Top all-time · #846
Susam Pal
Personal blog · susam.net/blog · on HN as susamprogrammingwriting
Susam Pal's personal blog at susam.net covers programming and writing. Since 2022, 77 different Hacker News readers have linked it 517 times, most often “Three Inverse Laws of AI”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (24) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link susam.net for its guide to using Vim with Common Lisp (Slimv and Vlime), the 'inverse laws of robotics' on not trusting AI output, and small esoteric tools and demos.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- The Vim-for-Lisp guide is called 'a great comparison' of two options, says it 'totally changed' one reader's setup, and is recommended as something to follow; a
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 24 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Three Inverse Laws of AI5 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2026-01-12
- Lisp Programming with Vim (2019)5 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2024-02-22
- Lisp in Vim (2019)5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-01-08
- From XON/XOFF to Forward Incremental Search4 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-08-13
- Wander – A tiny, decentralised tool (just 2 files) to explore the small web4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2026-03-18
- I Will Not Add Query Strings to Your URLs4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-05-09
- Writing First, Tooling Second4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-11
- Guess my RGB3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-03-31
- Attention Media ≠ Social Media3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-20
- Stories From 25 Years of Software Development3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-06
What Hacker News says?
I've been on the Internet since 1999, and I feel a strong sense of nostalgia for those early years. For me, the period from 1999 to 2010 was the "golden age" of the Internet. It was a time of exploration, creativity, and genuine connection. I imagine that people who joined even earlier might feel a similar nostalgia for their own era on the web. I also wrote about my experiences and why I consider this time the gold…
Comment linking /web-golden.html
on “IMG_0416”Submitted Guess my RGB as a story · 618 points
HN discussionAs the person who worked with the OpenCode team on the CLI security regression this last week, I do not think they are unrelated , though there is no direct connection. My read is too much vibemaxxing, not enough critical analyses of the Ai output and (re)designs of various systems in their code base. Breaking Rule #2 - never blindly trust the output from Ai https://susam.net/inverse-laws-of-robotics.html
Comment linking /inverse-laws-of-robotics.html
on “OpenCode Hacked: User credentials leaked”Submitted Hacker News Hug of Deaf as a story · 457 points
HN discussionEnd of an era! I remember going through XSLT tutorials many decades ago and learning everything there was to learn about this curious technology that could make boring XML documents come 'alive'. I still use it to style my RSS feeds, for example, < https://susam.net/feed.xml >. It always felt satisfying that an XML file with a stylesheet could serve as both data and presentation. Keeping links to the original announ…
Comment linking /feed.xml
on “XSLT RIP”Submitted Simplicity of IRC as a story · 364 points
HN discussionRecently, I reached a personal milestone: completing 200 content pages on my website. [1] I wasn't really keeping track, but yesterday, I noticed I had published 200 pages on my website. It just quietly happened over the years. Only took 24 years! By content pages, I mean stuff like blog posts, articles, notes, tools, web games, geek art, etc. (not stuff like index pages, tag list pages, and so on). I mostly write f…
Comment linking /pages.html
on “How to post when no one is reading”Submitted The indieweb doesn't need to “take off” as a story · 309 points
HN discussionInverse laws for humans, when interacting with robots 1. Do not humanize the Ai 2. Do not blindly trust output from the Ai 3. Humans are to remain ultimately responsible and accountable for actions of the Ai adapted / paraphrased from https://susam.net/inverse-laws-of-robotics.html
Comment linking /inverse-laws-of-robotics.html
on “Jev meets the Trolley Problem”Submitted I fed 24 years of my blog posts to a Markov model as a story · 303 points
HN discussionWhile not as impressive, I have a small set of fun pages here: https://susam.net/links.html#fun These are tiny hobby projects I've developed in the limited spare time I get. They serve as creative outlet and keep alive the fun in computing I first discovered many decades ago while learning the Logo programming language. I'm curious to see what others here do to keep the fun in computing alive for themselves.
Comment linking /links.html
on “Noise”Submitted Prime Number Grid as a story · 296 points
HN discussionThe actual colour may have been #950 or #951 which looks very similar to #951. Pulling the blue slider down by a notch or two could have got you a perfect match. Here is a demo of these colours if you want to see for yourself how similar they look: https://susam.net/code/bin/2024-03-31-rgb-952.html
Comment linking /code/bin/2024-03-31-rgb-952.html
on “Guess my RGB”Submitted Solving Fizz Buzz with Cosines as a story · 215 points
HN discussionI made my website [1] totally from scratch too! Using 100% handcrafted HTML and CSS and a little bit of Common Lisp. Hopefully it is not too ugly! Like some of the other comments here, I don't use Hugo, Jekyll, Pelican, etc. either! I know they are solid tools and they serve many people well. But I haven't found them useful for my own needs. I prefer not to subject my website to the constraints of a large and comple…
Comment linking /colophon.html
on “My website is ugly because I made it”Submitted Elliptical Python Programming as a story · 184 points
HN discussionI just checked my home page [1] and it has a compressed transfer size of 7.0 kB. / 2.7 kB main.css 2.5 kB favicon.png 1.8 kB ------------------- Total 7.0 kB Not bad, I think! I generate the blog listing on the home page (as well as the rest of my website) with my own static site generator, written in Common Lisp [2]. On a limited number of mathematical posts [3], I use KaTeX with client-side rendering. On such page…
Comment linking /tag/mathematics.html
on “A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)”Submitted Comfort of Bloated Web as a story · 158 points
HN discussionGiven that http://susam.net:8000 has stopped responding, I suspect that there will be a lot more beeps today.
Comment linking /
on “Hacker News Hug of Deaf”Submitted Lemma for the Fundamental Theorem of Galois Theory as a story · 134 points
HN discussionI could fulfil my childhood dream of creating a space-invaders-like game [1], much later as an adult [2], thanks to MDN! The excellent documentation for the Canvas API [3] and OscillatorNode [4] on MDN made it quite easy to get started with developing the game. [1] https://susam.net/invaders.html [2] https://github.com/susam/invaders#why [3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API [4] https://dev…
Comment linking /invaders.html
on “Celebrating 20 Years of MDN”Submitted Zero point leet seconds (2018) as a story · 129 points
HN discussionThese days I use XSLT to style my feeds. For example: https://susam.net/feed.xml https://susam.net/feed.xsl
Comment linking /feed.xsl
on “XSLT – Native, zero-config build system for the Web”Submitted Quicksort with Jenkins for fun and no profit as a story · 121 points
HN discussionInteresting article! I always enjoy reading how people build and maintain their independent personal websites. This post starts with the "Comment System Problem" and mentions four possible solutions, but I think there's a fifth that has worked well for me. After spending too much time fiddling with third-party comment systems, I ended up building my own [1]. It's pretty barebones, just does what I need, and nothing…
Comment linking /comments/
on “Building Bluesky comments for my blog”Submitted Million Times Million as a story · 111 points
HN discussionIt does appear to be handcrafted HTML, generated using [1]. > This is a static website generated using a Common Lisp program. See github.com/susam/maze for the source code of this website[2] > Just like the original website, every line of HTML and CSS that appears in the website is handcrafted.[3] [1] https://github.com/susam/maze/blob/main/site.lisp [2] https://susam.net/maze/about.html [3] https://github.com/susam…
Comment linking /maze/about.html
on “Simplicity of IRC”Submitted Fizz Buzz in CSS as a story · 110 points
HN discussionSpeaking of ‘simplicity’, this blog has a fantastic design. The CSS is only ~30 lines and is largely just applying spacing/padding. No JS, no custom font, etc. https://susam.net/css/main.css
Comment linking /css/main.css
on “Simplicity of IRC”Submitted Programming with DOS Debugger (2003) as a story · 107 points
HN discussion
