Top all-time · #10640
Nick Hutton
Personal blog · blog.eutopian.io · on HN as nickdothuttonsecuritywriting
Nick Hutton writes Privacy, Power, & Protection In The Cyber Century, a personal blog at blog.eutopian.io about security and writing. Since 2018, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 69 times, most often “Building a Better LinkedIn”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
An informal collection of posts and articles by Nick Hutton
Most-linked posts?
- Building a Better LinkedIn2 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-05-16
- Age of Invisible Disasters (2017)2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-08-26
- An Idea Whose Time Has Come · Privacy, Power, & Protection in the Cyber Century2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-09-19
- Documenting Breaches with H Diagrams2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-18
- Winning Systems and Security Practitioners: Attack Surface Reduction2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-02-17
- Attack Surface Reduction by Dynamic Compilation (2019)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-21
What Hacker News says?
I am reminded of Poindexter's[1] total information awareness project, which I thought at the time too interesting for it to wholly disappear. I must admit this knowledge influenced one or two of my own blog postings on what I call "Strategic Software"[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness [2]: https://blog.eutopian.io/tags/strategic-software/
Comment linking /tags/strategic-software/
on “'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza”Submitted Age of Invisible Disasters (2017) as a story · 148 points
HN discussionUnfortunately blogs are missing a strong feedback loop. If RSS was the notification mechanism, then what was it that closed the loop so the blogger got great info on what was being read, liked, disliked? Chen gets this right here: https://andrewchen.co/the-death-of-rss-in-a-single-graph/ The internet is full of people with incredible ideas, many of which are writing them down, but the problem is discovery. How to co…
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs”Submitted China and Huawei. The UK Gets a Lesson in Go as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI’m hopeful something good will come of this. I wrote this about LinkedIn but most of it could easily apply to a Reddit alternative, I love HN but would love to see a broader platform that didnt become cancerous. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development”Submitted Winning Systems and Security Practitioners: Attack Surface Reduction as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI suggested a few years ago an alternative business model for platforms[1]. Rather than selling ads, sell people the ability to filter. Buy some in-platform filtration either from a provider or from another user of the platform. It had been a particularly frustrating day. [1] https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think”Submitted “Out of every hundred men, ten shouldn’t be there, eighty are just targets” as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI use it to keep in some level of contact with a wide group of work contacts as they move around the industry. But it’s not an enjoyable experience. I wrote about how it could be improved in the hope someone would do it... so far still waiting. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “LinkedIn’s Alternate Universe”Submitted Strategic Software and My Attempt to Start an Arms Race with It as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDiscrimination is the key, discrimination, hierarchy, an elite, but an elite drawn from the mass. I wrote a little on this within the context of LinkedIn a while ago myself: https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin
on “Usenet – Let's Return to Public Spaces”Submitted Documenting Breaches with H Diagrams as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t know. I wrote a little about it here: “Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignifican…
Comment linking /the-next-big-thing-go-back-to-the-future./
on “Experts from a world that no longer exists”Submitted Building a Better LinkedIn as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> I'm thinking of something like "algorithm as a service," which would be aligned with your interests and tuned for your personal goals. I thought about this back in 2017 (within the context of LinkedIn signal to noise) [1]. I hap hoped for a marketplace/app store for algos. For example: "What if the filter could classify a given post as 30% advertorial 70% editorial, and what if you could set a threshold for seeing…
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “In Praise of RSS and Controlled Feeds of Information”Submitted Huawei 5G, a Geostrategic Headache as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote a little about this and the alternatives here, especially for sites with user-generated content which may be impossible to find/regenerate from elsewhere. I call it “Beating the Samson Option”, of pulling the temple down upon your head. https://blog.eutopian.io/beating-the-samson-option/
Comment linking /beating-the-samson-option/
on “Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups”Submitted Huawei 5G, Diplomatic Design Presented to the U.S. as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor background, a couple of posts on the Huawei 5G debacle. From the UK viewpoint, but at least partly relevant to other western powers. https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/ https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g-the-uk-gets-a-lesson-in-g...
Comment linking /huawei-5g-the-uk-gets-a-lesson-in-go/
on “U.S. to open program to replace Huawei equipment in U.S. networks”Submitted Winning Systems: Attack Surface Reduction as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI’m not really a social or business media guy but even I know it could be so much better. I’ve been waiting for somebody to improve things and wrote this in frustration. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn”Submitted The Next Big Thing? Go Back to the Future as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor those of you interested in a little of the history leading up to this point, particularly from a European perspective, you might find this of interest from me, written in 2019. A number of events lead up to our present dilemma. https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/
Comment linking /huawei-5g/
on “Europe’s telcos want ‘open’ 5G networks”Submitted NSA PRISM's Commercial Cousin as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI too am missing my 1990s forums experience. This feeling, and a particularly frustrating few minutes spent on LinkedIn prompted me to write something about it. I discuss some intellectual problems and solutions. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
Comment linking /building-a-better-linkedin/
on “Ask HN: What problem are you close to solving and how can we help?”Submitted Attack Surface Reduction by Dynamic Compilation (2019) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionKnuth writes eloquently what I have thought for a while. Some of these early works and ideas, even and perhaps especially those that did not evolve into something successful today, are worthy of study. I strongly suspect some of them could take us in new directions. Some of those that “blocked” may now be unblocked by related developments in our field. Maybe we have to go back to forwards. https://blog.eutopian.io/t…
Comment linking /the-next-big-thing-go-back-to-the-future./
on “Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science (2014)”Submitted Rating Cyber Security Pros as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI mentioned this incident in passing on my post of a few years ago. We studied it many years ago in the early 90s at university. https://blog.eutopian.io/the-age-of-invisible-disasters/
Comment linking /the-age-of-invisible-disasters/
on “The Therac-25 Incident”Submitted Channelling Feynman simplified cyber breach explanations (2019) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
