Top all-time · #4697
Ned Utzig
Personal blog · madned.substack.com · on HN as mad_nedprogrammingsystemshistory
Ned Utzig writes The Mad Ned Memo, a personal blog at madned.substack.com about programming, systems and history. Since 2021, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 82 times, most often “A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mad Ned for its storytelling posts, such as a teenager's guide to avoiding work, and its Thin Pipe series on community broadband in Princeton, Massachusetts, cited as a resource for municipal internet projects.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Nerdy tales and discussion from the past three or four decades of computer hardware, software, games, engineering, hacking, and other sundries. Scary and fun ones too.
Most-linked posts?
- A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-19
- An old hacker's tips on staying employed3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-08-11
- My multi-decade quest for rural broadband2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-06
- When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-10
- /p/thin-pipe-part-ii2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-05-12
- A Teenager's Guide to Workplace Ethics2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-07-14
- The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-24
- Always Mount a Scratch Monkey2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-19
- Memories of Weird Memories, of Computers Past2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-04
- The Case for the Liberal Arts Programmer2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-09
What Hacker News says?
I loved the story! It seems that in the comment section under the blog post, there is good stuff too for example the one that starts with: > Ned (if that is your real name), I have a story with virtually the same beginning, a different middle, and a similar end... [1] [1] https://madned.substack.com/p/a-teenagers-guide-to-avoiding-...
Comment linking /p/a-teenagers-guide-to-avoiding-actual/comments
on “A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work”Submitted A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work as a story · 1464 points
HN discussionhttps://madned.substack.com/ What hooked me: https://madned.substack.com/p/a-teenagers-guide-to-avoiding-... which was on HN a week or two ago.
Comment linking /p/a-teenagers-guide-to-avoiding-actual
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Thanks for the Bonus, I Quit as a story · 1245 points
HN discussion> I really REALLY wish more people/cities would take this "fuck you, we'll do it ourselves" attitude. This is hard. Start here: https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i The problem is the activation energy and a bunch of people who will oppose you no matter how useful something is.
Comment linking /p/thin-pipe-part-i
on “The FCC needs to stop 5G fast lanes”Submitted An old hacker's tips on staying employed as a story · 815 points
HN discussionSorry, i was out of a spare scratch monkey. https://madned.substack.com/p/always-mount-a-scratch-monkey
Comment linking /p/always-mount-a-scratch-monkey
on “Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?”Submitted Internal competition can often be the most dangerous kind as a story · 255 points
HN discussionIt's unfortunate that The Good Scott Adams occasionally gets mixed up with The Evil Scott Adams. It's so ironic that they share a name. Many people know who the The Evil Scott Adams is, because he's such an unrepentant attention starved troll who is notorious not only for making a sock puppet to praise and flatter himself as a genius on internet forums, but for his obsessive unvarnished hateful bigotry, racism ("bla…
Comment linking /p/the-further-text-adventures-of-scott
on “Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles”Submitted My multi-decade quest for rural broadband as a story · 241 points
HN discussionI feel like the author might benefit from reading a blog post that was posted on HN a while back[0][1], specifically the "two and done rule" and the "do it anyway principal". Yes your manager is wrong, but the way you handled it is very immature. There are "shit" managers everywhere, if you get one, suck it up and start planning your escape. If you really want, you can go higher up the chain and raise your concerns.…
Comment linking /p/an-old-hackers-tips-on-staying-employed
on “A conflict with a manager ended with me being disallowed to work at Spotify”Submitted The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams as a story · 236 points
HN discussionIf you mean "Thin Pipe, part II" - its there. hackernews moderators did something weird - this original post and early comments were just part 2 of the story, since i had posted part 1 separately last week. they relinked this part 2 post back to part 1, which was the earlier stuff leading up to the municipal broadband part. but the comments for part 2 remain. anyway sorry for any confusion - direct link for part 2 i…
Comment linking /p/thin-pipe-part-ii
on “My multi-decade quest for rural broadband”Submitted A talk with Walter Bright about Empire as a story · 228 points
HN discussionYou might want to contact the people who went through this in Princeton, Massachusetts: https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-ii They probably have lots of contacts.
Comment linking /p/thin-pipe-part-ii
on “Ask HN: Advice on bringing community broadband to Los Alamos?”Submitted When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021) as a story · 218 points
HN discussionOh no, I thought this was about the GOOD Scott Adams, pioneer of Adventure on microcomputers. He did a wonderful AMA on Hacker News a while ago (and didn't even praise himself with a sock puppet like the Evil Scott Adams used to do), and it was quite engaging. He's a really kind guy, who faithfully practices Christianity instead of weaponizing it. I'm glad the verify from his Facebook account that the Good Scott Ada…
Comment linking /p/the-further-text-adventures-of-scott
on “Scott Adams has passed away”Submitted Black Hat Exploits of the Stupid-Easy 80s as a story · 204 points
HN discussionAnd this can be a mixed bag. Princeton, MA is a really good example because they've got success and failure. They sort of succeeded with Internet and sort of failed with electricity (and windmills). See Mad Ned blogs for Internet: https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-ii
Comment linking /p/thin-pipe-part-ii
on “An Upstate Town Took Back Its Power (2023)”Submitted Found a program I wrote in 1981 and decided to bring it back to life as a story · 197 points
HN discussionWith D language it can be the music, instruments, player and the conductor all at once [1]. Fun facts, Walter the original author of D language wrote his popular Empire game in Fortran [2]. Some of the ideas that make Fortran fast is incorporated into D language design and this makes D is as easy if not easier to optimize than Fortran [1]. [1]Numeric age for D: Mir GLAS is faster than OpenBLAS and Eigen: http://blog…
Comment linking /p/a-talk-with-computer-gaming-pioneer
on “Is Fortran easier to optimize than C for heavy calculations?”Submitted I decided to build a nine-bit computer as a story · 180 points
HN discussionSubmitted The sunny side of firing someone as a story · 103 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hacking around on the telephone, the internet before the internet as a story · 45 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Kiss of Death as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSubmitted Two Things I Learned When I Crash Landed at a Startup as a story · 33 points
HN discussionSubmitted Memories of Weird Memories, of Computers Past as a story · 32 points
HN discussionSubmitted An old hacker's tips on staying employed (2021) as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubmitted Trash Eighties: Radio Shack's Golden Years as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Good Cragile: Crappy Agile that works as a story · 10 points
HN discussion
