Top all-time · #13509
Elliot C Smith
Personal blog · elliotcsmith.comstartupsprogrammingai
Elliot C Smith's personal blog at elliotcsmith.com covers startups, programming and ai. Since 2022, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “How to avoid picking terrible metrics”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Elliot C Smith's personal blog. The only linked post is titled roughly 'how-to-avoid-picking-terrible-m...', cited in a comment about a benchmark in a different HN thread.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Posts on product, software development, building companies and other things I find interesting.
Most-linked posts?
- How to avoid picking terrible metrics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-06
- Autoresearch, Claude and Constrained Optimization2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-30
What Hacker News says?
https://www.elliotcsmith.com/ Writing mainly about AI and healthcare these days. Using ghost (hosted) after many years of picking a new platform every time I felt compelled to write more.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity as a story · 473 points
HN discussionnot the greatest benchmark, bzip2 many times beats xz, gzip is competitive with zstd maybe it used default compression levels, and the defaults are not "matched" fumny because author also wrote this post: https://www.elliotcsmith.com/how-to-avoid-picking-terrible-m...
Comment linking /how-to-avoid-picking-terrible-metrics/
on “Autoresearch, Claude and Constrained Optimization”Submitted If your customers don't talk, NPS is a vanity metric as a story · 38 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to avoid picking terrible metrics as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted A look back at twenty years of writing code as a story · 16 points
HN discussionSubmitted Making a living when AI raises the bar as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Chat is poor UX for most users as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Autoresearch, Claude and Constrained Optimization as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What do AI based layoffs say about their ability to scale? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted "Product Teams vs. Feature Teams" in an AI World as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Accuracy of the Incumbent as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Compressed Complexity as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted You Can't Delete the Default as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons from one too many model spreadsheets as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes from the Four Silicon Valley Product Group Books as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Just because it's old, doesn't make it tech debt as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unbundling health on the path to value-based care as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Personalisation and Curation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Autoresearch, Claude and Constrained Optimization as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to, mostly, guarantee success in your career as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Has AI removed the appeal of vertical SaaS? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cautions on Being 'Experiment Driven' as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Red Bubble Green Bubble as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Manage Risks, Not Methods as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on Service and Tech Startups as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Let Your Users Reset as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Know which type of goals you're chasing as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Minimum Marketable Difference as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Performance vs. Diagnostic Metrics as a story · 1 points
HN discussion