Top all-time · #806
Ibrahim Diallo Blog
Personal blog · idiallo.com · on HN as ibudialloprogrammingai
Ibrahim Diallo Blog is a personal blog at idiallo.com about programming and ai. Since 2013, 81 different Hacker News readers have linked it 429 times, most often “The Machine Fired Me”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 0 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ibrahim Diallo's blog for stories about being fired by an automated system, for tips on handling traffic spikes and zip bombs against scrapers, and for essays on tech, privacy and work. Commenters often cite posts as background.
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.
A programming blog featuring insights, tutorials, and and clever tips to hack your code and daily life by Ibrahim Diallo
Most-linked posts?
- The Machine Fired Me19 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2018-06-19
- I use zip bombs to protect my server5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-04-28
- Poor man's way of handling 1.3M web request4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-02-23
- I Taught My Neighbor to Keep the Volume Down4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-01-05
- We Never Paid for Journalism4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-21
- I'm bored, what do I do?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-07-07
- Don't use localhost:3000, use your own custom domain4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-04-28
- How I learned to charge my customers3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-04-06
- Where Did the Productivity Gains Go?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-08-12
- Writing code is easy, reading it isn't3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-08
What Hacker News says?
The power of Inspect Element. This is exactly how I found out I was underpaid[1]. A company I worked for used a software called erecruit to manage my contracts. When you click on a clients name, it makes an ajax request to fetch the data. Being a web developer, I inspected the data returned. I'm pretty sure all the developer did was: echo json_encode($queryResult); I saw how much I was getting paid vs how much they…
Comment linking /blog/how-much-do-you-charge-for-your-work
on “When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number”Submitted The Machine Fired Me as a story · 1471 points
HN discussionNay, laddie, that's no' the real AGI Scotsman. He's grander still! Wait til GPT-6 come out, you'll be blown away! https://idiallo.com/byte-size/ai-scotsman
Comment linking /byte-size/ai-scotsman
on “GPT-5”Submitted Do not download the app, use the website as a story · 1347 points
HN discussion230 out 100k+ want to unionize? It would be nice for sure, but unions are not coming back[1]. The campaign to disrupt unions was successful and they are easily dismantled without breaking the law. Yet the employees still need protection. Unions have been sorta replaced by HR. Employees almost always go to HR to resolve issues but they forget that this entity is for the company, by the company. If we want to make any…
Comment linking /blog/unions-are-not-coming-back
on “A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize”Submitted I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page as a story · 1148 points
HN discussionRandomly enough, the writer of this previously achieved HN fame when he was unstoppably fired by a machine: https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me
Comment linking /blog/when-a-machine-fired-me
on “I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page”Submitted I use zip bombs to protect my server as a story · 1076 points
HN discussionHere is a perspective I read that I thought was interesting[1]: "There are a billion active accounts on facebook and other than the 208 that are set to private, I can communicate with every single one of them. I don't know what other word I can use other then Power. This is great power, just like the power held by the presidency, with great power comes great responsibility, and loneliness. The worst thing about Face…
Comment linking /blog/facebook-and-me
on “Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch”Submitted No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive as a story · 580 points
HN discussionNow the question is, what time is it in voyager 1? With time dilation, the "now" on Voyager is out of sync with our now. I was watching star wars recently and when Han Solo casually say "we should be in Alderaan at 0200 hours", I paused for a second. What does that even mean [0]? Traveling through space is challenging today, but after we figure that out, we will have to face the problem of time keeping across the ga…
Comment linking /blog/galactic-timekeeping
on “Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth”Submitted The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones as a story · 566 points
HN discussionI'm all for keeping kids away from social media. My main concern is how we verify that they are under 16 [0]. > showing my ID [in person] was a simple, controlled transaction: one person looked at it for three seconds, handed it back, and forgot about it. The information never left that moment. But online, that same verification process transforms into something far more risky. A digital journey through countless se…
Comment linking /blog/your-id-online-and-offline
on “Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban”Submitted I stood up to my boss, then he got promoted as a story · 464 points
HN discussionBased on the gp's handle, I believe the full story [0] had been posted here [1] before: 0: https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645
Comment linking /blog/when-a-machine-fired-me
on “Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?”Submitted How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts as a story · 459 points
HN discussionI write stories. https://idiallo.com Real stories about my work experience in Tech. Sometimes technical, but these days it's more about the social impact of code in the real world.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted I can't upgrade to Windows 11, now leave me alone as a story · 456 points
HN discussionCouple months back I wrote [0]: > “You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say, do, or generate on this device can and will be used against you… Would you like to create an account?” [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/the-right-to-remain-silent
Comment linking /blog/the-right-to-remain-silent
on “Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge”Submitted Users only care about 20% of your application as a story · 405 points
HN discussionWhen you reach "The cliff of Irrational Arguments" you need to stop and reevaluate what is the purpose of the discussion. There was a joke about the man who was threatening to jump off a cliff. No professional could convince him otherwise with sound arguments. It took a another mental patient to make an irrational threat, cut the cliff down, to scare him off. Edit to add link: https://idiallo.com/blog/the-cliff-of-i…
Comment linking /blog/the-cliff-of-irrational-arguments
on “How to win an argument with a toddler”Submitted How I learned to charge my customers as a story · 212 points
HN discussionThis is a reminder that the power of Oracle is not in creating great software, it's in having iron clad lawyers and salespeople[0]. I want this to happen and will contribute, but I think there will be a rude awakening when the anvil falls on our heads. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/why-use-oracle-db-today
Comment linking /blog/why-use-oracle-db-today
on “Help us raise $200k to free JavaScript from Oracle”Submitted The 40M dollar job as a story · 208 points
HN discussionHello creator. You can handle the traffic and db insert on a cheap digital ocean plan.[1] My server purred with hn traffic. [1]: https://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-request
Comment linking /blog/handling-1-million-web-request
on “Txt.fyi”Submitted You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title as a story · 193 points
HN discussionIt will certainly be the default for cases where it's easier to read code than to write code, but this is far from universally true. AFAIK, Joel Spolsky was the first to discuss this at length 25 years ago [0], but numerous people have echoed his sentiment [1, 2, 3, ...] One of the most underrated skills in effectively using gen-AI for coding is knowing ahead of time whether it will take longer to carefully review t…
Comment linking /blog/writing-code-is-easy-reading-is-hard
on “Vibe engineering”Submitted Why Companies Don't Fix Bugs as a story · 179 points
HN discussionIn my case, I did two things: 1. Add memcached 2. Serve static files via nginx It allowed me to handle 2.9 million requests I documented it here: http://idiallo.com/blog/handling-1-million-web-request
Comment linking /blog/handling-1-million-web-request
on “How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire”Submitted What does it mean that MP3 is free? as a story · 164 points
HN discussion
