Top all-time · #7510
Spencer Mortensen
Personal blog · spencermortensen.com/articlesprogrammingdesign
Spencer Mortensen's personal blog at spencermortensen.com covers programming and design. Since 2018, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “Email obfuscation: What still works in 2023?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-04, 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 Spencer Mortensen's articles on email obfuscation and approximating circles with Bezier curves, used as references for hiding email addresses from scrapers and for rounded corners and circle rendering.
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.
Most-linked posts?
- Email obfuscation: What still works in 2023?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-22
- /articles/bezier-circle/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-24
What Hacker News says?
Related: https://spencermortensen.com/articles/email-obfuscation/#tex...
Comment linking /articles/email-obfuscation/
on “Google Sheets ported its calculation worker from JavaScript to WasmGC”Submitted Email obfuscation: What works in 2026? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis requires loading an external SVG file, better use an inline version: <object data="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20200%2024%22%3E%3Ca%20href%3D%22mailto%3Amyemail%40mydomain.tld%22%3E%3Ctext%20x%3D%2250%25%22%20y%3D%2250%25%22%20dominant-baseline%3D%22middle%22%20text-anchor%3D%22middle%22%3Emyemail%40mydomain.tld%3C%2Ftext%3E%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2F…
Comment linking /articles/email-obfuscation/
on “Protecting your email address via SVG instead of JavaScript”Submitted Email obfuscation: What still works in 2023? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you use the standard way to approximate a circle with Bezier curves, it will differ from a true circle by about 0.03%. The human eye is not capable of seeing the difference, and, as the OP mentioned, most people can't accurately eyeball a perfect circle anyway. This post shows the math behind that, and then shows that it could be made even better with a few different choices. https://spencermortensen.com/articles…
Comment linking /articles/bezier-circle/
on “Circles Do Not Exist”Submitted Email obfuscation: What works in 2025? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI read this article a while back, it contains several alternatives https://spencermortensen.com/articles/email-obfuscation/
Comment linking /articles/email-obfuscation/
on “Ask HN: How to obfuscate an email on a website in 2024?”Submitted The Typographic Scale as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe article covers this method of using an image: https://spencermortensen.com/articles/email-obfuscation/#tex... The problem is that humans who want to cut and paste your email into a different client have to retype it, which is annoying and error prone.
Comment linking /articles/email-obfuscation/
on “Email obfuscation: What still works in 2023?”Submitted Approximate a Circle with Cubic Bézier Curves as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIsn't that because those corners are rendered as Bezier curves that are H/W accelerated? Usually, small radii are emulated by beziers: https://spencermortensen.com/articles/bezier-circle/
Comment linking /articles/bezier-circle/
on “Apple's Unique Device Curvature”