Top all-time · #20114
Brett Mullins
Personal blog · bcmullins.github.io/blog · on HN as wannabebaristasciencehistory
Brett Mullins's personal blog at bcmullins.github.io covers science and history. Since 2019, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 78 times, most often “Resources for Learning Computational Complexity Theory”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Privacy & ML Researcher
Most-linked posts?
- Resources for Learning Computational Complexity Theory2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-07-13
- Interesting Research Programs from the 2010s2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-30
What Hacker News says?
I had a similar experience and it certainly made my day! I wrote some code to parse nested JSON and fill a hole in a tutorial. Here's my relevant post: https://bcmullins.github.io/parsing-json-python/ . Here's the plug for the project using my code: https://github.com/sinnfeinn/microweather .
Comment linking /parsing-json-python/
on “Tell HN: Somebody implemented something I wrote a blog about”Submitted Resources for Learning Computational Complexity Theory as a story · 75 points
HN discussionHere's my list for 2024: * Wisdom’s Workshop (2016) by James Axtell is a history of the American research university from Medieval times to the present. * The Principles of Science (1874) by William Stanley Jevons (of economics fame) is a wide-ranging treatment of logic and philosophy of science that’s bursting with ideas. * Ballyhoo! (2024) by Jon Langmead is a history of professional wrestling and combat sports fr…
Comment linking /interesting-books-2024/
on “Books I Loved Reading in 2024”Submitted Foreign Affairs at 100: A look back at the first issue as a story · 60 points
HN discussionThis one: https://bcmullins.github.io/parsing-json-python/ This post offers a quick solution for extracting values from nested JSON in python. After posting on HN, someone submitted it to PyCoder's which brought in a lot of traffic. Then I received an email asking for my PayPal address to send me a thank you. I set up a page on Buy Me a Coffee[0] and have gotten a handful of coffees from readers since then. Thank yo…
Comment linking /parsing-json-python/
on “Ask HN: What HN post made you money?”Submitted Interesting Research Programs from the 2010s as a story · 53 points
HN discussionI write a blog to share projects and to have a single place to point people to (that can be accessed without an account). I share some of my posts on HN such as annual interesting books [0] and articles [1] lists. But my main source of new readers recently has been from chatbots. This has led to the interesting scenario where many posts more than six months old get regular traffic, while traffic on new posts depends…
Comment linking /interesting-articles-2024
on “Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?”Submitted An Utterly Incomplete Look at Research from 1825 as a story · 34 points
HN discussionI have a blog that's connected to my academic website. While my homepage gets some traffic from people googling papers, my blog gets much less. I post a few times each year, mostly about stuff I've been reading. I did have one post go viral-ish a few years ago ( https://bcmullins.github.io/foreign-affairs-100/ ). I was surprised to find that some workplace acquaintances and even students read my blog. A colleague ou…
Comment linking /parsing-json-python/
on “Re: Do people IRL know you have a blog?”Submitted A Look Back at Research from 1875 as a story · 22 points
HN discussionI've been reading the first few years of Popular Science for a project [0]. In the 1870s, the magazine is an interesting slice of science and philosophy. It really shows the breadth and power of Edward Youmans' network. Here's a cool article [1] about how the founding of Popular Science was bound up with Herbert Spencer's book The Study of Sociology (1873) and was printed on a shoestring budget. [0] https://bcmullin…
Comment linking /research-from-1873/
on “Popular Science Magazine Archives, May 1872-March 2009”Submitted Mind at 150: A Look Back at the First Issue as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWisdom’s Workshop (2016) by James Axtell is a history of the American research university from Medieval times to the present. It's worth reading for anyone in academia or grad school in the US. Each year, I put together lists of the books and articles that I found most interesting. Here's my book list for 2024: https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2024/ I'm still cranking out my list of articles.
Comment linking /interesting-books-2024/
on “Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2024?”Submitted Interesting Research Programs from the 2010s (2020) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionJekyll is easy to use and you can write posts using markdown. There are several themes available out there, but it's also easy to work with the back end to customize. I've used Jekyll with Gitub pages for several years with no issues [0]. Plus, hosting is free on Github! [0] https://bcmullins.github.io
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on “Ask HN: What is the best way to author blogs in 2024?”Submitted Interesting Articles I've Read in 2023 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI mainly discover new blogs from links from other blogs I read or from HN. I share my blog on HN and Bluesky and a few niche communities like Mander (when it makes sense). Most of my traffic right now comes from chatbots citing my posts, StackExchange, or links in documentation. My website is https://bcmullins.github.io
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on “Ask HN: Where are people sharing their blogs these days?”Submitted Friedman's 1953 and Interpretable Machine Learning as a story · 3 points
HN discussion1. Differential Privacy (2025) by Simson Garfinkel A readable but thorough introduction to differential privacy. 2. Tales of the Weird: An Uncanny Introduction (2023) A collection of short stories from the British Library to introduce the many flavors of weird fiction. 3. An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise (1980) by John R. Pierce A fun survey of information theory with great anecdotes…
Comment linking /interesting-books-2025/
on “Ask HN: End of Year Book Recommendations”Submitted Economic Methodology Meets Interpretable Machine Learning – Intro as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI just posted a list of articles earlier today.[0] Choosing one article and one book, I would go with - Stylized Facts in the Social Sciences by Daniel Hirschman - 1177 B.C. by Eric Cline [0] https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-articles-2022/
Comment linking /interesting-articles-2022/
on “Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?”Submitted Top Articles I've Read in 2019 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere's my list so far: Differential Privacy (2025) by Simson Garfinkel. This is an accessible and enjoyable introduction to differential privacy from the MIT Press essentials series. The Philosopher in the Kitchen (1825) by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. This is a primer on gourmandism or the art and science of cooking, eating, and hosting. An interesting look at the French intellectual milieu at the turn of the nin…
Comment linking /interesting-books-2024/
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read in 2025?”Submitted Interesting Books (2025 Edition) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI write quite a bit about books and papers I read. This ranges from contemporary work on privacy and machine learning to math, economics, and philosophy from the nineteenth century. Several readers have asked for an easy way to get recommendations without working through long-form review articles. Here's the first iteration of a simple recommender: https://bcmullins.github.io/reading/
Comment linking /reading/
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)”Submitted Coffee in Vancouver and NeurIPS 2024 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionReading and writing about old books and articles [0]. It's a nice distraction from work while still being mentally stimulating. I'm increasingly thinking about mowing the yard and managing the garden. That's a hobby, right? [0] e.g. http://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1825/
Comment linking /research-from-1825/
on “Ask HN: What Is Your Hobby?”Submitted A Look at Research from 1924 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere's some more specific recommendations from the books people have mentioned: * Part 3 of Sipser’s Introduction to the Theory of Computation * The first half of Arora and Barak's Computational Complexity No one had mentioned this one yet, but it provides nice exposition: Goldreich’s Computational Complexity: a Conceptual Perspective. Here are some notes I put together on what's out there for learning complexity th…
Comment linking /complexity_theory_resources/
on “Recommended Books on Computational Complexity Theory”Submitted Interesting Books I've Read in 2023 as a story · 2 points
HN discussion