Top all-time · #2794
Justin Garrison
Personal blog · justingarrison.com/blog · on HN as JustinGarrisonsystemscultureprogramming
Justin Garrison's personal blog at justingarrison.com covers systems, culture and programming. Since 2020, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 68 times, most often “Mastodon Instance with 6 Files”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Justin Garrison's blog for posts on AWS and Fargate internals, employee treatment at Amazon, and ActivityPub static files. It is also cited as a counterpoint on the Linux desktop debate.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A personal website about development, technology, culture, and life.
Most-linked posts?
- Mastodon Instance with 6 Files5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-04-28
- Fargate Is Not Firecracker5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-02-09
- Amazon's Silent Sacking4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-12-30
- 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-12-25
- Mastodon Is Doomed3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-25
- The Document Culture of Amazon3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-15
- Your Slop, My Sludge2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-19
- The State of Immutable Linux2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-23
- Get Started with Self-Hosting2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-10
- Infrastructure as Software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-17
What Hacker News says?
I wrote a review of the phone after using it as my primary device for a while https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/palm-companion-review/
Comment linking /blog/palm-companion-review/
on “Palm – The best small phone for minimalists, athletes, and kids”Submitted The Document Culture of Amazon as a story · 488 points
HN discussionIs is just me, this post and this [1] one are just people complaining about RTO? If you were hired during COVID lockdown with the promise of your career buing built on remote only, fine but lay yourself off and move on. Else it's not entirely justifiable to be mad at AWS for RTO policies. From an outside perspective AWS looks very healthy and ouputing great innovation. [1]. https://justingarrison.com/blog/2023-12-30…
Comment linking /blog/2023-12-30-amazons-silent-sacking/
on “Signs that it's time to leave a company”Submitted Amazon's Silent Sacking as a story · 445 points
HN discussionAccording to [1] Fargate is actually not using Firecracker, but probably something closer to a single container running in a single-tenant ec2 VM. If true, this makes VM boot-time optimizations and warm pooling even more important for such product. [1]: https://justingarrison.com/blog/2024-02-08-fargate-is-not-fi...
Comment linking /blog/2024-02-08-fargate-is-not-firecracker/
on “Making EC2 boot time faster”Submitted Getting Started with Signal as a story · 276 points
HN discussionMeetings: The activity of people hearing themselves talk. I think I stumbled here or in lobsters with this site: https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/2021-03-15-the-document-... Very apropos to the effectiveness of meetings and of course ,note taking towards creating long term value.
Comment linking /blog/2021-03-15-the-document-culture-of-amazon/
on “My approach to taking notes in meetings”Submitted Cubernetes as a story · 191 points
HN discussion[OP] on the flip side, did you know 2022 was the year of Linux on the desktop! https://justingarrison.com/blog/year-of-linux-desktop/
Comment linking /blog/year-of-linux-desktop/
on “Mastodon Is Doomed”Submitted Infrastructure as Software as a story · 49 points
HN discussion[OP] Active vs static/passive protocols is a big scaling, security, and maintenance problem. I wrote about it previously [1] and proposed adding a static option to ActivityPub and was flatly denied. [1] https://justingarrison.com/blog/2022-12-06-mastodon-files-in...
Comment linking /blog/2022-12-06-mastodon-files-instance/
on “Mastodon Is Doomed”Submitted 21 More AWS Services They Should Cancel as a story · 28 points
HN discussionIt does happen occasionally. For example Justin Garrison wrote what I would consider a fairly scathing review of Amazon's HR practices related to laying people off, while he was still at Amazon: https://justingarrison.com/blog/2023-12-30-amazons-silent-sa... He left recently, but he wrote this blog while still being employed there, as mentioned at the bottom of the post.
Comment linking /blog/2023-12-30-amazons-silent-sacking/
on “Ask HN: Why aren't more people writing blogs while still employed @ FAANG?”Submitted The Document Culture of Amazon (2021) as a story · 23 points
HN discussionhttps://justingarrison.com Blog and stuff
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share Your Personal Site”Submitted Mastodon Is Doomed as a story · 23 points
HN discussionActivityPub—along with its lesser known counterpart LitePub that focuses on transience and privacy—makes creating a minimum viable “account for social media” approximately as easy as serving a few static JSON files from your domain[0], though there are nice minimal servers with more features[1], too. [0] https://justingarrison.com/blog/2022-12-06-mastodon-files-in... [1] https://git.sr.ht/~tsileo/microblog.pub
Comment linking /blog/2022-12-06-mastodon-files-instance/
on “Skyvew – View and share Bluesky threads without needing a Bluesky account”Submitted Dollar Driven as a story · 15 points
HN discussionhttps://justingarrison.com I have articles going back to 2006! Have averaged 1 post a month for 17 years
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Mastodon Instance with 6 Files as a story · 13 points
HN discussionParts of ActivityPub will work with static files: https://justingarrison.com/blog/2022-12-06-mastodon-files-in... You need something to deal with follows (cryptographically verify that the follow attempts actually originate from the servers they claim to) and submitting posts to your followers (push based, not pull based in practice) but all the metadata and user lookup stuff can be done with JSON files in the right…
Comment linking /blog/2022-12-06-mastodon-files-instance/
on “You can serve static data over HTTP”Submitted Cubernetes as a story · 9 points
HN discussionCounterpoint: https://justingarrison.com/blog/2024-02-08-fargate-is-not-fi... And also, you’ll notice that Fargate takes minutes to launch while Lambda takes a second or less. You’re waiting on AWS to launch a EC2 with your config and pull your containers into it. (that article matches things I heard from Amazon when I asked why my stuff is slow)
Comment linking /blog/2024-02-08-fargate-is-not-firecracker/
on “Run isolated sandboxes with full lifecycle control: AWS introduces MicroVMs”Submitted Mastodon Is Doomed as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThat's a very limiting definition of 'death' and it may as well have applied for "Linux Desktop", yet Linux as a Desktop choice is increasingly popular, just not at a growth rate that would satisfy Silicon Valley: https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/year-of-linux-desktop/ As for 1: you don't have metrics for that. As for 2: you don't have metrics for that.
Comment linking /blog/year-of-linux-desktop/
on “Secure Scuttlebutt”Submitted Get Started with Self-Hosting as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI've been on the IT world for 30 years now and with Linux for about 20... Most people won't ever admit Linux won. No matter what!!! A counter post with some valid points: https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/year-of-linux-desktop/
Comment linking /blog/year-of-linux-desktop/
on “Rant: Year of Linux on the Desktop (2022)”Submitted Your Slop, My Sludge as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Get Started with Self-Hosting as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fargate Is Not Firecracker as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
