Top all-time · #872
André Staltz
Personal blog · staltz.comprogrammingweb
André Staltz's personal blog at staltz.com covers programming and web. Since 2014, 77 different Hacker News readers have linked it 160 times, most often “Google, Facebook, and Amazon have fundamentally transformed the web”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Open Source Freelancer
Most-linked posts?
- Google, Facebook, and Amazon have fundamentally transformed the web9 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2017-10-30
- An off-grid social network7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-04-06
- Software Below the Poverty Line6 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2019-06-13
- A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-12-18
- Is your JavaScript function actually pure?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-08-26
- Promises are not neutral enough4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-02-14
- Time Till Open Source Alternative4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-08-27
- Why we need Callbags (pattern for observables/streams)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-01-30
- Some people want to run their own servers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-08
- Monolithic or Modular: The Two Schools of Thought in Open Source2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-12-04
What Hacker News says?
It's not only Google, some argue we have been slowly moving from an Internet to a Trinet where GOOG-FB-AMZN control the majority of the web traffic while staying out of each others way [0] [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube”Submitted An off-grid social network as a story · 1031 points
HN discussionAndre Staltz has a pretty good article[0] about how that collapse is already happening with the likes of Facebook, Google, and Amazon taking over every other site. [0]: https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see”Submitted Google, Facebook, and Amazon have fundamentally transformed the web as a story · 712 points
HN discussionThis article nicely complements anither one: https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web”Submitted Time Till Open Source Alternative as a story · 500 points
HN discussion> No one is forced to use TikTok. TikTok was nearly forced to sell parts of its operation so it could continue operating in the US, in India it's actually banned. > DuckDuckGo's success is an example of that. As good as DDG is, it's not that great of an example as all the background tech there still relies on Microsoft's Bing, which means there is very much a US-centric search engine monopoly in place. > that will f…
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority”Submitted JavaScript libraries should be written in TypeScript as a story · 386 points
HN discussionCouldn’t help but think of this story in the back of my head: https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “AMP for email is a terrible idea”Submitted The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017) as a story · 370 points
HN discussionOh wait, we already had that, and then we centralized and monopolized the hell out of it [0] [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless cybersecurity policies”Submitted Software Below the Poverty Line as a story · 345 points
HN discussionBut switching to another browser does nothing to challenge AMP, as these changes are mostly pushed on the server-end while changes to the browser end, like this one, serve to further obfuscate this consolidation of Google's dominance on the web. In that context, it's a bit cynical to belittle the problem as you are doing there when this has been a very real issue for several years. As by now Google, Facebook, and Am…
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Google adds experimental setting to hide full URLs in Chrome 85 address bar”Submitted A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet as a story · 279 points
HN discussionIt's not childish. That's the main problem with open source as a whole: devs expect somebody else to maintain projects indefinitely long, for free. This is what's unsustainable. See "Software below poverty line": https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html
Comment linking /software-below-the-poverty-line.html
on “FUSE for macOS is no longer open source”Submitted Promises are not neutral enough as a story · 202 points
HN discussionIA being sued out of existence would fit perfectly into this dumpster fire of a timeline. Right now it's one of the few easily accessible places on the web that haven't completely caved in to copyright and moderation censorship, the only way to keep web "news media" somewhat accountable by having an actual historical record one can point at. Once that's gone, misinformation serving pro-US narratives will go into com…
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit”Submitted Some people want to run their own servers as a story · 199 points
HN discussionAh i think i may have misunderstood how the system is made. It is purely peer to peer. So any issues could be if the software has a security vulnerability, but I'm not sure how that ties in with things like "as-use" open source licensing. This post explained the network fairly well I found: https://staltz.com/an-off-grid-social-network.html As far as GDPR goes, you're right because you're specifically choosing peopl…
Comment linking /an-off-grid-social-network.html
on “Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook”Submitted Why React/Redux is inferior as a paradigm as a story · 198 points
HN discussionhttps://beepb00p.xyz/sad-infra.html This one had some impact on me because it revived the importance of taking ownership not only on my personal data, but the infrastructure which generates it, processes and stores it; and that the same infrastructure should be well thought of by me through a tinkering process which adds value to itself and to data the more I invest time on it. I felt very motivated to rethink my wo…
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?”Submitted Don't React as a story · 184 points
HN discussionI've skimmed over the activitypub overview. It looks interesting. I'd be curious what your thoughts are on it in comparison to two other "recent" decentralized social protocols. I feel it shares a lot of similarities with the [matrix spec], though obviously a different vocabulary. Also, matrix is focused a lot more on the concept of subscriptions and eventual consistency. The other recent protocol I'd associate this…
Comment linking /an-off-grid-social-network.html
on “MediaGoblin – Self Hosted, Decentralized Alt to YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud”Submitted JavaScript Getter-Setter Pyramid as a story · 142 points
HN discussion> It's sad. Makes it harder to navigate the web. Some would even say it killed the web by centralizing all the content in the hands of a few [0]. Which is the direct consequence of everybody optimizing to better show up on Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft and ultimately even migrating all their hosting to these companies. [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
Comment linking /the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
on “Search engines and SEO spam”Submitted A plan to rescue the Web from the Internet (2017) as a story · 131 points
HN discussionYou may enjoy: https://staltz.com/a-plan-to-rescue-the-web-from-the-interne... Also, if you're curious about what that looks like today: https://scuttlebutt.nz
Comment linking /a-plan-to-rescue-the-web-from-the-internet.html
on “NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection”Submitted Reinvent the Social Web as a story · 107 points
HN discussionWhy not just have an intermediate company that handles the donation/support aspects? I mean, we already have Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/ and for other content creators the likes of Patreon also work out nicely. Two examples, off the top of my head: 1) Here's how Open Collective looks, for jMonkeyEngine (a lovely Java game engine that's also a bit underfunded and underutilized): https://opencollectiv…
Comment linking /software-below-the-poverty-line.html
on “Professional maintainers: a wake-up call”Submitted Is your JavaScript function actually pure? as a story · 107 points
HN discussion
