Top all-time · #2351
Leah Neukirchen
Personal blog · leahneukirchen.org/blogprogrammingsystems
Leah Neukirchen writes leah blogs, a personal blog at leahneukirchen.org about programming and systems. Since 2019, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 54 times, most often “Trivium”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Leah Neukirchen's site for its Trivium link-only blog and for posts on init systems, git and Unix tools. One commenter calls Trivium a fantastic link-only blog.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Trivium5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-11-07
- How to check you're in the initial PID namespace?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-01-09
- Ken Thompson's Unix Password3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-10-09
- Note Taking in Emacs with Howm3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-27
- Efficient text editing on a PDP-102 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-24
- Comparing Nitro to Runit2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-24
- What autoconf got right2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-07
- Black box debugging of pdf rendering in printers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-10-11
What Hacker News says?
> I realize that traditional explicit bookmarks are also needed; where else can I easily put arbitrary searches using %s? I outsourced that. Since I have seen leah2's anarchaias [1] tumblelog (and one of its successors project.ioni.st from the rails guys, I fail to find a snapshot online - it was pretty) I iterated through multiple software solutions. My bookmark manager is also a tumblog [2] and online accessible.…
Comment linking /anarchaia/
on “Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out”Submitted Ken Thompson's Unix Password as a story · 2101 points
HN discussionA much simpler one, but at times also very useful is “git attic” https://leahneukirchen.org/dotfiles/bin/git-attic It lists files that were deleted and which commit deleted them.
Comment linking /dotfiles/bin/git-attic
on “Git tips and tricks”Submitted The case of the mysterious --help directory (2020) as a story · 171 points
HN discussionapple cider to apples https://leahneukirchen.org/blog/archive/2019/10/ken-thompson... [previous hn discussion]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21202905
Comment linking /blog/archive/2019/10/ken-thompson-s-unix-password.html
on “The six dumbest ideas in computer security (2005)”Submitted X11 screen locking: a secure and modular approach as a story · 92 points
HN discussionThere's an appropriately minimal comparison with runit in her slides (PDF) from a talk she gave in 2024: https://leahneukirchen.org/talks/#nitroyetanotherinitsy
Comment linking /talks/
on “Nitro: A tiny but flexible init system and process supervisor”Submitted Advent of Swift as a story · 86 points
HN discussionI switched to Howm about a year ago (after trying and actively using dozens of other PKM systems), and it's by far the best I've come across. The whole design is well thought out, consistent and not created with the aim of marketing, but because it has served the creator well with his way of working (and surprisingly the philosophy applies to many of us). Japanese “engineering” at its best, so to speak. As Howm has…
Comment linking /blog/archive/2022/03/note-taking-in-emacs-with-howm.html
on “Howm: Personal Wiki for Emacs”Submitted Determining an Election in K as a story · 77 points
HN discussionFIDO would be for authentication, not signing. It also supports SSH (and X.509, see < https://git-scm.com/docs/gitformat-signature >) but it does not support minisign or signify. There's a git module for signify, < https://leahneukirchen.org/dotfiles/bin/git-signify > but don't count on it being widely supported.
Comment linking /dotfiles/bin/git-signify
on “Emacs arbitrary code execution and how to avoid it”Submitted What autoconf got right as a story · 71 points
HN discussionVery early blogs often had more of a Twitter/Tumblr feel in single-sentence posts. The style of longer articles/essays with titles only developed a little bit later. Take a look at one of the earliest weblogs, kottke.org in 2000. The posts there displayed have titles, but that is a post facto artefact of the CMS and current theme, not how kottke.org looked in 2000. If you imagine those titles and metadata away it lo…
Comment linking /blog/archive/2005/04/thoughts-on-vooly.html
on “How tumblr became popular for being obsolete”Submitted Remembering the work of David M. Tilbrook and the QED editor as a story · 37 points
HN discussion"Analyzing the structure of the Tractatus, we found a style of outline with useful properties that is not supported by modern outliners." [1] 1. https://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/2008-12-06
Comment linking /trivium/2008-12-06
on “D3js Tree of Wittgenstein's Tractatus”Submitted Zz: A smart and efficient directory changer (2017) as a story · 36 points
HN discussionNot to mention their blogs, especially https://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/
Comment linking /trivium/
on “Hrmpf rescue system, built on Void Linux”Submitted Note Taking in Emacs with Howm as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSemi-related, here's a comparison of nitro and runit written by the author of nitro: https://leahneukirchen.org/blog/archive/2025/08/comparing-ni...
Comment linking /blog/archive/2025/08/comparing-nitro-to-runit.html
on “Nitro: Tiny but flexible init system and process supervisor”Submitted Trivium as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIt's not exactly daily, but Leah Neukirchen's Trivium (the successor to the original "tumblelog", anarchaia) is a fantastic link-only blog: https://leahneukirchen.org/trivium/
Comment linking /trivium/
on “Kottke.org Is 25 Years Old Today and I’m Going to Write About It”Submitted Anatomy of a Ceph Meltdown as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI have used Flipboard forever, since Google Reader (RSS) was googlized. I agree that it's chock full of clickbait.. I use it in sort of a ritualistic form of reading the news, by sorting the articles into piles. So not only reading something, but also thinking about which piles would match the article. I don't know of any other good link pages as dense as Hacker News. -Slashdot- (sigh) There are individuals who post…
Comment linking /trivium/
on “Ask HN: Do you know of an HN for general topics?”Submitted What Autoconf Got Right as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Got Root? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Comparing Nitro to Runit as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to properly shut down a Linux system as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Counting lanternfish with BQN and linear algebra (2021) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Efficient text editing on a PDP-10 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Trivium 30 aug 2026 as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
