Top all-time · #4509
Workbench
Personal blog · workbench.cadenhead.org/newsprogrammingwriting
Workbench is a personal blog at workbench.cadenhead.org about programming and writing. Since 2009, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 17 times, most often “There's a Reason RSSCloud Failed to Catch On”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Workbench for posts on RSS and Atom history, RSSCloud, domain-name disputes such as bit.ly and .ly, and tech news like the Digg acquisition. Comments cite its posts as background rather than praising them.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /news/3503/bitly-builds-business-libya-domain2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-05
- There's a Reason RSSCloud Failed to Catch On2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-09
What Hacker News says?
> Pope names form a fairly limited set. Does it? For starters consider that "Francis" was a new name - he's the first pope to use it. He was also the first pope in a millennium to pick an entirely new name (John Paul I obviously was the first pope John Paul, but he picked two names that has a very long tradition, and that are obviously names with a very special connection to the church; consider also that some disli…
Comment linking /news/3712/predicting-next-popes-name
on “What Happened When We Tried to Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel”Submitted Aaron Swartz really did co-author RSS spec at age 14 as a story · 263 points
HN discussion$500K? I cant still remember the first time I saw this cover: http://workbench.cadenhead.org/media/businessweek-kevin-rose...
Comment linking /media/businessweek-kevin-rose-digg-cover.png
on “Betaworks has acquired the core assets of Digg”Submitted Kvikkalkul: the secret programming language of the Swedish Navy? as a story · 113 points
HN discussionYou missed the shenanigans around Libya and the .LY domain, I guess? http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3503/bitly-builds-busine...
Comment linking /news/3503/bitly-builds-business-libya-domain
on “Castle.so Upload and share your files, beautifully.”Submitted There's a Reason RSSCloud Failed to Catch On as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThere may ideally be only 4 versions of RSS, but Winer was responsible for 6 of them :) Mark may be an asshole, but he's nearly always correct (save for his recent Apple II fixation), and he follows up instead of trying to edit his mistakes from the record. He has a lot of company in hating Winer, basically everyone Dave's ever worked on anything with. Here's some examples of classic Dave: http://www.metafilter.com/…
Comment linking /news/2881/
on “Why Atom was created”Submitted CURL creator / Mozilla employee denied US entry as a story · 7 points
HN discussionFrom [0]: > By the time Raymond could legally sell his VA Linux shares in June 2000, they had plunged $31 million in value to a still-impressive $5.5 million. > Thanks to the dot-com bust -- fed in large part by big-hype, no-hope companies like VA Linux, the worth of Raymond's shares had dropped to $195,000, a loss of more than $5 million. From [1]: > Back at IPO time I wrote an essay called "Surprised By Wealth" in…
Comment linking /news/3149/eric-s-raymond-bazaar-financial-advisor
on “In which, alas, I must rattle a tin cup”Submitted Kvikkalkul, the secret programming language of the Swedish Navy as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAh, I was correct to theorize the sheer number of connections would be a huge problem: http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3555/theres-reason-rsscl...
Comment linking /news/3555/theres-reason-rsscloud-failed-catch
on “WordPress Just Made Millions of Blogs Real-Time With RSSCloud”Submitted Was the First Blog a .Plan File? (2007) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI tried hunting through the government website, and it lists a large number of registrars, but none of them seem to offer an easy way to sign up for one. Keep in mind the following things though: (1) You need to have a business in Nigeria (2) ccTLDs are subject to local laws, so be careful before basing your brand around a ccTLD name. Case in point: Bitly http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3503/bitly-builds-busine.…
Comment linking /news/3503/bitly-builds-business-libya-domain
on “Microsoft has just registered bi.ng”Submitted Stephen Glass Couldn't Get Away with It Today as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs genius as he is, doesn't everything seem to boil down to a battle of wits or a vendetta with Dave? Wouldn't be the first time ( http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/2881/letter-dave-winers-... ) or the last.. :-) Similar rows broke out when Atom wasn't even called Atom, but Echo.. http://news.cnet.com/2009-1032_3-5059006.html?tag=fd_lede1_h...
Comment linking /news/2881/letter-dave-winers-attorney
on “An open letter to Google”Funnily enough the changes were made based on a bug report by Tim Berners-Lee himself, who noticed link rot and missing links to specifications. Hence the commits by an W3C employee, who cleaned up the markup and apparently took the RSS 2.0 spec from the RSS Board website. Which in effect is understandable from the employees point of view – an RSS board seems vastly more official and stable than a link on a random s…
Comment linking /news/2860/rss-means-never-being-board
on “W3C and My RSS Spec”
