Top all-time · #7616
Josh Thompson
Personal blog · josh.works · on HN as wonder_erprogrammingcareer
Josh Thompson's personal blog at josh.works covers programming and career. Since 2019, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 78 times, most often “Take Back Your Attention with uBlock (2018)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Josh Thompson's site for a copy of jbq's essay "Dizzying but Invisible Depth", whose original Google+ post is gone.
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.
I'm Josh. I give myself permission to put whatever I want on this website.
Most-linked posts?
- Take Back Your Attention with uBlock (2018)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-16
- Dizzying but Invisible Depth2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-12
- The 2-Sigma Problem2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-22
- Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-07
- Preparing for the Turing Ruby Bootcamp2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-07
- How to Write a Letter of Recommendation for Yourself2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-05
What Hacker News says?
This is super cool! I've only recently discovered that Markdown has footnotes, and I've gone to down adding footnotes everywhere. I use Jekyll + markdown on my website, and I now have lots of fun adding footnotes to my writing. I added a "footnote tutorial" for readers on https://josh.works/turing-backend-prep-01-intro#why-this-rub... , to help them learn how to navigate the footnotes. I _love_ your library, and I l…
Comment linking /turing-backend-prep-01-intro
on “Total Cookie Protection”Submitted Bollards: Why and What as a story · 504 points
HN discussionoooh. It was after reading Gwern that I added footnotes and table-of-contents to all of my blog posts. And RSS. All headings have anchor links. https://josh.works/jaywalking or https://josh.works/full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan
Comment linking /full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted Change your MAC address with a shell script (2019) as a story · 190 points
HN discussionhttps://josh.works/archive You probably _shouldn't_ read my blog. It's small, has low traffic, and I am the primary beneficiary of my writing. That said, I've been writing regularly for eight years now, and it's an _awesome_ progress-tracking tool for me. It's seen me through a few career changes (most recently into software development) and I use it all the time to share ideas with people. If I share an idea with p…
Comment linking /turing-backend-prep-01-intro
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted How much does a bad hire cost? as a story · 27 points
HN discussionThanks ayewo! It is indeed Jekyll. The Poole theme. I've written a little about how to set up something similar here: https://josh.works/build-a-personal-site-with-jekyll It's not super customized, but I've done a lot of work over the years to just make it work well for me. Jekyll is a super cool tool.
Comment linking /build-a-personal-site-with-jekyll
on “To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills”Submitted How to Write a Letter of Recommendation for Yourself as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills I strongly agree! Looks like many other commenters agree too. how do I find companies that are hiring and agree with this statement? I've had a hard time finding those companies. I've had a slew of interviews recently, and none of them asked about my extensive online writing. None of them seemed to have clicked through to my website.…
Comment linking /blog
on “To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills”Submitted Whole Messages in Slack as a story · 3 points
HN discussionthis makes sense to me, the thrust of this paper. Reminds me of another paper which has impacted me deeply: https://josh.works/driven-by-compression-progress-novelty-hu...
Comment linking /driven-by-compression-progress-novelty-humor-interestingness-curiosity-creativity
on “Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’”Submitted Add an Index to Your Notebook as a story · 2 points
HN discussiona while ago, in my first engineering job, I was tracking down a strange bug related to chinese character sets. Turns out some of the db tables were using utf8 and latin1; changing them to `utf8mb4` fixed it right up! https://josh.works/troubleshooting-chinese-character-sets-in... It was a fun bug to work on. I learned a lot about character encoding, and enjoyed bringing a refined "process" to the table.
Comment linking /troubleshooting-chinese-character-sets-in-mysql
on “In MySQL, use “utf8mb4” instead of “utf8” (2016)”Submitted The 2-Sigma Problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor a while, I could use uBlock to delete all those unwanted columns. It was effortless and permanent. I wrote up the instructions here: https://josh.works/take-back-your-attention But a year ago or so, Twitter redesigned the front-end. Now the class names constantly change, and my CSS Selector knowledge isn't good enough to write flexible-enough rules to keep these unwanted elements blocked. :( I'd pay someone to p…
Comment linking /take-back-your-attention
on “Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet”Submitted Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI do desired them for their _objective_ incompetence. Among serious traffic people, globally, american traffic planners are regarded as children in a corner eating play dough. I have plenty of nuance, here you go: - https://zoningverydifferentthanours.substack.com - https://josh.works/issues-in-golden - https://josh.works/parking-in-golden - https://josh.works/about-roundabouts I could go on. Do you want to start wi…
Comment linking /full-copy-of-1922-atlanta-zone-plan
on “Bollards: Why and What”Submitted A Junction Efficiency Metric: Vehicles per Square Meter per Minute as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI had no idea Christopher Alexander was a software development luminary. I knew him via _A Pattern Language_, and I'm way more into architecture and physical space design than I am software. Now I'm mega interested to absorb his thoughts on software. I expect I'll be much better for it. He's on my "recommended reading" list, I had _no_ idea he was so enmeshed in software: https://josh.works/recommended-reading#a-pat…
Comment linking /recommended-reading
on “Christopher Alexander has died”Submitted Take Back Your Attention with uBlock (2018) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Overeating makes you fat, not a specific carb. Eating sugar creates a cascade of hormonal knock-on effects that can make you fat. I beg of you (especially if you're struggling with your weight!) to consider the alternatives to Calories-In/Calories-Out eating. My dad is a doctor, he's _convinced_ it's all CICO (which is what was taught to physicians in the 70s, and today), he struggles with his weight, constantly,…
Comment linking /notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar
on “Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors”Submitted How to Ask Questions of Experts to Gain More Than Just Answers (2017) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn some communities, weight gain is a down-stream effect of "metabolic syndrome", and the "solution" isn't to count calories or exercise more - it's to simply eat _differently_. Sugar is a particularly odious contributor to problems. Like OP, my wife and I also struggled with infertility for a few years (two miscarriages, years of doing everything "right", and not getting pregnant.) We're finally pregnant, and out o…
Comment linking /notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar
on “Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors”Submitted Dizzying but Invisible Depth as a story · 1 points
HN discussionworking on bringing some basic, banal bits of infrastructure management to real-world traffic issues. I'm literally trying to fix broken junctions around me. It's at the same time laughably easy, and wildly complicated. I'm calling the alternative, correct junction a 'traffic bean': https://josh.works/traffic-bean It's relevant to software, sorta. I've got rather a lot of GIS/mobility-related data available here. It…
Comment linking /mobility-data
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”Submitted Josh Thompson Presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board as a story · 1 points
HN discussionamerican-style intersections function with an order-of-magnitude higher safety and throughput and a much smaller square meter 'footprint' if they switch from 'controlled' intersections (lights, stop signs) to 'traffic beans': [0] [0]: https://zoningverydifferentthanours.substack.com/p/a-pattern... This gets complicated because the reason things are the way they are is _crucial_ to efficient, easy change, and the gre…
Comment linking /mobility-data
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)”Submitted Preparing for the Turing Ruby Bootcamp as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI can't help but mention that there are two dominant schools of thought regarding cancer treatments: 1. The Somatic theory of cancer ('bad genes/out-of-control cellular replication') 2. The metabolic theory of cancer ('cancer cells ferment blood sugar for energy via an ancient emergency metabolic pathway') Both have merit, but a complete occlusion of one would be bad. I wrote an open letter, long ago, to a wealthy p…
Comment linking /mike-clayville-can-have-a-huge-impact-on-cancer
on “A Universal Cancer Treatment?”Submitted Rules for Fighting Fair as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
