Top all-time · #8701
William Denton
Personal blog · miskatonic.orgprogrammingmath
William Denton writes Miskatonic University Press, a personal blog at miskatonic.org about programming and math. Since 2010, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem explained”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link William Denton's blog for posts on Word-file tools (lessfilter, mswordview), the Hammett/Chandler slang story of 'gunsel', and a Gödel Incompleteness Theorem explainer.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem explained2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-03-21
What Hacker News says?
For those curious / on a nostalgia trip, "mswordview" was the name at the time. The project lives as the wvWare library, which reads and parses MS Word 2000, 97, 95, and 6 file formats: < https://wvware.sourceforge.net/ > A primer on lessfilter: < https://www.miskatonic.org/2020/06/24/lessfilter/ > And lesspipe: < https://www-zeuthen.desy.de/~friebel/unix/lesspipe.html >
Comment linking /2020/06/24/lessfilter/
on “Pandoc”Submitted Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem explained as a story · 111 points
HN discussionAnyone interested in this stuff, definitely read up on gunsel and gooseberry lay if you haven't: https://www.miskatonic.org/gooseberry.html In short, it's a story of Dashiell Hammett setting out to sneak a then-unpublishable bit of slang (gunsel) past his editor, and as a result giving the word an entirely new meaning (which has now become accepted usage).
Comment linking /gooseberry.html
on “Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo”Submitted Books and Chapters in Zotero (2024) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Should I run an exit relay from my home? A bridge is different than running an exit relay. A Bridge allows someone who's ISP blocks access to the TOR network to bypass that by connecting to your bridge.[0] Bridge relays are Tor relays that are not listed in the public Tor directory. That means that ISPs or governments trying to block access to the Tor network can’t simply block all bridges. Bridges are useful for…
Comment linking /2024/04/07/how-i-set-up-a-tor-bridge/
on “Ask HN: I have excess compute, how can I contribute positively to the Internet?”Submitted Tidy data in org: inline charts in a text editor as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe linked page is a much better resource for understanding the Incompleteness Theorem: http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html
Comment linking /godel.html
on “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem for dummies”Submitted How I use Emacs for Getting Things Done as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
