Top all-time · #120
Terence Eden
Personal blog · shkspr.mobi/blog · on HN as edentsecurityhardwareculture
Terence Eden's personal blog at shkspr.mobi covers security, hardware and culture. Since 2009, 332 different Hacker News readers have linked it 1,689 times, most often “The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Eden's blog for posts on government websites, privacy, digital security and small experiments, often as a reference point in discussions.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called interesting, cool and nice; one commenter says a post explains a concern they struggle to put into words.
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.
Regular nonsense about tech and its effects 🙃
Most-linked posts?
- The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML24 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2021-01-26
- How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain12 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2018-06-12
- I've locked myself out of my digital life10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-06-07
- Where is the original “Overview of SHARD” paper? (2021)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-06-27
- EBCDIC is incompatible with GDPR8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-10-25
- Why Bother with What Three Words?7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-03-28
- KYLI – because it is superior to JSON5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-03-21
- Illegal Hashes5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-11-28
- Is HTTP 451 Suitable for GDPR Blocking?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-06-10
- 40 years later, are Bentley's "Programming Pearls" still relevant?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-09-03
What Hacker News says?
Probably one of those nice Clevo laptops, more bang for my buck with that ( https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/05/review-clevo-n151cu-lafite-... ) I've weaned myself off big tech services now (except I still use Chrome, but I used that un-synced - could just change to Chromium). I just want something capable, with a nice keyboard running an OS that doesn't constantly change things underneath me, is stable, and secure. I…
Comment linking /blog/2020/05/review-clevo-n151cu-lafite-iv-system76-darter-pro-entroware-proteus/
on “An Open Letter Against Apple's Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology”Submitted NDA expired, let’s spill the beans on a weird startup as a story · 1328 points
HN discussionThe "basic bitches" version of the site should be the base, this is a gov website which will be used by the older demographic first. This article got posted here recently: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven... even outside of a pandemic people need access to gov sites from whatever device they can get their hands on > But the GOV.UK pages are written in simple HTML. They are designed to be…
Comment linking /blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/
on “CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs”Submitted The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML as a story · 1064 points
HN discussionSame author: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/12/electricity-thats-too-cheap...
Comment linking /blog/2023/12/electricity-thats-too-cheap-to-meter/
on “First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation”Submitted Why Bother with What Three Words? as a story · 948 points
HN discussionFWIW I have updated stats at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/04/3-years-of-domestic-solar-s... They're also published as open data. The dark and dreary days tend to be the ones with the most wind power. The tides around our coast are in constant motion. But, the big challenge is still storage. Domestic solar panels provide 100% of our yearly electricity use. At the moment I can only store 4.8kWh of excess. So we need…
Comment linking /blog/2023/04/3-years-of-domestic-solar-stats-in-the-uk/
on “First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation”Submitted I Have Resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee as a story · 745 points
HN discussionCan you realistically overbuild solar and wind in a way that works in winter? Here's Terence Eden in the UK, and his graph of rooftop solar[1] showing peak around 400kWh/month in summer and trough around 50kWh/month in darkest December - that's a difference of ~8x which might be possible... But that's averaged over the month, what about a run of December days with heavy cloud cover, misty foggy atmosphere, still air…
Comment linking /blog/2013/02/solar-update/
on “First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation”Submitted I've locked myself out of my digital life as a story · 729 points
HN discussionHere's a practical reason for doing this. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/01/mailchimp-leaks-your-email-... A few years ago, I discovered that referrers from MailChimp let you unsubscribe people from lists, and see their email addresses.
Comment linking /blog/2018/01/mailchimp-leaks-your-email-address/
on “Firefox 87 trims HTTP Referrers by default to protect user privacy”Submitted “It works better in the app” as a story · 715 points
HN discussionNo, the writer's misunderstanding of that use case is explained in the comments. Emergency services don't have sms/mms service. The W3W service would presumably use SMS to get location. (phone sends lat/long coords via sms, gets 3 word response). SMS tends to be more reliable than a data connection in areas with a poor connection (remote, or interference). This is doable right now - having some sort of data-to-emerg…
Comment linking /blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-words/
on “Why Bother with What Three Words?”Submitted DNS Esoterica – Why you can't dig Switzerland as a story · 703 points
HN discussionThere’s a famous article by Terence Eden about the kind of devices that people are forced to use to interact with the UK Government, written with his experiences working for the government. The devices include: A Playstation Portable. The latest stats include thousands of visits from XBox and Playstation consoles. All modern smartphone requirements boil down to Play Integrity and iOS AppStore attestations. https://s…
Comment linking /blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/
on “India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app”Submitted CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017) as a story · 696 points
HN discussionThe blockchain idea is well-intended, I believe. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vi...
Comment linking /blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vinci-on-the-blockchain/
on ““We already store data. In a database. It works well””Submitted Who is Facebook's mysterious “Lan Tim 2”? as a story · 657 points
HN discussionsee also https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/08/an-update-to-the-atkinson-h...
Comment linking /blog/2022/08/an-update-to-the-atkinson-hyperlegible-font/
on “Atkinson Hyperlegible Font”Submitted Please stop using CDNs for external JavaScript libraries as a story · 627 points
HN discussionBTW, another HN submission demonstrating how inaccurate news articles can be: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/i-have-no-facts-and-i-must-...
Comment linking /blog/2025/10/i-have-no-facts-and-i-must-scream/
on “What Americans die from vs. what the news reports on”Submitted ProctorU is dystopian spyware as a story · 602 points
HN discussionI genuinely don't know if the yellow car shown on one of these images from windows down is a taxi. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/taxi-min...
Comment linking /blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/taxi-min.png.webp
on “CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)”Submitted Just because I have a vertical screen doesn’t mean I’m on a phone as a story · 547 points
HN discussionThere is an essay like that - https://medium.com/the-mission/your-life-is-tetris-stop-play... And here's my rebuttal to it - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/01/for-some-people-life-is-har...
Comment linking /blog/2016/01/for-some-people-life-is-harder-than-chess/
on “Hatetris – Tetris which always gives you the worst piece”Submitted Symbian Won as a story · 512 points
HN discussionSlightly related, I recently hit on this SVG animation bug in Chrome (that someone else found): https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/06/an-annoying-svg-animation-b...
Comment linking /blog/2025/06/an-annoying-svg-animation-bug-in-chrome/
on “A new PNG spec”Submitted Super Tiny Website Logos in SVG as a story · 510 points
HN discussion> Do you own a WordPress site? Turn AMP off or don’t enable it in the first place. A warning - I turned off the AMP plug in and it effectively removed my site from Google for a week or so. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/removing-your-site-from-amp... The Google cache takes ages to clear away all the now-dead links and will serve 404s to your users. A nice incentive to stay trapped in their monoculture.
Comment linking /blog/2016/11/removing-your-site-from-amp/
on “I decided to disable AMP on my site”Submitted Introducing a new HTML element – welcome <clippy> as a story · 474 points
HN discussion
