Top all-time · #1057
Herman Martinus
Personal blog · herman.bearblog.devgameswriting
Herman Martinus writes Herman's blog, a personal blog at herman.bearblog.dev about games and writing. Since 2020, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 178 times, most often “The Bear Manifesto”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Hi I'm Herman Martinus. I'm a maker of things, rider of bikes, and hiker of mountains.
Most-linked posts?
- The Bear Manifesto8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2025-01-27
- My product is my garden6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-12-01
- Building software to last forever5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-10-25
- The Great Scrape5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-03-26
- The ChatGPT vs. Bear Blog spam war4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-04-16
- Zero to 1000 users in 18 hours – a HN story4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-05-29
- Instead of an MVP, Build an SLC: Simple, Lovable, and Complete4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-11-02
- The Frustration Loop4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-09-20
- Becoming a Day Person4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-03-19
- I Started Journaling (2019)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-05-27
What Hacker News says?
> there is zero discoverability, you can’t even encounter people through conversations. based on the spam and harassment on most social sites, I'd call this a feature. If you read something interesting you can email the person with your thoughts , and if they find it interesting they'll follow you. If you are a troll, they'll delete your message and they don't need to use their platform to support your comments. If…
Comment linking /misc-updates/
on “Open Social”Submitted My product is my garden as a story · 731 points
HN discussionThis looks minimal, but a random page that I've visited [1] duplicates article's text 6 times across different meta tags. Sure something that can be improved. [1] https://herman.bearblog.dev/why-i-journal/
Comment linking /why-i-journal/
on “Show HN: Bear – Minimal blogging platform”Submitted Bear is now source-available as a story · 551 points
HN discussionI sign up but no email was send. The css should either leave the default colors alone or set both the background and font color. The source of this page contains much more cruft in meta tags and <!-- Microdata --> than actual content. https://herman.bearblog.dev/markdown-test/
Comment linking /markdown-test/
on “Show HN: Bear – Minimal blogging platform”Submitted Smartphones and being present as a story · 438 points
HN discussionSafari on iOS 13.4 crashed loading https://herman.bearblog.dev/the-gods-of-toil/ Not blaming bearblog, but FYI
Comment linking /the-gods-of-toil/
on “Show HN: Bear – Minimal blogging platform”Submitted Cities need more trees as a story · 293 points
HN discussionHeads up: it doesn’t have no JavaScript at present, because Cloudflare’s email protection system is in place. (I hate that thing. It mangles non-email addresses all the time if they look even vaguely like an email address, e.g. a package with version number “foo@1.2.3”. Penalising users that disable JavaScript.) https://herman.bearblog.dev/ contains a “Get in touch” mailto: link that gets ruined, and the following s…
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: Bear – Minimal blogging platform”Submitted Messing with scraper bots as a story · 245 points
HN discussionIn this case it's kind of unbelievable how quickly the flip happened. Their 'manifesto'[0] was published only at the start of the year, where they vowed to be an incorruptible bastion of stability in a selfish society focused on short-term thinking. They want Bear to be around in 50 years. Then in the last couple weeks or so[1] it seems they saw a bit of a spike, and immediately pulled up the ladder. They even criti…
Comment linking /building-software-to-last-forever/
on “Bear is now source-available”Submitted Aggressive bots ruined my weekend as a story · 209 points
HN discussionhttps://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/ > This is a morbid topic for me to write about: what happens to Bear if something happens to me? I've got that covered too. There's a detailed succession plan in place, including: Full documentation of all systems and processes Multiple trusted developers with access to the codebase Clear instructions for maintaining the platform So if I were to be incapacitated in any way, the…
Comment linking /manifesto/
on “Bear is now source-available”Submitted Slow social media as a story · 194 points
HN discussionBear has no VC investors: https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/
Comment linking /manifesto/
on “Bear is now source-available”Submitted Forced to upgrade as a story · 184 points
HN discussionHas the maintainer looked at fair source? [0] I believe it's superior to source-available (and open core), because it eventually becomes fully open source under DOSP [1], which is great for free and paid users, especially for a blog platform like Bear. There's an FCL [2] fair source license, which aligns pretty well with their current Bear Blog License (namely the non-compete and license key bits from the ELv2). All…
Comment linking /manifesto/
on “Bear is now source-available”Submitted The ROI of Exercise as a story · 154 points
HN discussionBearblog has a lot of momentum and (anonymous) users, and a committed maintainer: https://herman.bearblog.dev/manifesto/ Ofc GitHub is will probably last longer, and so will running your own hosting/deployment
Comment linking /manifesto/
on “The highest-ranking personal blogs of Hacker News”Submitted Building software to last forever as a story · 152 points
HN discussionI literally just published a post on this and how it affects Bear Blog. https://herman.bearblog.dev/the-great-scrape
Comment linking /the-great-scrape
on “Devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries”Submitted Observations on 6 Years of Journaling as a story · 144 points
HN discussionCould be in part bot activity. I've seen a couple other weird things rise up on here. The blogging platform for this one is interesting, if you follow the rabbit hole a bit you'll find e.g. https://herman.bearblog.dev/building-software-to-last-foreve... I don't see that many posts, but it appears to have some interesting traffic on it at present. Worth holding on to perhaps? https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblo…
Comment linking /building-software-to-last-forever/
on “We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult”Submitted A personal trainer is the best investment I've made as a story · 102 points
HN discussionThere was an article just yesterday which detailed doing this as not in order to ban but in order to waste time. You can also zip bomb people which is entertaining but probably not super effective. https://herman.bearblog.dev/messing-with-bots/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45935729
Comment linking /messing-with-bots/
on “The internet is no longer a safe haven”Submitted Big Fat Websites (2021) as a story · 92 points
HN discussionAlso present in this great piece: https://herman.bearblog.dev/my-product-is-my-garden/
Comment linking /my-product-is-my-garden/
on “Digital Gardening”Submitted I Started Journaling (2019) as a story · 90 points
HN discussionThis is the philosophy behind Bear Blog. It’s built to last longer than me. https://herman.bearblog.dev/building-software-to-last-foreve...
Comment linking /building-software-to-last-forever/
on “Simple Lasts Longer”Submitted How the internet became shit as a story · 64 points
HN discussion
