Top all-time · #6569
Matthew Brunelle
Personal blog · blog.matthewbrunelle.com · on HN as ciferkeysystemsaisecurity
Matthew Brunelle's personal blog at blog.matthewbrunelle.com covers systems, ai and security. Since 2018, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 26 times, most often “Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The linked post appears to concern Pocket Casts altering its deal and app. The one comment addresses Pocket Casts directly about that change and says nothing about the post's writing.
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 write about a variety of projects, events and thoughts, but they all share one aspect: I learned something and want to share my experience with others.
Most-linked posts?
- Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-18
- Agentic Engineering Is Just Everything We Haven't Been Doing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-12
- (My) Second Year of the Linux Desktop (For Gaming)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-24
What Hacker News says?
Really feel a similar sentiment to a lot of others in the comments! I'm enjoying the recommendations other shared here. I _think_ this follows the rules of conduct for HN but let me know, I recently brained dumped about the following on my blog about the general experience setting up GrapheneOS: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/i-picked-a-really-weird-tim...
Comment linking /i-picked-a-really-weird-time-to-try-out-grapheneos/
on “Graphene OS: a security-enhanced Android build”Submitted Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app as a story · 127 points
HN discussionAdding another data point from my own experience. I had a very similar case with my own blog which I detailed here: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/i-dont-want-to-play-the-seo... Gone through everything I can find, but nothing has made a difference for months now. Would love to hear any thoughts people have that aren't the usual checklist items. Good news is I still get some visitors through Kagi, DDG, and Bing.
Comment linking /i-dont-want-to-play-the-seo-game/
on “Google de-indexed Bear Blog and I don't know why”Submitted Swap, ZRAM, Zswap and Hibernate on NixOS as a story · 78 points
HN discussionI've been collecting a history of this sort of thing, and list of companies here: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/on-self-hosting-opentofu-an... . I'll have to add this one. Let me know if there's more I can include!
Comment linking /on-self-hosting-opentofu-and-formerly-oss-licensed-software/
on “Liquibase continues to advertise itself as "open source" despite license switch”Submitted Testing out BLE beacons with BeaconDB as a story · 63 points
HN discussionI've use instalooter as a library to great success: https://github.com/althonos/InstaLooter Even made an issue on the repo when I ran into an issue setting it up on AWS and the maintainer was fast to respond. Used it to make a bot to scrap soup special menus from a sandwich place near my work: http://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/projects/2018/05/07/Soup-Bot...
Comment linking /projects/2018/05/07/Soup-Bot.html
on “Show HN: Instagram-scraper – Scrape instagram photos by tags, without API”Submitted I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13 as a story · 14 points
HN discussionPlease don't do it like this. It wasn't a bug. Please, just say it. Give me closure. It'll be good for your karma. The adverts have been running all month and the 1* reviews on the app store and your forums would have made you aware of this 'defect'. Forum responses were initially to tell us to upgrade - and then they went silent. I presume you had some internal meetings. Resolving this wouldn't have been hard, as d…
Comment linking /podcasts-you-altered-the-deal-so-i-will-alter-your-app/
on “Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app”Submitted Pocket Casts, You Altered the Deal, So I Will Alter Your App as a story · 12 points
HN discussionVery exciting! I made a simple bot to scrape lunch specials menus off Instagram and post them to my company's slack ( http://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/projects/2018/05/07/Soup-Bot... ). One point point was making custom lambas to spin up/down the DB and everything that was needed to use it (a NAT on EC2, and an elastic IP since the default NAT aww provides is pricey). The bot only needs to run for an hour on weekdays…
Comment linking /projects/2018/05/07/Soup-Bot.html
on “Amazon Aurora Serverless”Submitted Agentic Engineering Is Just Everything We Haven't Been Doing as a story · 11 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.matthewbrunelle.com I've been working on my writing over the last half year, so there's been a bump in post volume.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted I've been running GrapheneOS on my Pixel Fold for over half a year as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Podcasts, You Altered the Deal, So I Will Alter Your App as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted (My) Second Year of the Linux Desktop (For Gaming) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Non-Obvious Nix Options as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Google Decided to Index My Blog Again as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Steam Machine Is a 50ft HDMI Cable as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Self-Hosting a Tangled Knot Using Clan and NixOS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I've Inadvertently Opted Out of Smart Notifications Thanks to GrapheneOS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Agentic Engineering Is Just Everything We Haven't Been Doing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Claude Coding Vibes Are Getting Worse as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted It's OK to Use Agentic to Revive the Projects You Never Were Going to Finish as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Trying Out Thunderbird Appointment While I Patiently Wait for an Invite as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted (My) Second Year of the Linux Desktop (For Gaming) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion