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taylor.town
Personal blog · taylor.town · on HN as surprisetalkstartupsculture
taylor.town is a personal blog at taylor.town about startups and culture. Since 2022, 63 different Hacker News readers have linked it 553 times, most often “How to be a -10x Engineer”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked mainly for the personal site and its unconventional design, which commenters debate. Other links cover essays on running a studio without AI and a 'wigwams' piece.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
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Most-linked posts?
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-05-02
- How to be a -10x Engineer5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-04-04
- 100M CROWPOWER and no horses on the moon4 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2025-09-03
- I'm leaving OpenAI to build Jurassic Park4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-08-07
- Be the node you want to see in the network4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-04-09
- How/why to sweep async tasks under a Postgres table3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-09-19
- I Hereby Pardon All Junior Engineers3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-22
- Napkin Math Tool3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-03-15
- Slap: Functional Concatenative Language with a Borrow Checker?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-04-03
- On Nontrepeneurship3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-02-05
What Hacker News says?
Tangentially related I think it’s a mistake to equate the United States with “America”. I prefer calling Americans “Yankees” or “Usonians”. [0] https://taylor.town/yankee
Comment linking /yankee
on “America.gov”Submitted Flunking my Anthropic interview again as a story · 370 points
HN discussionhttps://taylor.town
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Clean your codebase with basic information theory as a story · 246 points
HN discussionI've been trying to make /wish pages a thing: [1] https://taylor.town/wish-manifesto I'll open a PR :)
Comment linking /wish-manifesto
on “Show HN: AboutIdeasNow – search /about, /ideas, /now pages of 7k+ personal sites”Submitted Frugly vs. Freemium as a story · 234 points
HN discussionDoesn't seem like the thing with the best usability for me (how my eyes scan information, in that regard the old site would be better), but it does seem aesthetically different and kinda cool. Plus, good job on not putting a whole bunch of JS into the site and letting it actually perform well without making my CPU sad. That said, https://taylor.town/android-chrome-512x512.png is about 225 KB and probably doesn't nee…
Comment linking /android-chrome-512x512.png
on “My website is ugly because I made it”Submitted Kevin Kelly's 2016 AI Predictions, 10 Years Later as a story · 220 points
HN discussionIt hasn't changed. The linked page is an article about his website posted on a different site. Here is the site he's talking about: https://taylor.town/
Comment linking /
on “My website is ugly because I made it”Submitted Nextdoor's Heisensubscribe (and Other Dark Patterns) as a story · 186 points
HN discussionYeah presumably because the ugly site has an awful background and poor font/colour choices that make it kind of hard to read. E.g. https://taylor.town/wealth-000 I made my website myself too and it isn't ugly. This guy's website is ugly because he decided to make it ugly out of some misguided sense of self-importance.
Comment linking /wealth-000
on “My website is ugly because I made it”Submitted 210 IQ Is Not Enough as a story · 177 points
HN discussionIf you look at the screencap you see a mail to hello@taylor.town. My first instinct was the same as yours so hf visiting https://taylor.town/ Edit: after posting this the taylor.town site became much slower - so maybe that's the hn hug of death gripping again
Comment linking /
on “My website is ugly because I made it”Submitted Reactive Relational Algebra as a story · 172 points
HN discussionAfter reading the post I kept thinking about two other pieces, and only later realized it was Taylor who had submitted it. His most recent essay [0] actually led me to the Commoncog piece “Are You Playing to Play, or Playing to Win?” [1], and the idea of sub-games felt directly relevant here. In this case, running a studio without using or promoting AI becomes a kind of sub-game that can be “won” on principle, even…
Comment linking /iq-not-enough
on “It’s been a very hard year”Submitted Napkin Math Tool as a story · 134 points
HN discussionMy book review from last September: > Reads like a “consciousness and computers are cool” story written by an engineer. A few incredible ideas padded by weak storytelling and philosophical exposition. Probably would’ve been better as a short story. [0] https://taylor.town/books#permutation-city If you like this book, I recommend Accelerando , Piranesi , Dick's Ubik , and Ted Chiang's collections.
Comment linking /books
on “Permutation City (1994)”Submitted A History of Microwave Ovens as a story · 118 points
HN discussionTotally agree! [1] https://taylor.town/synthetic-intelligence
Comment linking /synthetic-intelligence
on “Do AI companies work?”Submitted How/why to sweep async tasks under a Postgres table as a story · 102 points
HN discussionHow do I submit https://taylor.town/ ?
Comment linking /
on “Loadmo.re: design inspiration for unconventional web”Submitted ERP Therapy Sucks as a story · 75 points
HN discussionHere is the essay I wrote when I decided to stop drinking “forever”: https://taylor.town/essays/1000-weekends
Comment linking /essays/1000-weekends
on “Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?”Submitted Against the advice of my superintelligence as a story · 72 points
HN discussionI covered some of this in a recent blogpost: [1] https://taylor.town/oh-theft tl;dr Remember that private plants overhanging public property are not necessarily fair game.
Comment linking /oh-theft
on “Map with public fruit trees”Submitted Santa Prefers Wealthy Sick Children (2023) as a story · 66 points
HN discussionPersonal websites are useful tools for organizing and re-organizing your mind. For me, a few simple practices have been life-changing: 1. Keeping a public list of soon/current/recent projects forces me to keep priorities straight over long stretches of time. 2. Maintaining a monthly newsletter organizes my life into personal "sprints". It also provides a tiny community of like-minded people. 3. Essays supercharge re…
Comment linking /
on “Let's make the web personal again”Submitted A Georgist's Guerilla Gardening Guide as a story · 65 points
HN discussionAuthor here :) Wasn't familiar with Parnas' criteria, thanks for sharing. I do something similar in a different way, which I call "IKEA-oriented development". IME, semi-disposable code is very easy to change over time as mental models and product goals evolve: [1] https://taylor.town/ikea-oriented-development
Comment linking /ikea-oriented-development
on “Clean your codebase with basic information theory”Submitted Why I didn't play this harpsichord sooner as a story · 57 points
HN discussion
