Top all-time · #2589
Paul Butler
Personal blog · paulbutler.org · on HN as paulgbprogrammingdatastartups
Paul Butler writes Posts on, a personal blog at paulbutler.org about programming, data and startups. Since 2007, 29 different Hacker News readers have linked it 58 times, most often “The WebAssembly App Gap”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Paul Butler's blog for technical posts, including smuggling data through invisible UTF-8 characters, the WebAssembly app gap, tail recursion in Python, and a critique of play-to-earn crypto games.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The WebAssembly App Gap6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-05-17
- Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2025-02-08
- An experiment in A/B Testing my Résumé4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-07-02
- Visualizing Facebook Friends: Eye Candy in R4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-12-19
- Tail Recursion in Python3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-01-23
- What does it mean to listen on a port?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-13
- Betting Against Bitcoin2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-10-26
- The problem with Bitcoin miners2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-15
- Paul Butler's Groupon "Gross Revenue" visualization2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-28
- “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-28
What Hacker News says?
>wear on mining machines There is virtually no wear on mining machines from actual use. There is, but it's negligible compared the main cause of depreciation of mining machines: better hardware coming out every 2-4 years AND the reduction in mining reward rate[1]. A bitcoin mining rig is worth essentially 0 after 2 years due to this depreciation. Not failure from wear. This is also true for GPU miners. Second, there…
Comment linking /2022/the-problem-with-bitcoin-miners/
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs as a story · 1222 points
HN discussion> so you can easily find the beginning of the next or previous character. It is not true [1]. While it is not UTF-8 problem per se, it is a problem of how UTF-8 is being used. [1] https://paulbutler.org/2025/smuggling-arbitrary-data-through...
Comment linking /2025/smuggling-arbitrary-data-through-an-emoji/
on “UTF-8 is a brilliant design”Submitted What does it mean to listen on a port? as a story · 853 points
HN discussionI’ve been shorting a few bitcoin-related public companies on the theory that in a run on Tether they will have to liquidate large bitcoin holdings and bring down the rest of the market. It’s not as direct, but I’m less worried about counterparty risk. I wrote up my thesis here: https://paulbutler.org/2021/betting-against-bitcoin/
Comment linking /2021/betting-against-bitcoin/
on “Report on Stablecoins [pdf]”Submitted Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji as a story · 769 points
HN discussionIt goes both ways, the sandboxing means that the app has less access to the OS, but the flip side is that the open web has more access to the app (CSRF, XSS, evil extensions, etc.) Coincidentally, I just published a blog post that touches on this from both sides: https://paulbutler.org/2020/the-webassembly-app-gap/
Comment linking /2020/the-webassembly-app-gap/
on “Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?”Submitted Why is it so hard to give Google money? as a story · 696 points
HN discussionI wrote a (very surface level) comparison on this last year[1]. If you already have V8 in your environment, it's probably worth using V8, but if you just want to load a wasm interpreter into some Rust code, wasmtime is a much nicer interface to work with and more lightweight. [1] https://paulbutler.org/2021/calling-webassembly-from-rust/ (nb. if I were to write this post today, it would be an omission not to mention…
Comment linking /2021/calling-webassembly-from-rust/
on “Wasmtime 1.0”Submitted The problem with Bitcoin miners as a story · 436 points
HN discussionThanks! FWIW, this is a follow up to an older article that covered a number of other issues with bitcoin's economics: https://paulbutler.org/2021/betting-against-bitcoin/
Comment linking /2021/betting-against-bitcoin/
on “The problem with Bitcoin miners”Submitted The hater's guide to Kubernetes as a story · 288 points
HN discussionYes, it was R. The author explains: http://paulbutler.org/archives/visualizing-facebook-friends/
Comment linking /archives/visualizing-facebook-friends/
on “Facebook intern visualizes friendships, draws world map”Submitted An experiment in A/B Testing my Résumé as a story · 109 points
HN discussionIt's the same Paul Butler that posted about A/B testing a CV http://paulbutler.org/archives/experiment-in-testing-my-resu...
Comment linking /archives/experiment-in-testing-my-resume/
on “Facebook intern visualizes friendships, draws world map”Submitted Betting Against Bitcoin as a story · 83 points
HN discussionAdmittedly I’m not very well read on the whole play2earn. However, I think the article posted on hn the other day about it makes a pretty compelling argument that it’s a Ponzi scheme. Article: https://paulbutler.org/2021/play-to-earn-and-bullshit-jobs/
Comment linking /2021/play-to-earn-and-bullshit-jobs/
on “Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?”Submitted Visualizing Facebook Friends: Eye Candy in R as a story · 47 points
HN discussionI've written about why I think this is a disingenuous comparison: https://paulbutler.org/archives/stop-dragging-hayek-into-bit...
Comment linking /archives/stop-dragging-hayek-into-bitcoin/
on “The Bitcoin Whales: 1,000 People Who Own 40 Percent of the Market”Submitted Why R Doesn't Suck as a story · 47 points
HN discussionYou can buy put options or outright short the mining companies. I don't recommend it unless you really know what you're doing and what the risks are, but it's worked out well for me. I've written about it a couple times. https://paulbutler.org/2022/the-problem-with-bitcoin-miners/ https://paulbutler.org/2021/betting-against-bitcoin/
Comment linking /2021/betting-against-bitcoin/
on “Bitcoin falls under $16,000”Submitted Do we really need another programming language? as a story · 38 points
HN discussionInteresting! Alternatively you could encode that in variation selectors on a zero width space: https://paulbutler.org/2025/smuggling-arbitrary-data-through...
Comment linking /2025/smuggling-arbitrary-data-through-an-emoji/
on “Can your terminal do emojis? How big?”Submitted Tail recursion in Python as a story · 30 points
HN discussionAnother project with similar goals in mind: https://paulbutler.org/2020/the-webassembly-app-gap/ Also backed by YC.
Comment linking /2020/the-webassembly-app-gap/
on “A Graph-Based Firebase”Submitted Groupon Math: Data scraping to estimate revenue as a story · 15 points
HN discussionMy resumes are typically tweaked to be job specific. Do I get to create just one generic apply-to-all copy? How about tracking metrics other than just views? Following http://paulbutler.org/archives/experiment-in-testing-my-resu... there are: how far into resume one scrolls, clickthroughs on embedded links, inclusion/exclusion of sections (e.g. grades for recent grads).
Comment linking /archives/experiment-in-testing-my-resume/
on “Resume.io - Crazy-simple online resumes with impression tracking.”Submitted Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI wondered how it would handle an infinite loop of javascript alerts, so I wrote a little script to test it: http://www.paulbutler.org/projects/chrome/test.html It passed! I'd be curious to know how Opera and Safari do on the test. I have a hunch Opera might pass it.
Comment linking /projects/chrome/test.html
on “The Google Chrome download link is live.”Submitted Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji as a story · 8 points
HN discussion
