Top all-time · #1960
Reginald Braithwaite
Personal blog · braythwayt.com · on HN as raganwaldprogrammingculture
Reginald Braithwaite's personal blog at braythwayt.com covers programming and culture. Since 2012, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 65 times, most often “I don't hire unlucky people (2012)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- I don't hire unlucky people (2012)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-03-19
- /posterous/2012/03/29/a-womans-story.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-10-10
- Racism Is Socially Engineered Injustice2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-05-24
- /homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-05-07
- How Raganwald Lost His Crown2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-29
- Calling All Hackers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-29
- Unlearning Helplessness2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-05-07
- Write for Yourself, Rewrite for Others2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-17
- Quote Meritocracy Unquote2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-01
- Why You Need a Degree to Work for BigCo (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-08
What Hacker News says?
Sometimes the good stuff isn't even on the first page. For example, see [0] (scroll down to the follow up) and the HN discussion [1] referenced there. Also, collapsible threads doesn't have to mean pre-collapsed threads. To me it seems like collapsible threads would help, not harm, in this case because more people would have collapsed the OT first thread and participated in the discussion about the actual topic. I r…
Comment linking /posterous/2012/03/29/a-womans-story.html
on “New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity”Submitted JavaScript Allongé is free as a story · 199 points
HN discussionRelated: http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unluc... And HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804134
Comment linking /posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people.html
on “We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)”Submitted Quote Meritocracy Unquote as a story · 164 points
HN discussionThe author linked this written essay form below but it's in a deeply nested comment that might get overlooked. I found this much easier to read. http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html Also the 30-min talk was recorded as a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xjntzo-mYc
Comment linking /homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html
on “Optimism”Submitted I Stand With Trolls as a story · 157 points
HN discussionThis is an actual presentation given at a conference, so the pictures are actually the visuals. I did write up half of this talk as an essay, you'll find it here: http://braythwayt.com/homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html
Comment linking /homoiconic/2009/05/01/optimism.html
on “Optimism”Submitted How Raganwald Lost His Crown as a story · 137 points
HN discussionI thought it was totally spineless. Compare: http://braythwayt.com/2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html
Comment linking /2013/03/21/evangelism-pr.html
on “A Difficult Situation”Submitted What I Learned From Blowing An Interview as a story · 131 points
HN discussionI really think you can do better to make constructive contributions to discourse on Hacker News. In that spirit, what I'll say is that no, numbers in and of themselves aren't racist, or biased, and neither are words, sentences, facts and so forth. But the way someone uses them can be racist, or biased, whether deliberately or systemically (which is where a system creates racist or biased outcomes, even though no one…
Comment linking /2016/03/30/racism-is-injustice.html
on “Rails has won: The Elephant in the Room”Submitted Calling All Hackers as a story · 92 points
HN discussionAlso "meritocracy". http://braythwayt.com/2013/04/01/quote-metritocracy-unquote.... http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/columnists/eli...
Comment linking /2013/04/01/quote-metritocracy-unquote.html
on “Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It”Submitted So Long, Reddit as a story · 88 points
HN discussionA few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial profiling. The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people actually approved of this method. It wasn't racism at work here, it was s…
Comment linking /2016/03/30/racism-is-injustice.html
on “Walking While Black”Submitted Unlearning Helplessness as a story · 71 points
HN discussionThe most influential essay I've ever read on hiring was titled I Don't Hire Unlucky People[1]. At the time, I was struggling to build a mobile dev team, and I could always find reasons to not hire anyone in the pipeline. However, there came a point where I had to apply the secretary problem [2] to my situation and realize it was costing me more to not have these positions filled. To that end, my only hard requiremen…
Comment linking /posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people.html
on “John Carmack on Hiring”Submitted Why You Need a Degree to Work for BigCo (2013) as a story · 47 points
HN discussionThis is exactly why HN needs collapsible comments. Not so I can collapse them for my convenience, so that stuff doesn't get buried so easily. Sometimes the top thread is all there is on the first page ... for example, there was this great blog post by raganwald a while. Here's the new version [1] since I assume the posterous one won't be around much longer. And here's the HN discussion of the original [2] in which,…
Comment linking /2012/03/29/a-womans-story.html
on “How to solve the problem that the topmost comments get all upvotes”Submitted Herd Thither, Me Hither (revised) as a story · 35 points
HN discussionSpeaking as someone who has been writing forever and blogging-as-we-currently-know-it since 2004... It always depends on what you want out of it. Some people are outcome-oriented. They want reputation and/or the affirmation of crowds, and for them, writing is a process of reverse-engineering what people want to read. At a deep level, they don't want to write , they want to have written something popular. Others are…
Comment linking /posterous/2014/10/30/write.html
on “How to create a blog post title optimizer with GPT-3 and Hacker News data”Submitted Was Alan Kay wrong? And why does that matter? as a story · 31 points
HN discussionGo wild: http://braythwayt.com http://raganwald.com
Comment linking /
on “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship”Submitted Are We An Unjust People? as a story · 30 points
HN discussionYou say "socialism" like it's a bad thing. I don't feel "alienated" from hacker culture, everyone I've met seems quite nice and receptive to me (although perhaps I'm in the wrong room). But perhaps what I see is that this is really nice, and why can't we share it with more people? Hacking isn't a zero-sum game. If we double the number of people trying to write open source, isn't that a win for everybody? It's not li…
Comment linking /posterous/2014/01/03/hello-my-name-is-reginald-and-i-am-a-socialist.html
on “I've been programming since I was 10, but I don't feel like a "hacker"”Submitted Communication? Check as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThis is spot on. And if you think about it neurologically, changing patterns of thinking that have grown into your brain make it even harder, like breaking a facebook habit. It's a process of learned helplessness: http://braythwayt.com/2015/01/20/learned-helplessness.html The cognitive portion is only half the picture though, and I think wealthy people(especially moderately wealthy people) suffer from something simi…
Comment linking /2015/01/20/learned-helplessness.html
on “Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions (2013)”Submitted If I can do it, you can do it as a story · 25 points
HN discussionYour entire argument is based on a false dichotomy. You say “There is no racism, everything can be explained by black people” and then try to demonstrate that black people have some problem or other. But this is like saying that a road cannot be unsafe, look, here are statistics showing that some of the people who drive are drunk. You trying to demonstrate that black people this or black people that in aggregate doe…
Comment linking /2016/03/30/racism-is-injustice.html
on “Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub”Submitted Sturgeon's Passionate Revelation as a story · 14 points
HN discussion
