Top all-time · #12038
Olivier Lalonde
Personal blog · syskall.comprogrammingstartups
Olivier Lalonde writes Syskall, a personal blog at syskall.com about programming and startups. Since 2010, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “How to write your own native Node.js extension”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Olivier Lalonde's posts cover startup hosting decisions, such as a look at YC W12 startups' hosting choices, and a Vim productivity tip about using tabs. The comments cite or link them without evaluating the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Olivier Lalonde's blog.
Most-linked posts?
- How to write your own native Node.js extension2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-13
- YC W12 startups' hosting decisions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-24
What Hacker News says?
On the more practical side, write down any idea you have no matter how crazy they sound or where you are (use your smartphone's Notes app). It will quickly become an habit and you'll soon find yourself with dozens of ideas. Eventually, the hard part will begin: choosing the right one. Another good trick is to write down those ideas on your blog at a fixed interval. This has two side effects: it forces you to either…
Comment linking /some-crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-and-proje/index.html/
on “How to Get Startup Ideas”Submitted How to roll out your own Javascript API with V8 as a story · 57 points
HN discussionI'm using Docker + Fig. The nice thing is that you can exactly replicate your production environment on your local machine and the Dockerfile syntax is really simple. The not so nice thing is that there's no "simple" way to run docker containers on multiple physical/virtual machines right now (that should become easier once Docker team releases their cluster solution). It would be nice to have a fig registry where p…
Comment linking /crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-ideas-2015-edition/
on “Sandstorm – An open source platform for personal servers”Submitted YC W12 startups' hosting decisions as a story · 36 points
HN discussionUnfortunately lack of hosting-related knowledge is indicative through and through here even to the actual startups out of YC. Is it too much to ask for someone to know the latest buzz about Rails but can't spell DNS? Good luck if you choose this as your crusade to educate. http://syskall.com/yc-w12-startups-hosting-decisions http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html
Comment linking /yc-w12-startups-hosting-decisions
on “GoDaddy's DNS Service is Down”Submitted My Biggest Vim Productivity Boost as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThere's also a cryptographic way: https://syskall.com/proof-of-liabilities/#what
Comment linking /proof-of-liabilities/
on “Exec who cleaned up Enron calls FTX mess 'unprecedented'”Submitted YC W12 startups' hosting decisions as a story · 17 points
HN discussion> Right? No. > Let's say I send you $100 USDT and Osama Bin Laden sends you $100 USDT. Then you send Justin Beiber $100 USDT and keep the remaining $100 USDT. That's a misconception, you can do that exact same thing with Bitcoin and you are left with the same question. Bitcoin outputs can be combined into a single output (and they routinely are). See this diagram: http://syskall.com/bitcoin-notes/svg/transaction.svg…
Comment linking /bitcoin-notes/svg/transaction.svg
on “Bitcoin's fungibility graveyard”Submitted How to write your own native Node.js extension as a story · 12 points
HN discussion(self-promotion) I wrote a somewhat related post a few days ago (Twitter predictions in the early days): http://syskall.com/twttr-and-the-benefit-of-hindsight
Comment linking /twttr-and-the-benefit-of-hindsight
on “"It'll never work": a collection of failed predictions”Submitted How to roll out your own Javascript API with V8 as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI did something similar a while ago albeit much less complete: http://syskall.com/hn-crunch-greasemonkey-script-for-hacker-... It adds a little picture and info bubble next to the username of HN members who have a CrunchBase profile (I manually compiled a non-exhaustive list here: https://github.com/olalonde/HN-Crunch/blob/master/hn.php#L5 ).
Comment linking /hn-crunch-greasemonkey-script-for-hacker-news
on “Hackerface: Rapportive for HN”Submitted Crazy and Not So Crazy Startup Ideas (2015 Edition) as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThey don't fit in an HN comment but I recently dumped a couple of ideas on my blog: http://syskall.com/crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-ideas-2015...
Comment linking /crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-ideas-2015-edition/
on “Ask HN: Idea Sunday”Submitted How to write your own native node.js extension as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK: Remote full stack web engineer (Node.js) I have been building web apps since 2005 and have experience with a wide range of stacks including Rails, PHP and Node.js. My current technologies of choice are Node.js, Express, Angular, Backbone, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Ubuntu, Heroku, AWS, Vim, Git and more. I love working with startups and am flexible with availability and compensation. Blog: http://www.syskall…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2013)”Submitted Some crazy and not so crazy startup and project ideas as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK - Remote. Canadian developer currently based in Hong Kong. I'm a full stack web engineer and have been developing web applications for over 8 years. I am mostly interested in backend Ruby on Rails & Node.js work although I am also comfortable with PHP and front-end development. http://www.syskall.com
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2012)”Submitted Project Idea: TL;DR browser add-on as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK - Hong Kong, Montreal & Remote ~7 years of experience with full stack web development. Current tools of choice: Node.js, Javascript, jQuery, Backbone.js, Ruby on Rails, HTML5, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, git, Ubuntu In addition, I have experience with PHP, C, C++, Java, embedded programming, Subversion and UI design. I have a strong interest for AI/machine learning. Github: https://github.com/olalonde / Blog:…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2012)”Submitted K-means clustering algorithm visualisation in JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussion@philwelch: I quoted you here http://syskall.com/why-we-should-eradicate-agnosticism-from-... , hope you don't mind. I tried contacting you by e-mail but it didn't work.
Comment linking /why-we-should-eradicate-agnosticism-from-the
on “Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)”Submitted Tips and tricks before learning a new technology as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere are my stats for two of my blog posts that made the front page: http://syskall.com/how-to-roll-out-your-own-javascript-api-w... 3051 visits 00:00:16 average visit duration 98.9% less than 10 seconds http://syskall.com/yc-w12-startups-hosting-decisions/index.h... 3920 visits 00:00:14 average visit duration 99.1% less than 10 seconds Somewhat depressing... (edit: according to lenazegher's comment the average visi…
Comment linking /yc-w12-startups-hosting-decisions/index.html/
on “HN front page, 16000 visitors in a day, how many actually read the article?”Submitted 17 crazy and not so crazy startup and project ideas as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'd like to mention this service isn't 100% accurate. For instance, my website http://syskall.com is shown as not blocked when in fact it is blocked (as are all Posterous blogs). Also, http://google.com.hk is shown as blocked when in fact it isn't. Writing this from an apartment in Shenzhen and regular DSL connection.
Comment linking /
on “Test whether any website is blocked in China in real-time”Submitted First "Startup Tuesday" in Shenzhen a success as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIMHO, Node.js will not directly compete with Rails/PHP as long as it forces programmers to program in an async style. As an example, async style makes it impossible to implement lazy loading (a technique commonly used by ORMs). Furthermore, Node.js is basically based on the idea of cooperative multitasking[0] which carries a certain trust issue in large teams or projects with lots of third party dependencies. There…
Comment linking /how-to-write-your-own-native-nodejs-extension
on “Visual Basic, PHP, Rails. Is Node.js next?”Submitted How to write your own native Node.js extension as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
