Top all-time · #3835
Peter Bhat Harkins
Personal blog · push.cxprogrammingsystems
Peter Bhat Harkins writes Push.cx, a personal blog at push.cx about programming and systems. Since 2007, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Google Ad Injection”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Peter Bhat Harkins' blog for posts on hiring apprentices, Nix, Mac development and Lobsters site administration, plus a draft on reverse engineering Google's ad injection into third-party sites.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blog of [Peter Bhat Harkins](https://malaprop.org)
Most-linked posts?
- Google Ad Injection3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-26
- 3 Rules of Database App Aging2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-01-16
- Extracting Immutable Objects2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-03-08
- Voicemail: driven to extreme measures2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-04
What Hacker News says?
(I'm the Lobsters admin.) Comments from merged stories do have a label showing where the came from... but only before the merge; afterwards top-level comments are always attached to the primary story which is when things get especially confusing. For this and other reasons, I'm in the middle of revamping UI for the feature and the database model: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/1456 If anyone is real cur…
Comment linking /stream
on “Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'”Submitted What Comes After MVC as a story · 111 points
HN discussionThis is a great writeup on a similar process: https://push.cx/2015/hiring-apprentices
Comment linking /2015/hiring-apprentices
on “The Hiring Post”Submitted 3 Rules of Database App Aging as a story · 79 points
HN discussionI attended NixconfNA last year as part of SCaLE. I spent quite a while trying to understand what Nix was actually trying to accomplish and how one would actually go about using it. Granted I was trying to do it on a Chromebook, but the idea stands: I should be able to get at least the nix environment set up and the silly gnu hello world built and running, right? Turns out nah. The ergonomics are just that of a hiltl…
Comment linking /nixos
on “Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts”Submitted Discord vs. IRC Rough Notes as a story · 48 points
HN discussionReturn business is primary, yes. There's standard networking things like building a blog and being friendly, but also nonstandard networking: http://push.cx/craftsmanship-calendar That calendar is way out of date now (it's on the TODO list to update tomorrowish), but spending time programming with people has done wonderful things for my network, my skills, my exposure to tech I'd otherwise ignore, my social skills,…
Comment linking /craftsmanship-calendar
on “Don't be rich, Live rich”Submitted House Rules (2018) as a story · 43 points
HN discussionI was under the impression that JungleDisk's encryption scheme was not as secure as they claimed[1]. Have they fixed it yet? [1] http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-06-03-insecurity-in-the... and its discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2616634 [2] http://push.cx/2011/retracting-my-jungledisk-recommendation
Comment linking /2011/retracting-my-jungledisk-recommendation
on “Why I Develop For The Mac”Submitted NixOS on Prgmr and Failing to Learn Nix as a story · 39 points
HN discussionI would really like ycombinator to be supported by the Sociable plugin - I don't think it takes too much to get it added, and the plugin is automatically updated every week on WordPress blogs. I hear it is easy to do: http://push.cx/sociable
Comment linking /sociable
on “Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator”Submitted Django vs. Rails: The Dead-Tree Edition as a story · 26 points
HN discussionLocation: Chicago, IL, USA Remote: yes Willing to relocate: no Technologies: Haskell, Rails, hybridizations of the two, JS, sysadmin Hybridizations, you say?: https://push.cx/2015/railsconf Blog: https://push.cx Email: ph@ blog domain Resume: available via email
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2015)”Submitted Distributed ID Generation and Bit Packing as a story · 25 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK - Nomadically traveling the world (currently in .ca) - Remote only, availability up to 20h/wk Currently do web dev front to back on Rails/jQuery/real life js/MySQL/Postgres. Can do PHP, Django, but usually only for porting to Rails. Rebuilt the .pro registry and did most of the Washington Post's 2008 online election coverage. github: http://github.com/pushcx blog: http://push.cx email: ph@ the blog
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancers? (June 2011)”Submitted Don't Play Hurt as a story · 25 points
HN discussionYeah. It's fairly likely the ads link to a URL with a recognizable pattern. Failing that, if an ad is reproducible we can iterate with a site owner to detect the DOM modification a few different ways. I've drafted a blog post to collaborate with others on reverse engineering this: https://push.cx/google-ad-injection
Comment linking /google-ad-injection
on “Google's iOS app now injects links on third-party websites that go to Search”Submitted Google Ad Injection as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI'm also building one, been blogging as I go: http://push.cx/tag/athenge And, yeah, I have a similarly low opinion of the game industry as this article. Looking at it from the outside I see no reason to be part of it, I'm happier to be a software company that does games rather than a games company. http://push.cx/2009/the-game-industry
Comment linking /2009/the-game-industry
on “Most MMO companies are "rudderless ships of doomed people"”Submitted Economics Doesn’t Believe in Magic as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSEEKING WORK | Chicago, IL | Remote OK 10+ years of experience with Rails development, mostly helping startups launch as a consultant. I've spoken at RailsConf and several other conferences, and written a book on Ruby. I also have significant experience with devops automation, React, Python, and mentoring junior developers. I have availability for part-time work and maintenance retainers. Not available for strict ma…
Comment linking /consulting
on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2018)”Submitted Y Combinator News as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI use Django at the Washington Post to develop interactive databases and respond to breaking news. Most of the codebase was written by Adrian Holovaty, a creator of Django, and it's by far the best codebase I've ever inherited. The admin interface is truly great and allows the non-technical folks to easily work with data, and it's nice that it's consistent across projects. The templating was easy to train graphic de…
Comment linking /2007/washingtonpostcom
on “Ask YC: Who is using django and what has your experience been so far?”Submitted Extracting Immutable Objects as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted Distributed ID Generation and Bit Packing (2014) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ripping Unicode (2006) as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Voicemail: driven to extreme measures as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Markoff's Gated Community Should Die in a Fire as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted TV Setup as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Google Ad Injection as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
