Top all-time · #20
Jamie Zawinski
Personal blog · jwz.orgprogrammingculture
Jamie Zawinski's personal blog at jwz.org covers programming and culture. Since 2007, 864 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,229 times, most often “The Rise of "Worse is Better"”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link it as a source of short essays on software and computing, such as "worse is better", CADT, backups advice and the "groupware" test.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter loves the home page; one calls the backups advice "very practical"; one says the backups advice "was 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.
Most-linked posts?
- The Rise of "Worse is Better"79 people · 93 mentions · first linked 2007-05-12
- /doc/cadt.html78 people · 100 mentions · first linked 2015-09-20
- The Rise of “Worse Is Better” (1991)59 people · 61 mentions · first linked 2015-10-21
- Reminder to HN: Think "how will this software get my users laid?"47 people · 52 mentions · first linked 2007-02-28
- Jwz: The CADT Model43 people · 52 mentions · first linked 2010-01-20
- Watch a VC use my name to sell a con18 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2011-11-29
- Tabs versus Spaces14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2008-09-19
- Message threading (1997-2002)13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2008-03-17
- XScreenSaver: On Toolkit Dialogs12 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2015-09-21
- Engineering Pornography (1989)12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2018-02-15
What Hacker News says?
This reminds me of jwz's XScreenSaver rant. https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/toolkits.html
Comment linking /xscreensaver/toolkits.html
on “macOS High Sierra: Anyone can login as “root” with empty password”Submitted Watch a VC use my name to sell a con as a story · 2376 points
HN discussionPlease check out erinn's comment, which is as good as the original post if not better: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se...
Comment linking /blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/
on “Watch a VC use my name to sell a con”Submitted Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers as a story · 688 points
HN discussionUse the phosphor screensaver (written by jwz) in the xscreensaver distribution together with Lynx/Elinks, as it can function as a terminal emulator: /usr/lib/xscreensaver/phosphor -scale 1 -program "lynx -dump http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se... | less"
Comment linking /blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/
on “Watch a VC use my name to sell a con”Submitted Google Reader Apocalypse Extremely Fucking Nigh as a story · 479 points
HN discussionI LOVE, absolutely LOVE his home page! http://www.jwz.org/ WELL DONE SIR!
Comment linking /
on “Watch a VC use my name to sell a con”Submitted Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit" as a story · 438 points
HN discussionA lot of them will use an algorithm similar to this one https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html
Comment linking /doc/threading.html
on “Ken Thompson's Unix Password”Submitted Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures as a story · 346 points
HN discussionhttps://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-o...
Comment linking /blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-on-them-being-an-advertising-company-now/
on “uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store”Submitted If you were involved in the OpenGL ES specification, you are an idiot as a story · 316 points
HN discussionI don't remember the FOSS world _ever_ working like you seem to think it should. The CADT Model[1] isn't exactly new and it wasn't really new when jwz coined the term either. Only the kernel, POSIX-y things, and enterprise software provides what you're asking for. And forks of Firefox struggle because writing a browser is really really hard and they can't keep up with the changes needed. [1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/…
Comment linking /doc/cadt.html
on “Firefox 57.0 Released”Submitted Some killjoys have removed the blink tag from Firefox as a story · 309 points
HN discussionThey allege that it circumvents a "rolling cipher", which (they say) is sufficiently DRMy that it comes under the law. The DMCA doesn't have much of a definition of what counts as an access control measure, but the "rolling cipher" that scrambles the download URL looks like one if you squint. Exactly what counts as DRM is less of a technical question than a legal one, so (not being a copyright lawyer) it's not obvio…
Comment linking /blog/2013/06/youtube-download-counter-countermeasures-applied/
on “How journalists use youtube-dl”Submitted The game of life emulated in the game of life as a story · 300 points
HN discussion> networked solution for all and everyone To get to that point the trick was to build it as something else first, and then switch. Myspace was primarily a platform for bands, which are fun and cool, which contributed to its early success. Jwz: > Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid? https://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html And Faceboo…
Comment linking /doc/groupware.html
on “Del.icio.us”Submitted Remember when people tracked bugs? as a story · 277 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of JWZ and his very practical advice on Backups: https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html In particular Addendum B: RAID is a waste of your goddamned time and money. Is your personal computer a high-availability server with hot-swappable drives? No? Then you don't need RAID. RAID is not a backup solution. Even if you use RAID, you still need backups.
Comment linking /doc/backups.html
on “You Are Not Google (2017)”Submitted Google seems to have broken email forwarding as a story · 262 points
HN discussionDid you police yourself? It seems you replaced a word you intended with the word “politics” to be PC. Mozilla has always been political. It was born so. Why do you think Jamie Zawinski got Shepard Fairey to design its logo? The Mozilla manifesto is full of political statements. Do you remember the fight against DRM? Net neutrality? SOPA? Often, people that speak like you mean “speech favoring equal treatment” instea…
Comment linking /blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-history-of-the-mozilla-logo/
on “Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products”Submitted PSA: Back Up Your Shit as a story · 242 points
HN discussionI want to read something at https://www.jwz.org/blog/ in response to all this.
Comment linking /blog/
on “Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products”Submitted Engineering Pornography (2002) as a story · 235 points
HN discussionnot forgetting https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/
Comment linking /blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/
on “FaceTime bug lets you hear audio of person you are calling before they pick up”Submitted Mobile web design: The reign of morons, indeed as a story · 217 points
HN discussionhttps://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/exterminate-all-rational-ai...
Comment linking /blog/2025/01/exterminate-all-rational-ai-scrapers/
on “Creepy Crawlies”Submitted Watch a VC use my name to sell a con (2011) as a story · 180 points
HN discussion...or sending that image [1] jwz sends back upon detecting HN in the referer. I bet they'll find the app in a matter of hours, or at least reduce the traffic drastically. 1. https://www.jwz.org NSFW!
Comment linking /
on “20% of requests for Wikimedia Commons are for one image of a flower”Submitted The secret history of the about:jwz url as a story · 175 points
HN discussion
