal website.
Most-linked posts?
- Your room can be as bright as the outdoors (2019)11 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2020-11-03
- Staring into the abyss as a core life skill (2022)10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-12-22
- In Defense of Blub Studies9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-12-05
- Wireless Is a Trap8 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-06-09
- Why and how to write things on the Internet8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-12-29
- Searching for Outliers7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-03-20
- Be Impatient7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-08-02
- Tips for immersive video calls6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-09-27
- You don’t need to work on hard problems (2020)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-11-15
- How I've Run Major Projects5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-03-16
What Hacker News says?
There's a... sad comparison of this article about over-responsibility, and https://www.benkuhn.net/blub/ about the value of learning about the stack you use (the more you know about the workings of bugs, sometimes the more they gnaw at you).
Comment linking /blub/
on “The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything”Submitted Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors as a story · 740 points
HN discussionIt's also really easy to have high quality audio! The author recommends a "podcasting" microphone, but a $35 standalone headset mic[1] is almost as good and much easier to use. If you want to hear a comparison, I got kind of obsessed with this problem at one point and took some comparison recordings here[2]. (You need a standalone mic since most headsets, even really nice ones, have really bad mics because most head…
Comment linking /wireless/
on “Higher quality audio makes people sound smarter”Submitted Attention is your scarcest resource as a story · 674 points
HN discussionTime to pull up my RSS reader! https://drewdevault.com/ http://jvns.ca/ https://www.benkuhn.net/ https://danluu.com/ https://scattered-thoughts.net/ http://antirez.com/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/ https://neilkakkar.com/ https://zachholman.com/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/ https://endler.dev/ https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/ https://www.the-paper-trail.org/ https://tonsky.me/ https://dave.cheney.net/ https://b…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Wireless Is a Trap as a story · 592 points
HN discussionThe blue sky's spectrum doesn't have a giant spike like this: https://www.benkuhn.net/img/lux/ledspec.png
Comment linking /img/lux/ledspec.png
on “Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors”Submitted Wireless is a trap (2020) as a story · 474 points
HN discussionThere’s a bunch of advice on improving video calls here: https://www.benkuhn.net/vc/ It touches on webcams. Some other important things for video calls apart from webcam picture quality are: - latency. This matters everywhere (webcam, webcam driver, codecs, network, graphics pipeline, monitor software, physically switching the pixels) but I would expect webcams to introduce higher latency due to generally not being…
Comment linking /vc/
on “Webcams aren't good enough”Submitted Essays on programming I think about a lot as a story · 438 points
HN discussionStrategically increasing the amount of light I'm exposed to was a game changer. Turns out we're bad at gauging how much light is in our environment. Few would suspect that the amount of lux we're exposed to indoors is often far less than 1% of the lux outside. A typical corporate office has under 500 lux, vs 50k+ midday-if you're at home and haven't put much thought into the lighting situation, the lux could be in t…
Comment linking /lux/
on “How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain”Submitted You don’t need to work on hard problems (2020) as a story · 415 points
HN discussionHow many of those $10B companies are actually really worth that, not just an inflated result of funding rounds? The parent is talking about S&P 500 companies, which means publicly traded ones. The thing where private companies have inflated valuations [1][2] doesn't apply here. [1] https://www.benkuhn.net/terms [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455
Comment linking /terms
on “Dropbox S-1”Submitted Attention is your scarcest resource (2020) as a story · 334 points
HN discussionI think it’s usually less of a “I’m not smart enough” and more of a “this may take significant time to understand well.” Topics that are deemed too complex usually just require a significant amount of previous knowledge that you may not already have, and you just need to spend a lot of time thinking and learning about them. More on this here - https://www.benkuhn.net/thinkrealhard/
Comment linking /thinkrealhard/
on “Patterns in Confusing Explanations”Submitted Autocomplete as an Interface (2015) as a story · 288 points
HN discussionIf you're too lazy to build something like this out but like the idea I highly recommend bright LED lighting for the day (explained here: https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/ ). I bought two ~7000 lumens LED corn bulbs and have noticed a huge shift in energy levels from having a brightly-lit room in dark PNW days. I put together a bunch of resources when I was researching buying some here: https://www.notion.so/vimota/LED-W…
Comment linking /lux/
on “Building an artificial sun that looks realistic [video]”Submitted Syntax Highlighting Is Backwards (2018) as a story · 274 points
HN discussionIf the product is being shut down, it is definitely not a big acquisition. The only way to be sure it's worth something is if a secondary market exists for the shares. This is only going to be true for later stage companies, not early stage ones though. I think the best advice on the topic of early stage options is this blog post: https://www.benkuhn.net/optopt/ The TL;DR for me is: Be more picky about the company t…
Comment linking /optopt/
on “The end of Airplane.dev”Submitted Why squared error? (2014) as a story · 256 points
HN discussionI saw an attempt at a similar thing posted on Hacker News in the past. Rather than use many standard lightbulbs, he used one massive 30,000 lumen "corn cob" bulb: https://www.benkuhn.net/lux Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660718 However, there is now an update on the blog where he seems to have independently switched to the "lumenator" system as described in the links on today's post: > Updat…
Comment linking /lux
on “Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)”Submitted Stock options are complicated as a story · 231 points
HN discussionI have had sleep issues my entire life. I've cut out sugar, caffeine (both for other reasons), and used blue light filtering applications on my devices. None made a significant difference. I think another issue worth looking at is people not getting a daytime light signal. I've purchased and ultra bright light that I saw in this post [1] and it seems to have helped more than anything I have tried before. 1. https://…
Comment linking /lux
on “Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?”Submitted The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones as a story · 227 points
HN discussionSome I follow: https://apenwarr.ca/log/ - programming, high level perspective https://www.benkuhn.net/ - programming, startups, effective altruism https://danluu.com/ - programming, hardware https://pedestrianobservations.com/ - public transit https://sideways-view.com/ - lots of interesting ideas, very eclectic And plugging my own blog: https://www.jefftk.com - effective altruism, contra dance, diy, not very focused
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What niche blogs are worthwhile to follow?”Submitted Tips for immersive video calls as a story · 198 points
HN discussionThe author dismisses clicky keyboards as "too loud for screen shares", but I'm not sure that's a problem with a good mic. You get truly impressive noise reduction. https://www.benkuhn.net/vc/ . My own experience is that with even a decent mic, I never used mute, and could do things like calls while my son watched TV in the next room (not separated by a door, but by a wide open entryway). My coworkers testimony made…
Comment linking /vc/
on “Using two keyboards at once for pain relief”Submitted To listen well, get curious as a story · 185 points
HN discussionEnvironmental lighting conditions rule the day! I have astigmatism and I prefer bright backgrounds; #000 text on #fff backgrounds works great for me, but that's because I work in a room lit by a 250W 30,000 lumen corn-cob LED bulb[0] that makes my small office as bright on the inside as the shaded ground from a tree on an overcast day (which is quite bright compared to usual indoor lighting). In a room that bright,…
Comment linking /lux/
on “Concrete.css”Submitted My favorite essays of life advice (2020) as a story · 154 points
HN discussion
