Top all-time · #89
Tim Bray
Personal blog · tbray.org/ongoingprogrammingweb
Tim Bray's personal blog at tbray.org covers programming and web. Since 2007, 409 different Hacker News readers have linked it 968 times, most often “The Web's the place (don't be a sharecropper)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link tbray.org for Tim Bray's long-running essays on platform sharecropping, Google search and blog privacy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Web's the place (don't be a sharecropper)23 people · 34 mentions · first linked 2008-04-14
- /ongoing/9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2017-10-14
- The Web’s the Place8 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2013-01-20
- Bye, Amazon7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-05-04
- Google Memory Loss6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-01-15
- AWS and Blockchain6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-11-20
- The Cloud and Open Source5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-09-22
- Now A No-Evil Zone5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-03-15
- XML and JSON in 20265 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-06-02
- Lock-In and Multi-Cloud4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-02-01
What Hacker News says?
He has a few reasons to retire -- and a few reasons not to retire. And he laid them out for us about a year and a half ago: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-Retire... > Progressive friends, people whose opinions I respect, give me shit about working for Amazon. I claim that the problem is capitalism, flaccid labor laws, and lame antitrust enforcement, not any particular company; maybe I’m right.…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-Retirement
on “Bye, Amazon”Submitted Bye, Amazon as a story · 3816 points
HN discussionOne way to do it in social media: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSoc...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSocialist-Future
on “What if we made advertising illegal?”Submitted Google Memory Loss as a story · 1377 points
HN discussionSharecropper woes: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-freedom-to-eat-pizza http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “I was once a Facebook fool”Submitted Just don’t as a story · 842 points
HN discussionYeah you know, it's funny, the last time I worked on question-answering code, we were trying really hard to find algorithms that could improve a particular metric (F-score, a synthetic agglomeration of precision and recall) ... I don't remember hearing very many conversations at all about whether we were measuring the right thing. Given a query like [site:tbray.org "rock n roll animal"], and knowing that the 1 relev…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Roll-Animal
on “Google Memory Loss”Submitted Apps Getting Worse as a story · 828 points
HN discussionI don't see any links to https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Ro... in those search results.
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Roll-Animal
on “Google Memory Loss”Submitted Graying Out as a story · 706 points
HN discussionThe first paragraph of the article mention the story of Tim Bray[0], which is exactly about this : Google forgetting an article which did not change location. [0] : https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is-losing-its-memory
on “It seems that Google is forgetting the old web”Submitted AWS and Blockchain as a story · 619 points
HN discussionTim Bray’s aeons-old blog is always good reading: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
Comment linking /ongoing/
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Just Too Efficient as a story · 570 points
HN discussion- nl · 2012-08-02
If platform operators openly stated "anything you develop can and will be used against you - by us" then no one in their right minds would develop on those platforms. There is a difference between "using something against you" and a platform keeping their options open. But, to quote Tim Bray from 2003: They own the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better wit…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “Dear Mark Zuckerberg” Submitted Why Google Did Android as a story · 552 points
HN discussionBuilding your business in an unexploited niche on another business's platform is sharecropping, pure and simple. http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “Dear Mark Zuckerberg”Submitted Mourning Google as a story · 548 points
HN discussion- nl · 2019-12-12
Perhaps. I agree that sounds good, but can you point to something that they have actually done lately? The ActivityPub process is a good example - yes, it got there, but much of the difficulties around the standardisation process seem related to the W3C process, not standardisation itself. I was involved around the edges of the Atom standardisation process[1]. There's a reason that went through the IEFT and not the…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2004/06/10/AtomIETFYes
on “Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media” Submitted Parable of the Sofa as a story · 547 points
HN discussionThis must be somewhat validating for Tim Bray, the VP/xml guy who quit over their firing https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon
on “Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds”Submitted Software in 2014 as a story · 471 points
HN discussionYour comments strike me as unaware or complacent. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A... https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/youre-just-dispos... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo... https://nypost.com/2019/07/13/inside-the-hellish-workd…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers
on “Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees”Submitted Old Geek as a story · 462 points
HN discussionSpeaking up? https://mobile.twitter.com/timbray/status/963115533825527808 https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/06/26/Shorting-...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2021/06/26/Shorting-Bitcoin
on “AWS and Blockchain”Submitted Not an Amazon Problem as a story · 428 points
HN discussionhttps://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2013/04/09/I-bought-... https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2017/05/13/Not-Belie...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/201x/2017/05/13/Not-Believing-in-Blockchain
on “AWS and Blockchain”Submitted On Password Managers as a story · 393 points
HN discussionBack in 2003, Tim Bray hit that nail: "Are You a Sharecropper?" https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePl...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “Fear of Apple”Submitted Refresh Is Sacred as a story · 370 points
HN discussion
