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Dave Bonds

Personal blog · plover.netgameswritingculture

Dave Bonds writes Plover.Net - An Interactive Fiction Hideout, a personal blog at plover.net about games, writing and culture. Since 2008, 54 different Hacker News readers have linked it 75 times, most often “What constitutes a true ad hominem argument?”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.

No feed foundVisit the blog
75mentions?
54HN people?
2008–2025first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 24 in 2013

Most-linked posts?

  1. What constitutes a true ad hominem argument?
    16 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2008-11-25
  2. Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly
    8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2013-06-06
  3. Why I am no longer a skeptic
    4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2011-10-17
  4. The Cult of Bayes' Theorem
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-05-05
  5. ASDF - a badly-drawn webcomic of trite, feelgood, preachy... (anti-xkcd)
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-01-04
  6. Positivist Programming
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-08-05
  7. /~bonds/genderedlanguage.html
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-12-16
  8. Fifteen Stupid Responses to Criticism
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-05-21
  9. /~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-06

What Hacker News says?

  1. badman_ting · 2013-08-16
    > Every argument is ad hominem nowadays. Careful... http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on ““People simply empty out””
  2. Leepic · 2013-06-06

    Submitted Logical Fallacies Are Usually Irrelevant or Cited Incorrectly as a story · 176 points

    HN discussion
  3. Jach · 2012-05-02
    There's a link that I like to give in response to erroneously declared "ad hominem"s. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html Since it's so full of examples, even the thickest of nerds can learn!

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “Apple rejecting applications which use Dropbox”
  4. beefhash · 2017-11-03

    Submitted 4.2BSD on SIMH vax with networking as a story · 78 points

    HN discussion
  5. dylangs1030 · 2013-06-11
    A few points: 1. I don't like that this is being said about Edward Snowden, but Occam's Razor implies it's not necessarily a conspiracy (yet). I'm sure it will be, at some point, but as a software engineer who made it without a college degree, I can personally attest that it's not unnatural for people to bring up and question a lack of education. People love to do this - before I was making any real progress in engi…

    Comment linking /~bonds/bdksucks.html

    on “The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun”
  6. zephyrfalcon · 2012-09-01

    Submitted Why I am no longer a skeptic as a story · 57 points

    HN discussion
  7. ChicagoDave · 2020-06-21
    Love it. Especially the failed business plan I had from 8 years ago. The OP is correct, but good luck getting the education world to change. It's monitored by "moms" that don't like change, school districts that run on what is known, and a publishing industry without a single success in interactivity in the decades computers have been around. Any success has been small and anecdotal, even Khan Academy. In order to t…

    Comment linking /~dave/textfyre/Textfyre%20Investor%20Presentation%20September%202012%20V3.3.pptx

    on “Video Games Are the Future of Education”
  8. Alex3917 · 2011-10-17

    Submitted Why I am no longer a skeptic as a story · 50 points

    HN discussion
  9. telcodud · 2013-02-08
    This was a really good read for me: The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy (link: http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html )

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “Surface Pro versus MacBook Air: Who's being dishonest with storage space?”
  10. sfk · 2008-11-25

    Submitted What constitutes a true ad hominem argument? as a story · 48 points

    HN discussion
  11. Locke1689 · 2011-03-07
    Not at all. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html As I said, insults are not ad hominem in and of themselves.

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “How rich kids already won the career game”
  12. markessien · 2008-11-25

    Submitted Ender's Game Review as a story · 46 points

    HN discussion
  13. benaiah · 2013-06-11
    It's actually not an ad hominem . A firm grasp of language, grammar, and communication is actually recognized, albeit informally, to be a good signal of technical skill and design effectiveness. If he can't refine his linguistic communication well enough to convey such a simple sentence, how can he be expected to refine his visual communication (i.e., UX design) well enough to surpass one of the leading UX teams in…

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “iOS 7 looks familiar”
  14. nickb · 2008-01-04

    Submitted ASDF - a badly-drawn webcomic of trite, feelgood, preachy... (anti-xkcd) as a story · 30 points

    HN discussion
  15. jdlshore · 2013-11-06
    There was no ad hominem here, just insults. You've fallen into the "ad hominem fallacy fallacy." :-) http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “MacKenzie Bezos Writes Amazon Review for Jeff Bezos Biography”
  16. colinprince · 2013-06-17

    Submitted Why I am no longer a skeptic as a story · 20 points

    HN discussion
  17. shardling · 2012-08-28
    1. You're misusing the term ad hominem : >The mere presence of a personal attack does not indicate ad hominem: the attack must be used for the purpose of undermining the argument ( http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html ) 2. I'm not going to respond to (or even read) any of your points about nutrition because you seem to be arguing with someone else, not me! I have no horse in this race, because I've never looked i…

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “The Hidden Truths about Calories ”
  18. wahnfrieden · 2013-05-05

    Submitted The Cult of Bayes' Theorem as a story · 9 points

    HN discussion
  19. Jach · 2011-08-11
    It's possibly an ad hominem , but not likely to me. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads”
  20. chrismealy · 2013-08-05

    Submitted Positivist Programming as a story · 5 points

    HN discussion
  21. ChicagoDave · 2025-01-20
    I was 15yo in 1977 when our two school paper terminals connected to a Milwaukee Public Schools PDP-11 provided access to the FORTRAN version of DUNGEO, aka mainframe Zork. Memorizing the map was considered a high calling among the half dozen students who became obsessed with the games (ADVENT aka Adventure or Colossal Cave was also on the PDP). At that time, death was just a part of the puzzles of the game. Repetiti…

    Comment linking /~dave/DungeonMap.pdf

    on “Zork: The Great Inner Workings (2020)”
  22. lazugod · 2013-09-12

    Submitted The Banality of Genius as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  23. bargl · 2013-10-02
    Actually it's still ad hominem. The fact that you completely ignored the original post and instead attacked Steve Gibson, is indicative of an ad hominem attack. If you'd even said, this new idea is ridiculous because QR codes are inherently insecure (which is false) you'd be fine. Sources: http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html I think this example is pretty much what you did. A: "All rodents are mammals, but a wea…

    Comment linking /~bonds/adhominem.html

    on “SQRL - Replacement for usernames and passwords”
  24. dpapathanasiou · 2008-05-21

    Submitted Fifteen Stupid Responses to Criticism as a story · 2 points

    HN discussion
  25. dwheeler · 2022-04-29
    Inform 7 is a very different language from other programming languages. Historically it was developed to be domain-specific and usable by non-programmers. An interesting summary is here: "Inform 7 for Programmers" by Ron Newcomb http://www.plover.net/~pscion/inform7.html

    Comment linking /~pscion/inform7.html

    on “Inform 7 v10.1.0 is now open-source”
  26. ChicagoDave · 2022-12-10

    Submitted Dungeon (Mainframe Zork) Map [pdf] as a story · 1 points

    HN discussion
  27. lazugod · 2012-11-04
    As discussed in the comments of http://plover.net/~bonds/purity.html , a loop of importance/purity rather than a straight hierarchy makes more sense (or assuages more people).

    Comment linking /~bonds/purity.html

    on “The Mathematics Behind xkcd: A Conversation with Randall Munroe”
  28. judofyr · 2014-02-12
    > A big problem with Bayesian statistics (as I see it) it that it not always possible to have any sense of what the prior probability is. Reminds me of this quote: (These values are known as priors, which is ironic because Bayesians inevitably pull them out of their posteriors.) http://plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html

    Comment linking /~bonds/cultofbayes.html

    on “P values are not as reliable as many scientists assume”
  29. ChicagoDave · 2017-09-26
    If I didn't have five kids, one in college, and monthly financial minimums that preclude taking time off from regular work, I'd jump at applying for YC. I even _had_ a great ed-tech startup... 5 years ago ... Textfyre Final Presentation, 2012 http://plover.net/~dave/textfyre/Textfyre%20Investor%20Prese... (The slide with the team has been removed...no need to share that info) We were in talks for a couple of months…

    Comment linking /~dave/textfyre/Textfyre%20Investor%20Presentation%20September%202012%20V3.3.pdf

    on “Request for Education Startups”
  30. Terretta · 2013-06-10
    Dell and Amazon leveraged chef to help build Crowbar and Opsworks respectively. Crowbar ... leveraging ... get it? In any case, noting Opsworks is based on Chef is not an "appeal to authority".[1] That knowing Chef means you have a head start on AWS's official devops tooling, seems a relevant data point for a comparison. (The officially supported devops tooling leveraging a particular CM system is different from sim…

    Comment linking /~bonds/bdksucks.html

    on “Vagrant: Create and configure portable development environments”

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