Top all-time · #655
Nick Heer
Personal blog · pxlnv.compoliticsculture
Nick Heer writes Pixel Envy, a personal blog at pxlnv.com about politics and culture. Since 2013, 96 different Hacker News readers have linked it 147 times, most often “The Window Chrome of Our Discontent”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Nick Heer's pxlnv posts as sources on web bloat, Apple's macOS design, bug bounties and permission prompts. One commenter calls 'The Bullshit Web' an oldie but goody.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter calls 'The Bullshit Web' an oldie but goody; another keeps going back to it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A sassy weblog written by Nick Heer with topics including technology and policy, Apple, Silicon Valley, and privacy.
Most-linked posts?
- The Window Chrome of Our Discontent6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2026-03-03
- The Bullshit Web4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-07-31
- One Year After ‘The Big Hack’4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-10-08
- The Metaverse Fever Dream – Pixel Envy3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-21
- Adobe's 'Modern' User Interface Is Just Webpages – Pixel Envy3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-05
- Ben Thompson Is Wrong About the Deregulation of ISPs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-11-30
- Software Quality2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-24
- The NY Times Published an A.I.-Fabricated Quote Attributed to Pierre Poilievre2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-12
- User Stylesheets Are Still Pretty Great and Should Be More Widely Supported2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-25
- Stories Told About Data Centres2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-13
What Hacker News says?
a) i agree that it's a problem for the whole society not just the corporates. it starts by far earlier as you said b) your argument is that 50% is currently not possible most companies are <20% in tech positions and <20-30% for management a few years ago even <10% [2] [1] https://pxlnv.com/blog/diversity-of-tech-companies-by-the-nu... [2] https://unreasonable.is/silicon-valley-more-female-engineers...
Comment linking /blog/diversity-of-tech-companies-by-the-numbers-2016/
on “Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo”Submitted The Bullshit Web as a story · 1017 points
HN discussionI have no particular beef with Dorsey but I think this would make sense. He's been CEO of both Square and Twitter for years now and no matter what time you wake up in the morning or however many specials diets you undertake you're not going to be able to give the focus a solo CEO is. I think the bigger issue is who gets to replace him: will it be someone with smart ideas or someone to serve as a puppet of activist i…
Comment linking /linklog/twitter-fleets-elliott-management/
on “I resigned from Twitter”Submitted Oh, the Places Your Apple ID Will Go as a story · 335 points
HN discussionThey claim to, but they drag their feet, demand terms most researchers find so unacceptable as to be a bit immoral (the point of "responsible disclosure" isn't, in fact, to hold secrets from the public arbitrarily long), and often end up paying only a fraction of what was expected, if anything. https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-bug-bounty-troubles/ https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/looking-f... https:…
Comment linking /linklog/apple-bug-bounty-troubles/
on “New speculative attacks on Apple CPUs”Submitted The California Exception as a story · 226 points
HN discussionmacOS Tahoe has declared war on app icons with distinctive shapes. No silhouettes. If your icon isn't a squircle, it will be shrunk to fit inside a default shape. The penalty box. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/6/2.html The loss of icon silhouettes is a big step down in usability. Erases decades of design guidelines. https://pxlnv.com/blog/roundrect-dictator/ Frankly it's senseless. https://www.flarup.emai…
Comment linking /blog/roundrect-dictator/
on “Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help”Submitted The Bullshit Web (2018) as a story · 176 points
HN discussionThere is one! Mac only though. Scroll down to "#credential_picker_container" here: https://pxlnv.com/blog/user-stylesheets-are-still-pretty-gre...
Comment linking /blog/user-stylesheets-are-still-pretty-great/
on “Sign in with Google in Chrome”Submitted Fake It 'Til You Fake It as a story · 175 points
HN discussionBelow are some relevant articles I keep going back to that highlight the same phenomenon on the 'decay' of web as a platform (by decay I mean extreme commercialization, excessive bloat, endless tracking and whatnot) made by the linked forum post's author: * https://pxlnv.com/blog/bullshit-web/ * https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ * https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/the-world-wide-web-is-d... Can't help but agree with…
Comment linking /blog/bullshit-web/
on “I Miss the Old Internet (2019)”Submitted One Year After ‘The Big Hack’ as a story · 108 points
HN discussionA company gets to decide what business it's in (Facebook and Google have each explored several), what its ethics are, and how these ethics apply. For example, Google is in a substantially similar business, but it is interesting to contrast Facebook's pattern of behavior with Google's. Google isn't a paragon, and it's alarming (to me) that Google is building a universal panopticon too. But these two companies, despit…
Comment linking /linklog/facebook-background-data/
on “Achtung: Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize”Submitted Unplugged Phone Mysteries as a story · 91 points
HN discussionCounterpoint: https://pxlnv.com/blog/macos-full-disk-access-restrictions/ > ...the uses of Full Disk Access go well beyond the category of backup apps, and it is worrisome to see Apple give it such a limited frame. I have given that permission to disk management utilities, Sketch, Terminal, and other apps I do not want to be throwing permissions requests as I move around my drives. Is Apple suggesting this capabilit…
Comment linking /blog/macos-full-disk-access-restrictions/
on “Apple and a hacker's future”Submitted Silicon Values as a story · 71 points
HN discussionhttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 > Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored…
Comment linking /linklog/improving-imessage-encryption/
on “What If All Your Slack Chats Were Leaked?”Submitted Google ‘Experiments’ with Bringing RSS Capabilities Back to Chrome as a story · 37 points
HN discussion> Jordan Coeyman's OptKit is a light but intelligent popover tool that actually works, and I signed up for his newsletter based on how well the tool worked on his blog. Ironically, it's the proliferation of unnecessary third-party tools (as described in [1]) which is a major source of the web slowness described in the original article. [1] linked from the article: http://pxlnv.com/linklog/tools-dont-solve-the-webs-p…
Comment linking /linklog/tools-dont-solve-the-webs-problems/
on “Why Web Pages Suck”Submitted Products’ Useful Lifespans Should Be Longer Than Their Batteries – Pixel Envy as a story · 26 points
HN discussionOne of the first links from the article: http://pxlnv.com/linklog/safari-content-blockers-shit-ass-we...
Comment linking /linklog/safari-content-blockers-shit-ass-websites/
on “Why Web Pages Suck”Submitted The Rise and Fall of Preview as a story · 19 points
HN discussionAll this from Bloomberg, who published an explosive piece on Chinese spies infiltrating "America’s technology supply chain". [1] Then when it became clear that the story was bogus, refused to admit they made a mistake. [2] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... [1] https://pxlnv.com/blog/one-year-after-big-hack/
Comment linking /blog/one-year-after-big-hack/
on “SoftBank Vision Fund Employees Depict a Culture of Recklessness”Submitted The diversity of various tech companies by the numbers as a story · 13 points
HN discussion> Maybe make it 2 weeks or “smart” and taking into account how often the app is really using that permission. If it were smart, it would have a "Never Again" option. Nick Heer argues that these dialogs are not even effective for unsophisticated users, especially when they occur repeatedly: https://pxlnv.com/blog/permissions-pollution/ > I do not think this new prompt succeeds in helping users make an informed decisi…
Comment linking /blog/permissions-pollution/
on “The Mac Is a Power Tool”Submitted ‘The Most Angrily Incoherent First Amendment Decision’ as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThe Bloomberg story referenced in your [0] was refuted by pretty much everyone and independently confirmed by no one. See [1]. It was not retracted by the authors but the consensus seems to be it is intelligent speculation rather than confirmed fact. In particular the quote you pulled seems like a garbled and further exaggerated secondary source based on the unvalidated Bloomber article. Note the incorrect technical…
Comment linking /blog/one-year-after-big-hack/
on “Bypassing the WiFi Hardware Switch on the Lenovo X201 (2023)”Submitted 'Elon Musk Gives Himself Another Handshake' as a story · 5 points
HN discussionExcept she didn't perform well. She made constant awful decisions through the course of her four year tenure.[0] [0]: http://pxlnv.com/linklog/swisher-interview-nymag/
Comment linking /linklog/swisher-interview-nymag/
on “Marissa Mayer’s Payday”Submitted French Data Under U.S. Firms Is Not Protected from U.S. Government Access as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
