Top all-time · #86
Jacques Mattheij
Personal blog · jacquesmattheij.com · on HN as jacquesmprogramminghardware
Jacques Mattheij's personal blog at jacquesmattheij.com covers programming and hardware. Since 2009, 404 different Hacker News readers have linked it 925 times, most often “Sorting 2 Metric Tons of Lego”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jacques Mattheij's posts for practical, experience-based takes on startups, hiring, dark patterns, and the Lego-sorting project. His unofficial HN FAQ is cited as the reference for HN's downvote and karma rules.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- One commenter says the Lego article is a fun read; another says the author explains GDPR clearly in a four-part article; another calls the dark-patterns ratchet
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Sorting 2 Metric Tons of Lego20 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2018-08-21
- The Unofficial HN FAQ (2011)18 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2010-11-07
- How to Sell your Company8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2011-02-23
- GDPR: Don't Panic7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2018-05-18
- How to run a small consultancy / freelancing business7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2009-09-28
- My list of ideas, if you're looking for inspiration7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2010-10-14
- How to build a windmill7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2012-09-27
- If you've got Nothing to Hide6 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2018-11-10
- If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear6 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2015-07-11
- The Unofficial HN FAQ6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2010-10-04
What Hacker News says?
I'll just leave this here: http://jacquesmattheij.com/elon-musk-and-the-hyperloop Looks like I nailed most of it. So, who is going to build a proof-of-concept scale model of this thing a few kilometers long?
Comment linking /elon-musk-and-the-hyperloop
on “Hyperloop”Submitted Show HN: Sorting Two Metric Tons of Lego as a story · 1264 points
HN discussionYes, you are right, and I was too optimistic. I'd have to level up. This is the stuff I've put together and it is clearly too small for this: https://jacquesmattheij.com/local-inference-with-large-langu...
Comment linking /local-inference-with-large-language-models/
on “We're releasing the weights of Mistral Large 4”Submitted Show HN: Long Range E-Bike as a story · 876 points
HN discussionHeh, good for you. It's insane. A friend of mine just got ripped off here (I posted about it the other day but it never got traction), he is a student and bought what he thought was a GPU but it was actually an empty shell with the GPU and the RAM removed from the board. https://jacquesmattheij.com/beware-gpu-scammers/ Crazy times! Congrats on getting rid of the debt, that's really a great feeling.
Comment linking /beware-gpu-scammers/
on “Anthropic S-1”Submitted Trackers as a story · 874 points
HN discussionI think I have about one case, but very indirectly: https://jacquesmattheij.com/when-crisis-hits/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/my-brush-with-a-patent-troll/ The most interesting one isn't mentioned in either of those, in a nutshell, one arm of Logitech sued us for Trademark infringement because our 'mascot' Chico looked too much like their camera. At the same time another arm of Logitech was making all kinds of ouver…
Comment linking /my-brush-with-a-patent-troll/
on “Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products”Submitted GDPR: Don't Panic as a story · 863 points
HN discussionI found this, but it's clearly Unofficial http://jacquesmattheij.com/the-unofficial-hn-faq#downvoted That said, the author currently has karma 111515 so he likely knows something about it. The guidelines[0] do mention "Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Comment linking /the-unofficial-hn-faq
on “All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware”Submitted Your own company? You can do it (2011) as a story · 701 points
HN discussionThis is very timely. I've been working for about 3 months now on a utility that transforms mp3's to midi files. It's a hard problem and even though I'm making steady progress the end is nowhere in sight. This will give me something to benchmark against with for instance voice accompanied by piano. Thank you for making/posting this. For an idea how this project is coming along: https://jacquesmattheij.com/toccata.mp3…
Comment linking /mp3-to-midi/
on “Spleeter: Extract voice, piano, drums, etc. from any music track”Submitted If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear as a story · 658 points
HN discussionNot sure if you're aware, but it's interesting that you mention Lego as the person you're responding to once accidentally bought literally tons of bulk Lego and later designed an automated Lego sorting machine. It's a fun read: https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/
Comment linking /sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/
on “20% of requests for Wikimedia Commons are for one image of a flower”Submitted How to Improve a Legacy Codebase as a story · 653 points
HN discussionEnjoy: https://jacquesmattheij.com/story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom/ And apologies for the non-working images.
Comment linking /story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom/
on “20% of requests for Wikimedia Commons are for one image of a flower”Submitted How to damage your brand in one smooth shot - Way to GoDaddy as a story · 619 points
HN discussionAt this time, the first link in that story is bad: https://jacquesmattheij.com/content/story-behind-wwcom-camar... This seems to work: https://jacquesmattheij.com/story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom/
Comment linking /story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom/
on “Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products”Submitted Just Say No as a story · 563 points
HN discussionFor the longest time (more than a decade) I ran a small company (< 50 employees) that fielded a video chat service. The whole thing revolved around a minor bug that just happened to be present in all major browsers. All that time I thought: next week someone else is going to clue in to this, it is so obvious. But nobody ever did. You can read more about it here: https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-several-million-dollar…
Comment linking /the-several-million-dollar-bug/
on “Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products”Submitted Why Johnny Won't Upgrade as a story · 537 points
HN discussionI wrote this: https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-social-media-problem/ Which has a bit of a different angle, but my conclusion is that social media as a tool can be useful but that in the aggregate right now it is a serious problem for which we are ill prepared as society.
Comment linking /the-social-media-problem/
on “Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show”Submitted Hey Google, I want my cache links back as a story · 519 points
HN discussionhttp://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#downvoted being factually wrong in the face of this many comments will invite my downvote. > "It does not try to position it as anything other than a subscription, and the language is plain english." In my opinion, that is simply factually wrong.
Comment linking /The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ
on “Why can a scam company raise $40 Million Series C + $76 Million Series B?”Submitted Sorting Two Tons of Lego, the Software Side as a story · 514 points
HN discussion> Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word. I'm happy to include multiple forms of coercion; the pattern here is the ratchet: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/ > It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. That's a nice summary of a class of dark patterns, yes. > It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you…
Comment linking /dark-patterns-the-ratchet/
on “Notion for everyone”Submitted Does it scale? Who cares (2011) as a story · 431 points
HN discussionYou may find this article helpful in some way: “How to Improve a Legacy Codebase” [0] [0] https://jacquesmattheij.com/improving-a-legacy-codebase
Comment linking /improving-a-legacy-codebase
on “Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?”Submitted Saving a Project and a Company as a story · 425 points
HN discussion> Excellent work, Dick. This isn't reddit. http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#downvoted
Comment linking /The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ
on “Time to end the war on drugs”Submitted No politics please, we're hackers, too busy to improve the world as a story · 420 points
HN discussion
