Top all-time · #1566
Hixie's Natural Log
Personal blog · ln.hixie.chweb
Hixie's Natural Log is a personal blog at ln.hixie.ch about web. Since 2007, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Reflecting on 18 years at Google (2023)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (27) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Ian Hickson's personal blog, where he writes about his time at Google, its management culture, Flutter, and web standards. HN readers link it for commentary on Google and Flutter.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Called a sensible estimation of the Flutter fork; a good summary of the Google culture post; one commenter suggests reading the follow-up post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 27 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Reflecting on 18 years at Google (2023)10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2023-11-22
- Co-founder of Flutter leaving Google5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-11-23
- A low-bandwidth, high-latency, high-cost, and unreliable data channel3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2007-09-26
- Extracts from a private Q&A retrospective about the WHATWG3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-07
- Reflecting on 18 Years at Google2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-22
- /?start=1265967771&2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-02-15
- /?start=17006273732 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-11
- How big is the Flutter team?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-05-04
- /?start=1363672582&count=12 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-28
What Hacker News says?
https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1714717681&count=1 is a sensible estimation
Comment linking /?start=1714717681&count=1
on “We're forking Flutter”Submitted Reflecting on 18 Years at Google as a story · 124 points
HN discussionNot trying to create a conspiracy theory, but I wonder whether this has any relation to Ian Hickson's departure from Google/Flutter team [1], where he specifically called out some names: > Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent…
Comment linking /?start=1700627373
on “Leaving Google”Submitted Adobe blocking publication of latest HTML5 draft? as a story · 104 points
HN discussionWHATWG also stands for "What working group", as in "What working group is going to work on extending HTML" http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1086387609
Comment linking /?start=1086387609
on “W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM”Submitted How big is the Flutter team? as a story · 53 points
HN discussionSome links: https://blog.mozilla.org/mrbkap/2013/08/12/the-old-html-pars... http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1138169545&count=1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324875
Comment linking /?start=1138169545&count=1
on “How a new HTML element will make the Web faster”Submitted Tag Soup: Crazy parsing adventures as a story · 20 points
HN discussionThe post is still up on the author’s self-hosted blog, no archive needed: http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1
Comment linking /?start=1363672582&count=1
on “The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)”Submitted A low-bandwidth, high-latency, high-cost, and unreliable data channel as a story · 15 points
HN discussionISTM Hixie's own blog [0] would be a better link than a wayback reference to a G-funct service. [0] http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1
Comment linking /?start=1363672582&count=1
on “The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)”Submitted Reflecting on 18 years at Google (2023) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttp://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1140242962&count=1
Comment linking /?start=1140242962&count=1
on “Push API – W3C Working Draft”Submitted Encoding data in the last two digits of a check -- flags or a checksum as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFirefox's arguments for not really bothering with the remaining parts of Acid3 was that it seemed like it they weren't testing particularly relevant standards and that the implementations of the other browsers for those standards were mostly to pass Acid3 and not particularly useful either. See http://limi.net/articles/firefox-acid3/ for more info. That seems like valid reasoning to me. I've also seen Hixie make com…
Comment linking /?count=1&
on “Firefox Now Scores 100% on Acid3 Test”Submitted Power Dynamics in Web Specifications as a story · 3 points
HN discussionVery interesting that he plans to continue working on Flutter after leaving Google: https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627532&count=1 I agree with him that Flutter is on a good trajectory.
Comment linking /?start=1700627532&count=1
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted Hixie on Who Builds Flutter as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI found myself asking the same questions after reading this. You might consider reading the followup post: https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627532&count=1 It suggests that, in spite of his problems with management, the author remains bullish about Flutter (and likely Dart).
Comment linking /?start=1700627532&count=1
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted Reflecting on 18 years at Google (2023) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYup. Changed from https://ln.hixie.ch/ . Thanks!
Comment linking /
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted How big is the Flutter team? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFixed now. Thanks! Btw HN didn't strip them -the submitted URL was https://ln.hixie.ch/ . No doubt this was the top post at the time. We do strip some query strings, but only for larger/known sites.
Comment linking /
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted The Future Is Flutter as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe submitted link is missing the query params (or HN stripped them) that lead directly to the post: https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373&count=1
Comment linking /?start=1700627373&count=1
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted The Spectrum of Openness as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think this link should point to the post at https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373&count=1
Comment linking /?start=1700627373&count=1
on “Reflecting on 18 Years at Google”Submitted A low-bandwidth, high-latency, high-cost, and unreliable data channel (2007) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLol. Hixie quit. https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373&count=1
Comment linking /?start=1700627373&count=1
on “Google layoffs hit Flutter team”Submitted Extracts from a private Q&A retrospective about the WHATWG as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
