Top all-time · #1271
Paul Ford
Personal blog · ftrain.comwritingprogrammingculture
Paul Ford writes Ftrain.com, a personal blog at ftrain.com about writing, programming and culture. Since 2007, 58 different Hacker News readers have linked it 62 times, most often “The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (WWIC: Why Wasn't I Consulted?)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Essays and stories by Paul Ford. Since 1997.
Most-linked posts?
- The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (WWIC: Why Wasn't I Consulted?)14 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2011-01-06
- Why Wasn't I Consulted?7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-03-04
- My daughter was first sued in the womb7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2011-05-16
- Robot Exclusion Protocol4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-07-28
- Nanolaw with Daughter (2011)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-06-12
- Real Editors Ship3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-07-20
- 202 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-10-26
- ReichOS: if the Nazis had won, would we have Linux?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-09-29
What Hacker News says?
Your post reminds me of http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html .
Comment linking /wwic.html
on “This is a web page”Submitted My daughter was first sued in the womb as a story · 477 points
HN discussionWhy wasn't I consulted?! http://www.ftrain.com/SiteLaunch.html
Comment linking /SiteLaunch.html
on “Flickr gets new UI, new Android app, 1 TB free space”Submitted Unicode table for you as a story · 41 points
HN discussionRelevant: https://www.ftrain.com/nanolaw
Comment linking /nanolaw
on “Astra for Law”Submitted The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (WWIC: Why Wasn't I Consulted?) as a story · 37 points
HN discussionTo play devil's advocate for a moment, we should also remember that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) people do have a choice in what they're offended by, and how they react to those feelings of offence. A lot of the people in this thread aren't even saying that they find it offensive personally, but that they feel that they ought to find it offensive on behalf of other people, which is very much a conscious dec…
Comment linking /wwic.html
on “Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only”Submitted Interactive Unicode Table as a story · 28 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of a short story by Paul Ford from a few years back[1]: We had gone to a baseball game at the beginning of the season. They had played a song on the public address system, and she sang along without permission. They used to factor that into ticket price—they still do if you pay extra or have a season pass—but now other companies handled the followup. And here was the video from that day, one of many…
Comment linking /nanolaw
on “Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games”Submitted Nanolaw with Daughter (2011) as a story · 18 points
HN discussionYeah, the open-source project I'm on moved all of our dev communications (†all of them) to discord, several years ago, and gladly left IRC without the dignity of a burial. † Email and mailing lists were something we forbade from day 1. There are a variety of sociological reasons why they're vile, but I think a lot of it has to do with bikeshedding, via "low-cost involvement" - people who care more about potstirring…
Comment linking /wwic
on “Microsoft in talks to buy Discord for more than $10B”Submitted What is this new thing? You're a nerd. Explain it immediately. as a story · 15 points
HN discussion> > Please (please.build) > 'build' kind of indicates that Not the GP, but as a developer reasonably conversant with build systems and their pain points, I still assumed this was going to be some form of lazyweb[0] related blog post or portal rather than a build system named 'Please'. [0] https://ftrain.com/dear-lazyweb
Comment linking /dear-lazyweb
on “Please – A cross-language build system”Submitted Your honor, I just wanted to build a hierarchy of topic pages. as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI think the one you're thinking of features a little girl being sued for benefiting from colonial-era crimes in the Belgian Congo (among other micro-lawsuits). This is Paul Ford's "Nanolaw with Daughter": http://www.ftrain.com/nanolaw.html
Comment linking /nanolaw.html
on “Justice-as-a-Service”Submitted Real Editors Ship as a story · 9 points
HN discussionThe comments on this thread are such an embarrassment. Someone's worked hard on something for months, and people go and piss all over it. If you don't think this is a useful or good app, you don't even have to look at it. Just pass. At least when someone launches a product, if you don't have anything encouraging or constructive to say, it's best not to say anything. It seems HN is suffering more and more from the "W…
Comment linking /wwic.html
on “Cheddar”Submitted The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (2011) as a story · 8 points
HN discussionGood companion to Paul Ford's Passivator: http://www.ftrain.com/ThePassivator.html
Comment linking /ThePassivator.html
on “BlaBlaMeter detects how much bullshit is in your text”Submitted Robot Exclusion Protocol as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI just did a search for an error message in a piece of software. The one result from Google was my own pastebinned traceback from five hours earlier. Google indexes random pastebins faster than I can forget I posted them. This still cracks me up, but now I laugh nervously: http://www.ftrain.com/robot_exclusion_protocol.html
Comment linking /robot_exclusion_protocol.html
on “Google already knows its search sucks (and is working to fix it)”Submitted Why wasn't I consulted? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThat reminds of a short story I read recently: http://www.ftrain.com/robot_exclusion_protocol.html
Comment linking /robot_exclusion_protocol.html
on “Google Maps Street View capture... from a bike”Submitted ReichOS: if the Nazis had won, would we have Linux? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe tferris comment (is it the tferris? It's been very active recently.) is basically what Gabriel pointed out -- an instant inverse reaction to the post's theme. In our digital isolation, it's natural. We want to scream "They are wrong and I am right! Look at me!" When we see someone else getting attention, we want to divert the stream of eyeballs and admiration to ourselves. It's exactly "Why wasn't I consulted?"…
Comment linking /wwic.html
on “Eliciting emotion”Submitted Time's Inverted Index as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis short piece of fiction seemed so far off before. Now it seems closer: http://www.ftrain.com/nanolaw.html
Comment linking /nanolaw.html
on “Ever wanted to programmatically file a lawsuit? In Poland, you can.”Submitted Real Editors Ship as a story · 4 points
HN discussion'“Why wasn't I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.' https://www.ftrain.com/wwic
Comment linking /wwic
on “Ask HN: Why do people write comments?”Submitted The Pyrophone, an early sound synthesizer utilizing tubes and fire (1876) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
