Top all-time · #2968
John Loeber
Personal blog · loeber.substack.com · on HN as loebereconomicsstartupsai
John Loeber writes Loeber on Substack, a personal blog at loeber.substack.com about economics, startups and ai. Since 2022, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 55 times, most often “A Timeline of the OpenAI Board”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
John Loeber's Substack covers tech business and policy, including browser extensions as an overlooked market, EU fines on US tech firms, and a timeline of the 2023 OpenAI board. Commenters cite the timeline as a source.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
On interactions between people, markets, and technology.
Most-linked posts?
- A Timeline of the OpenAI Board13 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2023-11-18
- Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-02-27
- Insurance for AI: Easier Said Than Done2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-04
- Why is there no government-built social media?2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-05
- 15 Years of Market Gaps for Browsers and Browser Extensions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-02
- Long Google2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-12
- A Plea for Silicon Valley to Enter Politics2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-12
What Hacker News says?
There was a good article from John Loeber a few months back about browser extensions: https://loeber.substack.com/p/9-15-years-of-market-gaps-for-... He had the same point, where it feels like browser extensions are a big, somehow under-appreciated market. Browsers are huge platforms -- creating add-ons and making them more capable should be a popular, value-generating thing to do! But for a number of (developer) UX…
Comment linking /p/9-15-years-of-market-gaps-for-browsers
on “Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software (2019)”Submitted Poison, Poison Everywhere as a story · 326 points
HN discussionI agree with this, so much so that I wrote a long essay about this Modern web design has completely lost the design idioms that so much thought went into during the desktop software wave of the 90s and early 2000s. This is a great loss for usability. https://loeber.substack.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-design
Comment linking /p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-design
on “Practical UX for startups surviving without a designer”Submitted Waymo the Leapfrog as a story · 85 points
HN discussionI based that opinion on two news that came out: 1. When they invested in Open AI it had a more mature board (in particular Reid Hoffman) and afterwards they lost a few members without replacing them. That was probably something Microsoft could have influenced without making themselves part of the problem. 2. They received a call one minute before the decision was made public. That shouldn't happen to a partner that…
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft”Submitted Insurance for AI: Easier Said Than Done as a story · 48 points
HN discussionThis puts the total fines from the EU on American tech businesses at $14.8B in the last few years: https://loeber.substack.com/p/20-no-more-eu-fines-for-big-te... I think this substack is good, it makes a pretty clear case that US tech companies may not leave Europe any time soon, but they wield the power in the relationship much more so than the Europeans. Those regulators are overplaying their hands.
Comment linking /p/20-no-more-eu-fines-for-big-tech
on “Dutch DPA fines Uber €290M because of transfers of drivers’ data to the US”Submitted Europe needs to escape providerism as a story · 43 points
HN discussionOh lord, spare me with the "links to China" idiocy. I once ate a fortune cookie, does that mean I have "links to China" too? Toner got her board seat because she was basically Holden Karnofsky's designated replacement: > Holden Karnofsky resigns from the Board, citing a potential conflict because his wife, Daniela Amodei, is helping start Anthropic, a major OpenAI competitor, with her brother Dario Amodei. (They all…
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI”Submitted Why is there no government-built social media? as a story · 20 points
HN discussionInsurance tech guy here. This is not the revolutionary new type of insurance that it might look like at first glance. It's an adaptation of already-commonplace insurance products that are limited in their market size. If you're curious about this topic, I've written about it at length: https://loeber.substack.com/p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-sai...
Comment linking /p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-said-than
on “Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors”Submitted Bitcoin Without a Fight as a story · 13 points
HN discussionhttps://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “OpenAI negotiations to reinstate Altman hit snag over board role”Submitted Nobody's Thinking Enough About AI as a story · 11 points
HN discussion100% agreed. Modern software has thrown out the design idioms that were so common throughout the '90s and early '00s in Windows (and Macintosh!) software. I wrote a blog post about what happened: https://loeber.substack.com/p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-design
Comment linking /p/4-bring-back-idiomatic-design
on “Windows 9x and Word 9x at 800x600 resolution. Spacious. Comfy”Submitted A Timeline of the OpenAI Board as a story · 10 points
HN discussionHelen Toner through her association with Open Philanthropy donated $30 Million dollars to OpenAI early on. That's how she got on the board. https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “Before Altman's Ouster, OpenAI's Board Was Divided and Feuding (NYT)”Submitted Notes on Arithmetic in GPT-4 as a story · 9 points
HN discussionApparently an indirect association. From [0]: Fall 2021 Holden Karnofsky resigns from the Board, citing a potential conflict because his wife, Daniela Amodei, is helping start Anthropic, a major OpenAI competitor, with her brother Dario Amodei. (They all live(d) together.) The exact date of Holden’s resignation is unknown; there was no contemporaneous press release. Between October and November 2021, Holden was quie…
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “Before Altman's Ouster, OpenAI's Board Was Divided and Feuding (NYT)”Submitted A Plea for Silicon Valley to Enter Politics as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI agree with that. Government officials and politicians should have effectively no conflicts of interest because they have no real way to seek valid approval from the electorate for them. For companies, if you have investors, employees, and (implicitly, because they continue to do business with you) customers all supportive of someone remaining in their position in spite of real or potential conflicts of interest th…
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “Altman Sought Billions for AI Chip Venture Before OpenAI Ouster”Submitted A Bubble Is Rarely a Bubble as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> Adam D’Angelo is working on ChatGPT competitor Poe. > Helen Toner & Tasha McCauley are working with OpenPhilanthropy/Anthropic on GovAI board (former board member Holden Karnofsky left when his wife started to get involved with Anthropic) These seem like much larger conflicts of interest (working with direct competitors) than working on a company that one day this company might want to purchase a product from. The…
Comment linking /p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board
on “Altman Sought Billions for AI Chip Venture Before OpenAI Ouster”Submitted Long Google as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThere was another post that was on the front page earlier today that pretty much asked: if the [Canadian] government hates [Facebook] social media platform so much, why don't they just build their own? https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-... And I agree with the author that it's sort of weird that for all the handwringing and grandstanding these governments are doing, none of them are willing…
Comment linking /p/10-why-is-there-no-government-built
on “Canadian government pulls all advertising, escalating showdown with Meta”Submitted Long Google as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAccurate. I had a similar reaction and ended up writing a detailed blog post about it: https://loeber.substack.com/p/12-what-i-wanted-from-wework WeWork was executing a strange vision of how "creative" work should be done while ignoring the ordinary needs of office workers. Open-plan couches instead of soundproofed phone booths.
Comment linking /p/12-what-i-wanted-from-wework
on “WeWork Skips $95M in Interest Payments”Submitted Maybe You Should Invest in Translation as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAll kinds of public organizations (governments, fire departments, heads of state, etc.) have been using Twitter to broadcast news for the last fifteen years, as if it were a public utility. But it isn't. And many politicians have been complaining for years about social media not being regulated as such. With all the kvetching about insufficient regulation and social media being a public utility, you would think that…
Comment linking /p/10-why-is-there-no-government-built
on “B.C. government hit tweet limit amid wildfire evacuations”Submitted Sovereignty in the Age of LLMs as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
