Top all-time · #8631
Chris Given
Personal blog · chrisgiven.compoliticsprogramming
Chris Given's personal blog at chrisgiven.com covers politics and programming. Since 2025, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Saying Goodbye”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Chris Given's posts as background on the IRS Direct File free tax-filing service, including its GitHub release and its shutdown. The comments cite the posts for facts and do not evaluate the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal blog of Chris Given, government technologist. These words are always written by a human; I have no one to blame but myself.
Most-linked posts?
- Saying Goodbye3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-05
- IRS Direct File on GitHub3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-06-04
What Hacker News says?
See also: Saying Goodbye - https://chrisgiven.com/2025/06/saying-goodbye/
Comment linking /2025/06/saying-goodbye/
on “IRS Direct File on GitHub”Submitted IRS Direct File on GitHub as a story · 744 points
HN discussionHere's the announcement from one of the principal engineers: https://chrisgiven.com/2025/05/direct-file-on-github/
Comment linking /2025/05/direct-file-on-github/
on “IRS Direct File on GitHub”Submitted Saying Goodbye as a story · 16 points
HN discussionhttps://chrisgiven.com/2025/06/saying-goodbye/
Comment linking /2025/06/saying-goodbye/
on “Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states”Submitted States should look beyond Direct File as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIRS Direct File on GitHub - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182356 - June 2025 https://chrisgiven.com/2025/06/saying-goodbye/ https://chrisgiven.com/2025/05/direct-file-on-github/ https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file (In the latest version of the bill being negotiated in Congress, the language to sunset Direct File has been removed, but this of course could change due to the fluidity of the situation; re…
Comment linking /2025/05/direct-file-on-github/
on “Show HN: A continuation of IRS Direct File that can be self-hosted”Direct File was only built in the first place because Turbo Tax and H&R Block dropped out of agreements with the IRS to keep free tax filing options free and unencumbered of upsells and dark patterns. The number of people their "free" products actually serve dropped drastically a couple years ago. They will upsell or dark pattern you to paying for it as best and as deeply as they can. This was an interesting read on…
Comment linking /2025/07/the-things-that-cannot-be-changed/
on “IRS head says free Direct File tax service is 'gone'”
