Top all-time · #342
Continuations
Personal blog · continuations.comphilosophyeconomics
Continuations is a personal blog at continuations.com about philosophy and economics. Since 2008, 152 different Hacker News readers have linked it 314 times, most often “Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (29) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Albert Wenger's continuations.com for essays on web3, tech policy, privacy and his Tech Tuesday computer science primers, often cited as background or support.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- CS-basics posts 'excellent', 'incredibly educational'; DNS post 'more descriptive'; web3 piece 'good article'
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 29 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Heading towards the knowledge age
Most-linked posts?
- Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-12-29
- The Future of Programming3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-02-05
- Land, Capital, Attention: This Time It Is the Same3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-10-18
- Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-05-26
- Meltdown and Spectre Are Good for Innovation3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-01-04
- Clarity3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-11
- A Word on NFTs3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-07
- Thoughts on Regulating ICOs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-05-15
- The Fallacy of Biological Determinism2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-06
- Thinking About AI2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-26
What Hacker News says?
I'm also unsure about protest banners, but on the general theme of holding your fire, "this is exactly how big companies lose against startups. They wait around to see what the startup will do, and by the time they have figured out that it’s important it is too late to catch up. This is why Andy Grove’s motto at Intel was “Only the paranoid survive.” So working with startups has taught me: don’t wait until it is too…
Comment linking /post/156262260395/what-i-learned-from-startup-investing-about-the
on “Time to Take a Stand”Submitted Web3/Crypto: Why Bother? as a story · 233 points
HN discussionI wrote a post with my predictions here https://medium.com/swlh/9-predictions-for-2020-2029-555312fc... TLDR 1. Federated Learning will unlock value from previously inaccessible sensitive data. 2. Deepfakes will impact democracy and bring about a need for publisher certified content. 3. Nationalism will rise around the world, the internet will splinter. 4. eSports will take a huge chunk of attention and advertising…
Comment linking /post/189997132065/an-agenda-for-the-2020s-inventing-the-knowledge
on “Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?”Submitted The Collapse of Complex Societies (Book Review) as a story · 206 points
HN discussionI haven't read the proposal but it made me think of something like: /.well-known/personal-access-token To get an access token for API access to my own data. You know, for our right to be represented by a bot[1] [1] https://continuations.com/post/172413445510/we-need-mandator...
Comment linking /post/172413445510/we-need-mandatory-enduser-apis-for-social-and
on “A well-known URL for changing passwords”Submitted Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Cryptocurrency Bubble as a story · 137 points
HN discussionI don't know about that. There's a flurry of open protocols being built on Blockchain and maybe there's a golden age ahead . . . > "Historically many key protocols, such as TCP/IP and HTTP, have come from researchers. Subsequent iterations of these protocols were often handled by nonprofit organization that tried to wrangle with more or less success the various commercial interests that sprang up around this protoco…
Comment linking /post/148098927445/crypto-tokens-and-the-coming-age-of-protocol
on “Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation”Submitted Facebook and Speech as a story · 114 points
HN discussionUber could still offload maintenance, fuel, liability etc to other entities and license the self driving software to them. Those entities would still have much lower operating costs than human drivers. They could even open source the self driving software to commoditise their complements [1]. Personally I hope that regulators do a bait and switch on Uber by allowing them to build a temporary monopoly and then reintr…
Comment linking /post/108912689660/big-and-bot-policy-proposals-transcript
on “G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft”Submitted Capital Is No Longer Scarce as a story · 112 points
HN discussionThe post this post links to a few times [1] is the more interesting one: https://continuations.com/post/671863718643105792/web3crypto... Still, it's unconvincing to me. It argues web3 is about permissionless data. The problem with that is we already have permissionless data -- you can put almost any kind of data you want on a server and encourage people honor it. What they actually want is shared data, governed by r…
Comment linking /post/671863718643105792/web3crypto-why-bother
on “Why Web3?”Submitted Why Decentralized Identity Matters as a story · 105 points
HN discussionThe linked post[1], ironically, really helps to cement why I consider web3 to be interesting technologically but mostly nonsense from a product perspective. > As a first approximation all the big powerful internet companies are really database providers. Facebook is a database of people’s profiles, their friend graphs and their status updates. Paypal is a database of people’s account balances. Amazon is a database o…
Comment linking /post/671863718643105792/web3crypto-why-bother
on “Why Web3?”Submitted Getting Past the Dominance of the Nation State as a story · 95 points
HN discussionFor another view, can read the comments of Disqus user JLM at the blog https://continuations.com/post/624305968188145664/help-stop-... There the relevant law is quoted and explained. So, in short, the DHS has the FPS (Federal Protective Service), and their job is > "... safeguarding Federal owned and leased facilities and has been since 1790. The FPS is part of the DHS. ... The Customs and Border Protection unit is…
Comment linking /post/624305968188145664/help-stop-fascism
on “Homeland Security Was Destined to Become a Secret Police Force”Submitted Why I (Still) Code as a story · 54 points
HN discussionnice touch with the blub reference :) (thinking to myself: how can put blub state on my linkedin profile) more seriously though, to your points about Coursera and VC liquidation timelines: We need coursera like moocs that are "B-Corps" or similar http://sos.oregon.gov/business/Pages/benefit-company.aspx . I made some comments along similar lines in the comment section of this post : http://continuations.com/post/119…
Comment linking /post/119930478310/going-past-capital
on “Coursera is phasing out free certificates”Submitted The Low Energy Trap as a story · 47 points
HN discussionBot are most certainly users. How is the server going to tell the difference? https://continuations.com/post/180985743645/world-after-capi...
Comment linking /post/180985743645/world-after-capital-bots-for-all-of-us
on “Beating Google ReCaptcha and the funCaptcha using AWS Rekognition”Submitted Disagreeing with Bruce Schneier: More Crypto is Not the Answer as a story · 36 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of a 2013 blog post by Albert Wenger where he argues that treating the problem of mass surveillance as a technical problem is futile: We cannot and should not be living in digital fortresses any more than we are living in physical fortresses at home. Our homes are safe from thieves and from government not because they couldn’t get in if they wanted to but because the law and its enforcement prevents…
Comment linking /post/60444129080/disagreeing-with-bruce-schneier-more-crypto-is
on “More encryption means less privacy”Submitted Monetary Policies for Crypto Tokens as a story · 35 points
HN discussion- pg · 2013-06-20
He's one of a tiny minority of VC partners who actually write code. His site is http://continuations.com .
Comment linking /
on “We've raised a $5.6M Series A from Union Square Ventures and Flybridge” Submitted Building Better Algorithms Requires Human Judgment and Values as a story · 35 points
HN discussionOne of Fred Wilson's partners, Albert Wenger, also penned a post touching on this today[0]. Both are worth reading. [0] http://continuations.com/post/124069363855/debating-the-gig-...
Comment linking /post/124069363855/debating-the-gig-economy-going-past-industrial
on “The Gig Economy”Submitted Google Buying Groupon is a Flawed Idea as a story · 34 points
HN discussionthere was a recent blog which dealt with rationality behind such high absurd evaluations: http://continuations.com/post/19000949472/a-rational-interne... 4. The winner-take-all nature of network-effects businesses in which the dominant business can be an order of magnitude more valuable than other competitors. So it is entirely rational given the Internet environment to see a dramatic stretching of the valuations fo…
Comment linking /post/19000949472/a-rational-internet-venture-valuations-bubble
on “Is There a Y Combinator Valuation Bubble or Not?”Submitted A World (Online) Without Money as a story · 26 points
HN discussionI haven't read this yet, but I want to credit Albert for his excellent posts on the basics of computer science. I found them incredibly educational! https://continuations.com/post/149364248835/tech-tuesday-ind... (He has a similar series on uncertainty, which I found great as well. There is no index so you have to work backwards from the start: https://continuations.com/tagged/uncertainty+wednesday/page/... )
Comment linking /tagged/uncertainty+wednesday/page/11
on “The World After Capital (2018)”Submitted Network Effects And Scale Economies (aka Spolsky vs. Heinemeier) as a story · 24 points
HN discussion
