Top all-time · #3041
Nelson Minar
Personal blog · somebits.com/weblogwebculture
Nelson Minar writes Nelson's Weblog, a personal blog at somebits.com about web and culture. Since 2007, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Leap Second crashes half the internet (2012)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Nelson Minar's blog covers tech history and industry, including TechCrunch's Arrington, the history of email, Chrome's web store, the leap second and Scribd. HN readers link it as background on these topics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Nelson Minar's weblog since 2001: technology, travel, food, gay life, etc
Most-linked posts?
- Leap Second crashes half the internet (2012)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-05
- Why Soap Sucks (2006)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-08-01
- FlightPrep's patent bullying with 7,640,0982 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-14
- Scribd and Quora considered harmful2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-05-25
What Hacker News says?
Aw I'm sad to not see my first Google product on the list: the old SOAP search API. 2002-2006 RIP. I wrote a bit about it when they shut it down: http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/googleSearchAPI.html
Comment linking /weblog/tech/googleSearchAPI.html
on “The Google Cemetery – A list of dead Google products and why they died”Submitted Scribd and Quora considered harmful as a story · 511 points
HN discussionSOAP: the gift that keeps on giving. I built two SOAP APIs for Google (Search and AdWords) and spent way, way too much time on this kind of data interop nonsense. I wrote up a quick summary of why SOAP sucks, it's still my most popular blog post. http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/whySoapSucks.html XML is a terrible encoding for data. Fortunately JSON does pretty well and has mostly replaced it for new stuff.
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bad/whySoapSucks.html
on “We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)”Submitted No longer loving Google as a story · 246 points
HN discussionI found this post from a year ago convincing that arrington jumps the gun sometimes, examples include "google apps free is done" to the last.fm debacle http://www.somebits.com/weblog/culture/blogs/techcrunch-wron...
Comment linking /weblog/culture/blogs/techcrunch-wrong-again.html
on “Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels”Submitted Klout Is Odious as a story · 192 points
HN discussionWow, are some poor bastards still using WSDL somewhere? I thought it was long dead. Back in 2006 I wrote up a quick bit on why SOAP sucks, my experience of running a couple of Google public SOAP services. Basically none of the stuff you describe actually works. http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/whySoapSucks.html
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bad/whySoapSucks.html
on “Nobody expects CDATA sections in XML”Submitted Facebook's Internet identity monopoly as a story · 77 points
HN discussionLast time we had a leap second in 2012, it crashed a whole lot of web servers. There was a bug in Linux kernel threading that MySQL and Java both triggered. Please forgive the self-link, but lots of details from the time on my blog: http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/leap-second-2012.htm... Leap seconds are a fact of timekeeping. Google's approach of slewing the clock seems like a robust way to implement it if…
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bad/leap-second-2012.html
on “A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2015”Submitted Goodreads lost all of my reviews as a story · 51 points
HN discussionThis story is big news in the little world of general aviation. RunwayFinder was an excellent free product, well loved, and a lot of pilots are angry about it being bullied offline. RunwayFinder says they don't infringe. It seems likely to me, between the prior art, the obviousness of the patent, and the specificity of the patent claims (including language about using "housekeeping frames"). But they lack the means…
Comment linking /weblog/aviation/flightprep-patent-7640098.html
on “Software Patents Shut Down RunwayFinder”Submitted UTC vs UT1 and Leap Seconds as a story · 44 points
HN discussionDetails will vary depending on the filesystem. Bad old filesystems are O(n^2) in the # of files in a directory. ext3fs is fine. Also tools like find and and rm often do more work on a file than strictly nececssary. I'm curious why rsync would be better myself; on first blush that'd be the worst choice! I've salvaged an unwieldy directory by using Python to directly call unlink(2). Details: http://www.somebits.com/we…
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bad/giant-directories.html
on “A faster way to delete millions of files in a directory”Submitted Stop Making Social Networks, Facebook Won as a story · 20 points
HN discussionAnother reason to take sleep apnea seriously! I just started using CPAP about 6 weeks ago and it's been life changing. I'm full of energy now! I have no idea what my testosterone levels are but my sexual health has improved along with a lot of other things. Although I chalk that up just to being well rested, not something as specific as a hormone. If you think you are having trouble breathing at night or are sleepy…
Comment linking /weblog/life/cpap-obstructive-sleep-apnea.html
on “Obstructive Sleep Apnea Is Associated with Low Testosterone Levels”Submitted Cancelling Facebook as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSome more info, posted only a year ago, saving you all that sweet, precious searching time: http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bang-path-addressing-uuc...
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bang-path-addressing-uucp.html
on “The History of Email”Submitted The last TV Olympics? as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI had to use the search to find out why people view scribd as evil. http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/quora-scribd-conside...
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bad/quora-scribd-considered-harmful.html
on “Peter Watts: The Scorched Earth Society [pdf]”Submitted Fixing toxic behavior in online communities as a story · 7 points
HN discussionHere's another view I made of the Fisk map a few years ago. It's Google Maps style. http://somebits.com/fiskmap This LIDAR map of the Willamette is really beautiful. Electric blue is an odd color for a data visualization, but it sure is striking.
Comment linking /fiskmap
on “Art Meets Cartography: The 15,000-Year History of a River in Oregon”Submitted The Mozilla Crisis as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI have run a linkblog for 15+ years now. It's basically bookmarks (and stored in Pinboard) but my focus is on publishing a social media feed for others to read. https://www.somebits.com/linkblog/ Linkblogging used to be a thing people did in the heydey of early 2000s blogging. Now it's mostly lost as a form. The spirit of it lives though in the way Mastodon, Slack, Facebook, etc make it easy to share a link and have…
Comment linking /linkblog/
on “Ask HN: Why haven't bookmarks been re-invented?”Submitted Script injection in whois responses? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionA short summary that made sense to me: http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/chrome-app-store.html
Comment linking /weblog/tech/chrome-app-store.html
on “Ask HN: What is the point of Chrome's web store?”- bd · 2008-12-14
Submitted Phasing in World of Warcraft as a story · 5 points
HN discussion The operating systems can already handle leap seconds. It's not the first time it got added. Some background on when it failed http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/leap-second-2012.htm...
Comment linking /weblog/tech/bad/leap-second-2012.html
on “Ask HN: What do we do about the leap second?”Submitted Leap Second crashes half the internet (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted FlightPrep's patent bullying with 7,640,098 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sync; sync as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
