Top all-time · #298
Jeff Kaufman
Personal blog · jefftk.com/p · on HN as jefftkprogrammingwriting
Jeff Kaufman's personal blog at jefftk.com covers programming and writing. Since 2011, 169 different Hacker News readers have linked it 656 times, most often “Why I Work on Ads”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jeff Kaufman's posts on earning to give, donations, browsers, privacy and web performance. One commenter recommends the blog; two critique his post on working on ads.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter says "if you haven't read much about earning to give, I recommend jefftk's blog".
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?
- /donations8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-03-18
- Why I Work on Ads7 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2021-05-04
- How to parent more predictably (2018)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-08-31
- Icdiff: Side-by-side highlighted command line diffs6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-05-02
- Shared Cache Is Going Away6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-11-02
- Is Unicode Safe?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-08-29
- Bets, Bonds, and Kindergarteners5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-04
- Detecting Tanks (2017)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-07-29
- History of HTTPS Usage4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-03-11
- Value of Working in Ads?3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-04-11
What Hacker News says?
Have you seen this on HN yet?: http://www.jefftk.com/p/how-to-get-a-massive-discount-on-col... Get married to a platonic roommate with a prenup. Risky some what, but with prenups and no fault divorce the risk is greatly diminished. The access to finding another human to join incomes and assets for tax planning purposes has doubled.
Comment linking /p/how-to-get-a-massive-discount-on-college
on “Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules”Submitted Mercury Spill as a story · 764 points
HN discussion> suddenly the differences start to stack up a bit, not a lot, but when one filter is letting 10x the particles through vs the other filter, it'll show It doesn't show: the difference is too small to notice at every stage: https://www.jefftk.com/remaining-particles-by-minute-995-vs-... Even comparing 95% vs 99.95% it's barely noticeable: https://www.jefftk.com/remaining-particles-by-minute-95-vs-9... Sheet: https://…
Comment linking /remaining-particles-by-minute-95-vs-9995-big.png
on “Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier”Submitted Why I Work on Ads as a story · 657 points
HN discussionAgreed: the Wirecutter's emphasis on HEPA is not right for a purifier that sits in a room. Once you get to reasonably high removal efficacy (even 90%, let alone 99.5% vs 99.97%) flow rate matters far more than filter spec. I also wish the Wirecutter would publish more detailed logs. They just check the particle density after half an hour, which is generally super low. Instead they could show the particle density cur…
Comment linking /p/testing-air-purifiers
on “Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier”Submitted How to parent more predictably (2018) as a story · 555 points
HN discussionI work at Google because they pay me money that I can donate [1] and I wouldn't work here if I thought that was making the world worse. [2] I left Google in 2017 to work for a startup I thought was more positive than earning to give [3] and then I rejoined later that year after the startup didn't pan out. [4] I'm open to arguments that I should be doing something else with my time! [1] https://jefftk.com/donations […
Comment linking /p/rejoining-google
on “Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app”Submitted Designing Low Upkeep Software as a story · 396 points
HN discussionExpanded this into a post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/google-losing-its-memory
Comment linking /p/google-losing-its-memory
on “Google Memory Loss”Submitted Shared Cache Is Going Away as a story · 381 points
HN discussionIf you haven't read much about earning to give, I recommend jefftk's blog.[0] That was where I first heard about the concept. I found it interesting to see how much he and his wife had earned for charities by working lucrative jobs and donating a large percentage of their earnings. [0] https://www.jefftk.com/donations
Comment linking /donations
on ““About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today””Submitted Programmers Should Plan for Lower Pay? as a story · 339 points
HN discussionThe other direction is to use a high resolution 1x monitor, without anti-aliasing. Crisp, legible text, even at very small sizes: https://www.jefftk.com/xterm-vs-gnome-terminal-4x.png I'm currently using a 27" external monitor at 2560x1440 ("QHD") and this is wide enough for five terminals side-by side at 83 columns each. (Monaco 10pt, anti-aliasing off, iterm2)
Comment linking /xterm-vs-gnome-terminal-4x.png
on “Time to Upgrade Your Monitor”Submitted What chords do you need? as a story · 318 points
HN discussionLots of great features here! On the link preview feature, both Wikipedia's and Gwern's implementations put the preview on top of the main content. I think this is much nicer to put to the side, where its less intrusive: https://www.jefftk.com/p/preview-on-hover
Comment linking /p/preview-on-hover
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted Mosh as a story · 312 points
HN discussionI do this too, and I like it a lot: https://www.jefftk.com/p/mastodon-replies-as-comments > Using Mastodon to power our comments means that every time someone visits the blog post, the user’s browser makes a request to your Mastodon instance. ... I’d proxy these requests through my server, but it’s yaks all the way down. I do proxy these, and it's not too much work [1]. A major reason to proxy is so you can cache: i…
Comment linking /p/mastodon-replies-as-comments
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted Make More Land as a story · 311 points
HN discussionwhat's cheaper than a studio? Splitting a several-bedroom apartment several ways. For example, where I live [1] a studio is $1,700 but one room in a 3br is $1,100. [1] http://www.jefftk.com/apartment_prices
Comment linking /apartment_prices
on “Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee”Submitted Simplifying Board Games as a story · 298 points
HN discussionAll my posts about contra dance: https://www.jefftk.com/news/contra Bleach post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/bleach
Comment linking /p/bleach
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Ceiling Air Purifier as a story · 273 points
HN discussionhttps://www.jefftk.com/ I write about making music, building things, software, contra dance, effective altruism, parenting, weird ideas, and anything else I think of. Posts I've written that have been popular here: * https://www.jefftk.com/p/let-people-move-to-jobs * https://www.jefftk.com/p/shared-cache-is-going-away * https://www.jefftk.com/p/how-to-parent-more-predictably * https://www.jefftk.com/p/survey-of-hist…
Comment linking /p/programmers-should-plan-for-lower-pay
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Why Prefetch Is Broken as a story · 245 points
HN discussionThis isn't the US, but cell phones make M-Pesa possible, which is very positive: http://www.jefftk.com/suri2014.pdf http://www.jefftk.com/suri2016.pdf
Comment linking /suri2016.pdf
on “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People”Submitted Pasta Cooking Time as a story · 206 points
HN discussionI'm learning how electronic music works and trying to merge it with the kinds of live music I've mostly played before. Sort of like, if someone were inventing the organ now, what would they do? Here's where I am so far: https://www.jefftk.com/p/rhythm-stage-setup-v3
Comment linking /p/rhythm-stage-setup-v3
on “Ask HN: What are you learning?”Submitted Allow babywearing carriers on planes as a story · 203 points
HN discussion> how do you feel about working on ads for Google I've written some about this: https://www.jefftk.com/p/value-of-working-in-ads "Many people would put ad tracking on this list of downsides: sites pass information to data brokers that build custom profiles for each user and allow personalizing ads. From my perspective, however, while having this information collected seems a bit creepy, it allows showing ads I'm mor…
Comment linking /p/value-of-working-in-ads
on “The world needs more search engines”Submitted Icdiff: side-by-side command line diffs as a story · 191 points
HN discussion
