Top all-time · #4889
Max Halford
Personal blog · maxhalford.github.io/blog · on HN as Lemaxoxodataprogramming
Max Halford's personal blog at maxhalford.github.io covers data and programming. Since 2017, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “Text classification with Python 3.14's ZSTD module”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Max Halford's blog posts on text classification with zstd and on segmenting comic book panels, both about practical machine learning techniques.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Technical essays by Max Halford on data science, machine learning, Python, SQL, and software engineering.
Most-linked posts?
- Text classification with Python 3.14's ZSTD module4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-02-06
- Dynamic On-Screen Keyboards2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-30
- Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Pizzas2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-27
- Comic Book Panel Segmentation2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-09
- Text Classification by Data Compression2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-08
- Answering “Why did the KPI change?” using decomposition2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-15
- Do LLMs identify fonts?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-30
- Graph Components with DuckDB (2023)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-04
What Hacker News says?
Check out "Text classification with Python 3.14's zstd module" ( https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/text-classification-zstd/ , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46942864 ). I wanted to link it somewhere in the comments. :-)
Comment linking /blog/text-classification-zstd/
on “Can gzip be a language model?”Submitted Text Classification by Data Compression as a story · 105 points
HN discussionThe original blog post by Max Halford ( https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/comic-book-panel-segmentat... ) does exactly that. I love his approach because, unlike mine, it is simple, yet it goes a long way. I'd encourage you to check it out. Can you explain what you mean by motion comic generation? Sounds interesting!
Comment linking /blog/comic-book-panel-segmentation/
on “Segmenting comic book frames”Submitted Do LLMs identify fonts? as a story · 64 points
HN discussionNice! I wrote about something similar for rectangular layouts: https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/dynamic-on-screen-keyboard...
Comment linking /blog/dynamic-on-screen-keyboards/
on “Markov Keyboard: keyboard layout that changes by Markov frequency (2019)”Submitted Stochastic gradient descent written in SQL as a story · 19 points
HN discussionhttps://maxhalford.github.io/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?”Submitted Do LLMs Identify Fonts? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionCheers! Mainly a couple of things: - I don't like to have to put { { ref('source') }} everywhere. I think the tool should parse dependencies automatically. I wrote more about this here: https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/dbt-ref-rant/ - I don't like the idea each .sql file has to have an associated .yml file. It feels better to have everything in one place. For instance, with lea you can add a @UNIQUE tag as an SQL c…
Comment linking /blog/dbt-ref-rant/
on “Lea: Minimalist Alternative to Dbt”Submitted Text classification with Python 3.14's ZSTD module as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fuzzy Regex Matching in Python as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A smooth approach to putting machine learning into production as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unknown pleasures with JavaScript as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A brief guide to French polling data as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Pub Quiz Flashcards as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Graph Components with DuckDB (2023) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Answering “Why did the KPI change?” using decomposition as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Text Classification by Data Compression as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Graph Components with DuckDB as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Comic Book Panel Segmentation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I got plagiarized and Google didn't help as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Koza: Symbolic Regression Based Machine Learning in Golang as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted My unvarnished guide to solution engineering as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lower your warehouse costs via DuckDB transpilation as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Text classification with Python 3.14's ZSTD module • Max Halford as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Text classification with Python 3.14's ZSTD module as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted OCR spelling correction is hard as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Answering “Why did the KPI change?” using decomposition as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Pizzas as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Pizzas as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
