Top all-time · #113
Dave Winer
Personal blog · scripting.com · on HN as davewinerprogrammingweb
Dave Winer writes Scripting News, a personal blog at scripting.com about programming and web. Since 2007, 348 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,241 times, most often “Developing Better Developers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Dave Winer's posts as sources on RSS history, the 'strategy tax' idea and early blogging, and recommend his blog to follow.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called worth a read and worth following; one commenter says his fat-tweet mock-up 'has it right'; another says 'I think Dave Winer is right'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Dave Winer, OG blogger, podcaster, developed first apps in many categories. Old enough to know better. It's even worse than it appears.
Most-linked posts?
- Developing Better Developers8 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2013-01-19
- Your human-size life5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-06-01
- We make shitty software [1995]5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-03-20
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2008-01-17
- Manifesto: Rules for standards-makers5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-05-11
- RSS in JSON, for real?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-09-10
- My blog doesn't need HTTPS4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-08-08
- /2014/06/02/whatIsARiverOfNewsAggregator.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-01-06
- Google Yawn3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-06-28
- Doc Searls on Steve Jobs (1997)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-01-28
What Hacker News says?
There are other ways of applying pressure. AWS hosting Wikileaks was not illegal but they were still pressured to stop hosting if they wanted lucrative hosting contracts with the federal government. Now I doubt Reddit has huge contracts with the government, but I’m sure the government could find something to harass them with if it wanted to. Drive long enough and a cop will eventually find a reason to pull you over.…
Comment linking /stories/2010/12/28/usGovtABigUserOfAmazonWebS.html
on “Robinhood is limiting purchases of stocks: AMC, Blackberry, Nokia, and GameStop”Submitted Facebook is scaring me as a story · 553 points
HN discussionIt has a paywall, forces users to have an account to read the stories published on the platform. It's not a champion of the open web, either. http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2016/01/20/090...
Comment linking /liveblog/users/davewiner/2016/01/20/0900.html
on “No Thank You, Mr. Pecker”Submitted Dave Winer: Why I stand up for Stallman as a story · 423 points
HN discussion> if Apple really wanted to mess with Microsoft, they could make OS X installable Microsoft once offered to help Apple to make Mac OS a widely-used industry standard. Apple decided it would rather sell $2,500 PCs than $50 software ;-) http://scripting.com/specials/gatesLetter/text.html
Comment linking /specials/gatesLetter/text.html
on “Ubuntu on Windows”Submitted I fear Google's control of the web as a story · 277 points
HN discussionPoor Dave Winer. 131 HN comments and no one even pointed to his post that shook Gruber out of his slumber in the first place. http://scripting.com/2017/05/31.html#a110526
Comment linking /2017/05/31.html
on “Facebook is an attack on the open web”Submitted Why Bootstrap might be very important as a story · 269 points
HN discussionA bar across your screen / webpage containing stuff that's of negative value to the user, like ads or please-share-this buttons. See e.g. this: http://scripting.com/stories/2011/03/06/whatIsADickbar.html . The term was coined by John "Daring Fireball" Gruber.
Comment linking /stories/2011/03/06/whatIsADickbar.html
on “Five minute guide to better typography”Submitted Why apps are not the future as a story · 269 points
HN discussionDave Winer - http://scripting.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Tech press misses Google/Amazon name grab as a story · 268 points
HN discussionTo quote an original blogger, Dave Winer, blogs, at best, are 'The unedited voice of a person.' http://scripting.com/2015/02/07/theUneditedVoiceOfAPerson.ht... I don't read scripting.com much anymore, but it was the first blog I stumbled onto.
Comment linking /2015/02/07/theUneditedVoiceOfAPerson.html
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Rackspace cloud beats Amazon EC2, by a lot as a story · 203 points
HN discussion> The reason RSS failed to reach mainstream adoption by users is because it is not user friendly at all. While I love RSS myself, no amount of tech nerd nostalgia is going to make it popular enough that your mom starts using it. I think it is a false premise that something is only valid if "mom starts using it". That is the profit-driven mentality. eg. "how can we market this? How can we expand RSS market share into…
Comment linking /stories/2011/01/15/mozillaPleaseKeepTheRssIco.html
on “It’s Time to Get Back to RSS”Submitted Hackathons are nonsense as a story · 185 points
HN discussionThanks for the blogroll love! You can also see one in action on my blog's home page. http://scripting.com/ And on a special site.. https://blogroll.social/ A blogroll is a kind of feed reader.
Comment linking /
on “I ditched the algorithm for RSS”Submitted Preparing for 25 Years as a story · 184 points
HN discussionThose interested in this branch of the discussion might find Dave Winer’s blog series about building an open social network on top of the RSS standard worth a read. Here’s one of many posts: http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html
Comment linking /2025/06/28/211301.html
on “Engineered Addictions”Submitted Dave Winer: An open Twitter-like ecosystem as a story · 175 points
HN discussion> We’ve come to believe that the best way for us to improve people’s productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so much email in the first place. AKA Paper --> https://paper.dropbox.com I don't know if I understand what Dropbox is anymore. It's gone from: syncing file storage --> a decentralized app ecosystem that in some ways competes with PaaS (effectively an OS [1]) --> document and m…
Comment linking /liveblog/users/davewiner/2015/12/07/0593.html
on “Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox”Submitted ICANN is wrong as a story · 157 points
HN discussion"What I'm trying to do with sponsors is what I strongly believe is the most responsible middle ground that keeps the greatest number of people happy, myself included." The like the fact Troy has his ^own^ blog and can make his own call. There are alternatives ways to think about ^how^ a blog makes money. [0] [0] Dave Winer, "How I made over $2 million with this blog" ~ http://scripting.com/stories/2009/02/11/howIMad…
Comment linking /stories/2009/02/11/howIMadeOver2MillionWithTh.html
on “I've removed all ad network code from my blog”Submitted The Lost Apps of the 80s as a story · 152 points
HN discussionThat is by the way not alternative history but where RSS started. Ok, not directly. First it started as a proto semantic web protocol, at Netscape to syndicate links and titles for their portal. Then Dave Winer used RSS to syndicate his weblog, scripting.com and started the marriage of blogs and feeds. But blogs at that time were more small paragraphs, less big articles. And every paragraph was syndicated. That's st…
Comment linking /2001/09/11.html
on “RSS Is Better Than Twitter”Submitted Your human-size life as a story · 145 points
HN discussion[Dave Winer]( http://scripting.com )
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”Submitted Kindle is OK as a story · 133 points
HN discussionI was going to link to a piece Dave Winer wrote on scripting news some years ago: http://www.scripting.com/2005/12/12.html#howToMakeMoneyOnThe... Where he talks about encouraging outgoing traffic. But one of the more interesting links in that post has gone "evil-dark" (expired, taken by squatters, endless unclosable javascript "your iOS app is inf1ected!!1one! Call us to fix it! Have your credit card ready!" So by y…
Comment linking /2005/12/12.html
on “Cutting Back Sugar Improves Obese Children's Health in Just 10 Days”Submitted An open challenge to PandoDaily as a story · 127 points
HN discussion
