Top all-time · #37
Drew DeVault
Personal blog · drewdevault.com · on HN as Sir_Cmpwnprogrammingsystemswriting
Drew DeVault's personal blog at drewdevault.com covers programming, systems and writing. Since 2013, 646 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,350 times, most often “The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Drew DeVault's blog for his posts on open source licensing and Elasticsearch, Slack and Discord, browser and Firefox behaviour, and his estimates of browser scope.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a great post on the C ABI, interesting for scale, a favourite blog, and one to read on Elasticsearch.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers32 people · 43 mentions · first linked 2020-03-18
- Sway 1.0 is not going to support the Nvidia proprietary driver21 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2017-10-27
- The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with18 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2020-07-27
- Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face17 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2025-03-18
- /17 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2017-09-08
- Rust is not a good C replacement14 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2019-03-25
- On the profitability of image hosting websites (2014)13 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2016-03-14
- Developers: Let distros do their job12 people · 21 mentions · first linked 2021-09-27
- I don't trust Signal12 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2018-08-09
- What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)12 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2020-11-01
What Hacker News says?
I know... but given how Slack plays games with archiving, I'd be wary of entrusting user conversations to Discord (plus, there is https://drewdevault.com/2021/12/28/Dont-use-Discord-for-FOSS... , though it might be outdated).
Comment linking /2021/12/28/Dont-use-Discord-for-FOSS.html
on “Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade”Submitted Firefox is on a slippery slope as a story · 2023 points
HN discussionhttps://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html You mean this Weyland "support"?
Comment linking /2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html
on “Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40B”Submitted Sr.ht, the hacker's forge, now open for public alpha as a story · 892 points
HN discussionFirst of all, they deliberately destroyed my bookmarks. https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-... > For a long time, it was just setting the default search provider to Google in exchange for a beefy stipend. Later, paid links in your new tab page were added. Then, a proprietary service, Pocket, was bundled into the browser - not as an addon, but a hardcoded feature. In the past few days, we’ve…
Comment linking /2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-slope.html
on “Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension”Submitted Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects as a story · 886 points
HN discussionIf the one particular aspect I mentioned isn't for you then why even bother wasting your valuable time responding? Just go read their website instead and see if there is something for you. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but at least then you'd know definitively. Much better use of your time and effort. I'll even save you a few clicks: https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availabilit... https://source…
Comment linking /2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availability.html
on “GitHub Codespaces”Submitted China as a story · 847 points
HN discussion> We don't shadow-ban accounts unless they're new and show evidence of spamming or trolling, or unless there's evidence that the user has been serially creating accounts to abuse HN. That's a complete contradiction of the explanation you gave at the time. And yes, I asked what had happened when I noticed the account was shadowbanned, and your response was ---------- Hacker News <hn@ycombinator.com> Aug 31, 2018, 10:…
Comment linking /2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html
on “The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News”Submitted Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects as a story · 612 points
HN discussionI'd just like to point out that it's also very easy to do on most reverse proxies. Client cert, or even regular password protection. Client certs are quite easy to setup. Create a CA cert, sign client certs with it, and allow only clients who have a cert signed by you. Client cert on Nginx: https://fardog.io/blog/2017/12/30/client-side-certificate-au... Bonus about client certs: https://drewdevault.com/2020/06/12/Ca…
Comment linking /2020/06/12/Can-we-talk-about-client-side-certs.html
on “Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says”Submitted Please don't use Discord for FOSS projects as a story · 606 points
HN discussionElasticsearch does not belong to Elastic https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/19/Elasticsearch-does-not-be...
Comment linking /2021/01/19/Elasticsearch-does-not-belong-to-Elastic.html
on “Amazon: Not OK – Why we had to change Elastic licensing”Submitted We can do better than DuckDuckGo as a story · 563 points
HN discussionSignal is likely funded by the CIA and other intelligence actors: https://yasha.substack.com/p/signal-is-a-government-op-85e https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/signal-facing-collapse-after... https://www.city-journal.org/article/signals-katherine-maher... https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html https://bigleaguepolitics.com/court-docs-show-fbi-can-interc...
Comment linking /2018/08/08/Signal.html
on “0-click deanonymization attack targeting Signal, Discord, other platforms”Submitted I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit as a story · 550 points
HN discussionNordVPN is being recommended a lot to people who don't know better by influencers on social media, especially on YouTube. This kind of endorsement is recklessly negligent and needs to stop. https://drewdevault.com/2019/04/19/Your-VPN-is-a-serious-cho... Edit: note that I don't blame these influencers for their ignorance on the risks of using a VPN; rather I blame the shady VPN providers for overselling the security…
Comment linking /2019/04/19/Your-VPN-is-a-serious-choice.html
on “NordVPN confirms it was hacked”Submitted I don't trust Signal as a story · 523 points
HN discussion>Using a copyleft license like AGPL makes this an automatic non-starter for most businesses, no matter how impressive your tech might be. Maybe some (but certainly not most!) tech businesses, but what makes you think that vendors of real-world products give a shit about AGPL? https://drewdevault.com/2020/07/27/Anti-AGPL-propaganda.html
Comment linking /2020/07/27/Anti-AGPL-propaganda.html
on “Show HN: I'm building an open-source Amazon”Submitted Simple, correct, fast: in that order as a story · 519 points
HN discussionDisappointing to see Kodah discounting all the open source contributors to ES. Please read this before you support folks like Kodah and Elastic hijacking ES. In short - this feeling that Elastic owns Elasticsearch (other than maybe trademark) is totally false. Many people contributed and adopted BASED on a real open source license. https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/19/Elasticsearch-does-not-be...
Comment linking /2021/01/19/Elasticsearch-does-not-belong-to-Elastic.html
on “AWS announces forks of Elasticsearch and Kibana”Submitted Become Shell Literate as a story · 512 points
HN discussionhttps://drewdevault.com/weird-guys/#lutke Literally a Nazi. His best friend and the COO is the founder of the Canadian equivalent of Breitbart, and also, they hosted the store for Breitbart...
Comment linking /weird-guys/
on “Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin”Submitted Google has been DDoSing Sourcehut for over a year as a story · 489 points
HN discussionThey need to stop or else make their crawlers easy to identify and block. However I have no faith that AI companies will play by the rules. They already cost people time, money, and their mental health by using adversarial tactics to evade blocking and ignoring robots.txt https://drewdevault.com/2025/03/17/2025-03-17-Stop-externali...
Comment linking /2025/03/17/2025-03-17-Stop-externalizing-your-costs-on-me.html
on “Claude can now search the web”Submitted PinePhone Review as a story · 487 points
HN discussion> The combination of GPL (or AGPL) with a large enough and diverse set of contributors who keep their rights in their contributions is a proven way to prevent what happened with Redis. Also the lack of a CLA (and/or copyright assignment) because many "modern" projects under the GPL ask you to waive your rights away, thus nullifying the license. Do not contribute to them if you have any self-respect. https://drewdeva…
Comment linking /2021/04/12/DCO.html
on “From where I left”Submitted Don’t sign a CLA as a story · 455 points
HN discussion> The claim that nvidia is bad at open source because it does not open source its Linux driver is also quite wrong [...] Hey! Wait a second, there. Nvidia isn't bad because it has a properietary Linux driver. Nvidia is bad because it actively undermines open-source. Quoting Linus Torvalds (2012) [0]: > I'm also happy to very publicly point out that Nvidia has been one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardwa…
Comment linking /2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html
on “Nvidia is reportedly in ‘advanced talks’ to buy ARM for more than $32B”Submitted Why I use old hardware as a story · 436 points
HN discussion
