Top all-time · #807
Stavros
Personal blog · stavros.io · on HN as stavrosprogramminghardware
Stavros's personal blog at stavros.io covers programming and hardware. Since 2013, 81 different Hacker News readers have linked it 419 times, most often “I found the Holy Grail of backups (2014)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-04, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Stavros' posts on borg backups, WireGuard and home hardware projects, mostly as sources. A few commenters recommend the borg and WireGuard guides.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter says the borg backup post explains why to use it; another says the WireGuard guide helps.
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?
- I found the Holy Grail of backups (2014)9 people · 48 mentions · first linked 2016-02-12
- How to Easily Configure WireGuard8 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2018-08-05
- How to use FIDO2 USB keys with SSH7 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-06-30
- Clearing up some misconceptions about Passkeys5 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2023-06-08
- "How I write software with LLMs"4 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2026-03-16
- /4 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-02-22
- Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-04-13
- Making an AI-generated sleep podcast4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-12-06
- Show HN: I made an alarm clock4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-25
- Switch to Jujutsu Already: A Tutorial4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-12
What Hacker News says?
You should look into the 'borg' backup tool - it has become the de facto standard for remote backups because it does everything that rsync does (efficient, changes only backups) but also produces strongly encrypted remote backup sets that only you have a key to ... your cloud provider has no access to the data. The borg website is here: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ and a good description of how it wo…
Comment linking /posts/holy-grail-backups/
on “Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained”Submitted Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona as a story · 905 points
HN discussionBy the way, if you get a bunch of these and want to have them communicate with other devices and themselves in a secure manner, I wrote a library to do just that: http://www.stavros.io/posts/introducing-string-phone/ Feedback appreciated!
Comment linking /posts/introducing-string-phone/
on “Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer”Submitted I just had over a thousand Euros stolen and Revolut is siding with the thief as a story · 705 points
HN discussionI was in the same boat, hopefully this will help: https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-to-configure-wireguard/ It's actually very easy to set up, I don't know why the official docs make it seem super hard.
Comment linking /posts/how-to-configure-wireguard/
on “Warp – Mobile VPN”Submitted Show HN: Ledonardo, my light painting hardware project as a story · 442 points
HN discussionI converted an old rotary phone into a mobile phone ( https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/ ), and the quality is much better than a mobile. Even just the sidetone makes it SO much better to talk on. I have no idea why modern mobile phones have no (or very low volume?) sidetone. It makes the UX orders of magnitude better.
Comment linking /posts/irotary-saga/
on “Installing a payphone in my house”Submitted Winning at Candy Crush as a story · 409 points
HN discussionhttps://www.stavros.io , I make silly stuff with technology. Read if you like 3D-printed googly cat eyes, I guess.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Why is everything so scalable? as a story · 408 points
HN discussionYep, here you are: https://www.stavros.io/posts/building-cheap-home-sensorcontr... I used an ESP8266 with cheapo sensors, the whole board costs like $5 or something. The software is pretty ad-hoc but is not more than 100 lines of code.
Comment linking /posts/building-cheap-home-sensorcontroller/
on “Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?”Submitted Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time as a story · 405 points
HN discussionI did this and wrote about it[0]. It works really well, is very fast and doesn't compromise your users' data. There are also libraries that make it very easy to add. [0]: https://www.stavros.io/posts/scourge-web-analytics/
Comment linking /posts/scourge-web-analytics/
on “Sites using Facebook ‘Like’ button liable for data, EU court rules”Submitted I made my own PCBs with a 3D printer as a story · 285 points
HN discussionI use OneSignal on my blog ( https://www.stavros.io/ ), which shows a small bell on the bottom right. If you click the bell, you get prompted to enable notifications for new articles. Quite a few people have done that, as it's pretty convenient if you want to be notified of new content.
Comment linking /
on “Reducing notification permission prompt spam in Firefox”Submitted The microservices cargo cult as a story · 277 points
HN discussionI used the Stavros one: https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-to-configure-wireguard/ Great to see 1.0.0 released. I’ve been using it for a VPN to my home network and have been really impressed with how fast it is (and how fast it connects!). The corporate VPNs I’ve used in the past we’re so much slower that it feels like a completely different league, although they support many more features of course.
Comment linking /posts/how-to-configure-wireguard/
on “WireGuard 1.0 for Linux 5.6”Submitted Show HN: I made an alarm clock as a story · 271 points
HN discussionGreat, setting this up will be my next post, then (for reference, my site is ( http://www.stavros.io/ , subscribe to my mailing list to be notified of new posts: http://eepurl.com/BbHo5 ). Coincidentally, I wrote about the first half of this setup yesterday: http://www.stavros.io/posts/no-hassle-emails-from-home/
Comment linking /posts/no-hassle-emails-from-home/
on “Dear Googles: Stop asking”Submitted Writing a full-text search engine using Bloom filters (2013) as a story · 258 points
HN discussionOP here. Just to clarify, because I see a lot of congratulations. I just shared the project, I'm not the author. Based on the GitLab project, the author seems to be @stavros: - https://gitlab.com/stavros/Spamnesty - https://twitter.com/stavros - https://www.stavros.io/
Comment linking /
on “Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time”Submitted Brilliant or insane code? as a story · 250 points
HN discussionOh wow, seventh? I think it's the second time I see it. Didn't I only build it a few months ago? EDIT: Oh huh, it's been more than a year: https://www.stavros.io/posts/spamnesty-waste-spammers-time/ How time flies.
Comment linking /posts/spamnesty-waste-spammers-time/
on “Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time”Submitted Show HN: An old rotary phone converted into a mobile phone as a story · 222 points
HN discussionHere you go: https://www.stavros.io/posts/spam-spammers-back/
Comment linking /posts/spam-spammers-back/
on “I Received an AI Email”Submitted Show HN: I made a 5-key keyboard as a story · 221 points
HN discussionI migrated from MongoDB to SQLite for a project a few years ago, it was much more performant: http://www.stavros.io/posts/using-sqlite-for-great-science-p... I think the data size ended up being a GB or so.
Comment linking /posts/using-sqlite-for-great-science-part-1-or-3-i-guess/
on “Don't use Hadoop when your data isn't that big”Submitted I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset as a story · 167 points
HN discussion> https://www.stavros.io/posts/fastapi-with-django/ Commonly referred to as "transliteration", and the transliteration is spelled "shiitake".
Comment linking /posts/fastapi-with-django/
on “Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font”Submitted The scourge of web analytics as a story · 160 points
HN discussion
