Top all-time · #10393
Bobbie Chen
Personal blog · digitalseams.com/blog · on HN as bobbiechensecuritywritingprogramming
Bobbie Chen writes Digital Seams, a personal blog at digitalseams.com about security, writing and programming. Since 2025, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 84 times, most often “Most Googlebots Are Fake”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked in two comments: one points to a post on how many Bluesky images have alt text, and one credits its author for an idea about the command palettes in Sublime Text and VS Code. Commenters cite it, with no judgement of quality.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about the connections in our often-online existence, written by Bobbie Chen.
Most-linked posts?
- Most Googlebots Are Fake3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-07-26
- Why do Sublime Text and VS Code use Ctrl-Shift-P for the command bar?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-07-02
- What birdsong and back ends can teach us about magic2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-07-13
- The Gypsy document editor from Xerox PARC: celebrating 50 years2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-08-25
- Zero-defects code: the prescient Microsoft memo from 19892 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-07-05
- Image descriptions (alt text) on Bluesky2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-08
- Making a font with ligatures to display thirteenth-century monk numerals2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-15
What Hacker News says?
I agree, chat is only useful in scenarios that are 1) poorly defined, and 2) require a back-and-forth feedback loop. And even then, there might be better UX options. I wrote about this here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ideal-ai-interface-is-prob...
Comment linking /blog/the-ideal-ai-interface-is-probably-not-a-chatbot
on “Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools”Submitted What happens to your online accounts when you die? as a story · 154 points
HN discussionTo this day I expect my wifi to drop whenever I hear a microwave, thanks to the one in my parents house: https://digitalseams.com/blog/microwave-ovens-wi-fi-and-http
Comment linking /blog/microwave-ovens-wi-fi-and-http
on “Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?”Submitted The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end as a story · 99 points
HN discussionBack in June (just three months ago) when I wrote this blog, people were telling me it was far away: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go...
Comment linking /blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-going-to-end
on “Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol”Submitted What birdsong and back ends can teach us about magic as a story · 39 points
HN discussionI wrote about this idea here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go... Quick summary, I believe consumer AI experiences will feature ads because the profit opportunity is too large and company valuations depend on it. The hiring of Fidji Simo (ads at Facebook) at OpenAI + and just this week, Vijaye Raji/Statsig also point that way.
Comment linking /blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-going-to-end
on “We're Joining OpenAI”Submitted Any decent error message is a kind of oracle as a story · 29 points
HN discussionIn the United Stages, RUFADAA provides this legal framework and I think it's quite reasonable. I wrote about it here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/what-happens-to-your-online-ac...
Comment linking /blog/what-happens-to-your-online-accounts-when-you-die
on “Yep, Passkeys Still Have Problems”Submitted The Gypsy document editor from Xerox PARC: celebrating 50 years as a story · 8 points
HN discussion>The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), a law developed to help fiduciaries deal with digital files of the dead or incapacitated, can come into play. But Haneman points out that most people die intestate (without a will), leaving matters up to tech platforms. Facebook's response to dead users is to allow anyone to request the memorialization of an account, which keeps posts online. As…
Comment linking /blog/what-happens-to-your-online-accounts-when-you-die
on “The dead need right to delete their data so they can't be AI-ified, lawyer says”Submitted Gmail's best features don't send emails as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI am less optimistic. Even paid products like Netflix or the Amazon Kindle are ad-monetized now. I think the current useful state of consumer LLMs is a temporary subsidy, and the incentives to add ads are too large. And that will change everything, even tools that should work for the user. I recently wrote a blog post on this: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go...
Comment linking /blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-going-to-end
on “The drawbridges come up: the dream of a interconnected context ecosystem is over”Submitted The dial-up modem lives on, in office meeting rooms as a story · 6 points
HN discussion"Is backward compatibility even possible?" -> https://digitalseams.com/blog/is-backward-compatibility-even...
Comment linking /blog/is-backward-compatibility-even-possible
on “Weaponizing Dependabot: Pwn Request at its finest”Submitted When encryption works perfectly and still fails as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIn the US, you have a legal right to access accounts of the deceased through RUFADAA. It's not as simple as logging in (usually requires a court order) but it's possible. I wrote about it and related issues here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/what-happens-to-your-online-ac... (and recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42991112 )
Comment linking /blog/what-happens-to-your-online-accounts-when-you-die
on “2FA or Not 2FA”Submitted When encryption works perfectly and still fails as a story · 5 points
HN discussion(creator here) I thought it would at least be easy to transcribe screenshots of just text, which were a common part of the dataset. These are harder to misinterpret so I figured automated alt text would be a win. But I found that even that was not easy to do with "traditional" OCR, notes here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/image-transcription-humbled-me
Comment linking /blog/image-transcription-humbled-me
on “Bluesky Alt Text Stream”Submitted The siren song of infinite flexibility as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe page accompanies a blog post about how many images have alt text on Bluesky so empty lines are included to give a feel for how many images do or don't have the descriptions: https://digitalseams.com/blog/image-descriptions-on-bluesky > This demo is part of Image descriptions on Bluesky: not bad, could be better - see the blog post for more details!
Comment linking /blog/image-descriptions-on-bluesky
on “Bluesky Alt Text Stream”Submitted The dial-up modem lives on, in office meeting rooms as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSo true. I recently wrote about how Merlin achieved magical bird identification not through better algorithms, but better expertise in creating great datasets: https://digitalseams.com/blog/what-birdsong-and-backends-can... I think "harsh reality" is one way to look at it, but you can also take an optimistic perspective: you really can achieve great, magical experiences by putting in (what could be considered) unrea…
Comment linking /blog/what-birdsong-and-backends-can-teach-us-about-magic
on ““The Bitter Lesson” is wrong. Well sort of”Submitted Microwave ovens, wi-fi, and HTTP as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI'm a big fan of Merlin and learning more about its development changed my perspective on software development! I wrote about that here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/what-birdsong-and-backends-can...
Comment linking /blog/what-birdsong-and-backends-can-teach-us-about-magic
on “iNaturalist”Submitted Zero-defects code: the prescient Microsoft memo from 1989 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThanks! I also write a topic-based blog on APIs, platforms, and more at https://digitalseams.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Where are people sharing their blogs these days?”Submitted Zero-defects code: the prescient Microsoft memo from 1989 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://bobbiechen.com/ https://digitalseams.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted The behavioral cost of personalized pricing as a story · 3 points
HN discussion