Top all-time · #74
tbray.org
Personal blog · tbray.orgprogrammingweb
tbray.org is a personal blog at tbray.org about programming and web. Since 2007, 409 different Hacker News readers have linked it 968 times, most often “The Web's the place (don't be a sharecropper)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link tbray.org for Tim Bray's long-running essays on platform sharecropping, Google search and blog privacy.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called always good reading and an oldie but a goodie; hit the sharecropper nail and said the HTTPS point better.
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?
- The Web's the place (don't be a sharecropper)23 people · 34 mentions · first linked 2008-04-14
- /ongoing/9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2017-10-14
- The Web’s the Place8 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2013-01-20
- Bye, Amazon7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-05-04
- AWS and Blockchain6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-11-20
- Google Memory Loss6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-01-15
- The Cloud and Open Source5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-09-22
- XML and JSON in 20265 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-06-02
- Now A No-Evil Zone5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2010-03-15
- Lock-In and Multi-Cloud4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-02-01
What Hacker News says?
He has a few reasons to retire -- and a few reasons not to retire. And he laid them out for us about a year and a half ago: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-Retire... > Progressive friends, people whose opinions I respect, give me shit about working for Amazon. I claim that the problem is capitalism, flaccid labor laws, and lame antitrust enforcement, not any particular company; maybe I’m right.…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/25/On-Retirement
on “Bye, Amazon”Submitted Bye, Amazon as a story · 3816 points
HN discussionOne way to do it in social media: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSoc...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSocialist-Future
on “What if we made advertising illegal?”Submitted Google Memory Loss as a story · 1377 points
HN discussionSharecropper woes: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-freedom-to-eat-pizza http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “I was once a Facebook fool”Submitted Just don’t as a story · 842 points
HN discussionYeah you know, it's funny, the last time I worked on question-answering code, we were trying really hard to find algorithms that could improve a particular metric (F-score, a synthetic agglomeration of precision and recall) ... I don't remember hearing very many conversations at all about whether we were measuring the right thing. Given a query like [site:tbray.org "rock n roll animal"], and knowing that the 1 relev…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Roll-Animal
on “Google Memory Loss”Submitted Apps Getting Worse as a story · 828 points
HN discussionI don't see any links to https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Ro... in those search results.
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/13/Rock-n-Roll-Animal
on “Google Memory Loss”Submitted Graying Out as a story · 706 points
HN discussionThe first paragraph of the article mention the story of Tim Bray[0], which is exactly about this : Google forgetting an article which did not change location. [0] : https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/201x/2018/01/15/Google-is-losing-its-memory
on “It seems that Google is forgetting the old web”Submitted AWS and Blockchain as a story · 619 points
HN discussionTim Bray’s aeons-old blog is always good reading: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
Comment linking /ongoing/
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Just Too Efficient as a story · 570 points
HN discussion- nl · 2012-08-02
If platform operators openly stated "anything you develop can and will be used against you - by us" then no one in their right minds would develop on those platforms. There is a difference between "using something against you" and a platform keeping their options open. But, to quote Tim Bray from 2003: They own the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better wit…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “Dear Mark Zuckerberg” Submitted Why Google Did Android as a story · 552 points
HN discussionBuilding your business in an unexploited niche on another business's platform is sharecropping, pure and simple. http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “Dear Mark Zuckerberg”Submitted Mourning Google as a story · 548 points
HN discussion- nl · 2019-12-12
Perhaps. I agree that sounds good, but can you point to something that they have actually done lately? The ActivityPub process is a good example - yes, it got there, but much of the difficulties around the standardisation process seem related to the W3C process, not standardisation itself. I was involved around the edges of the Atom standardisation process[1]. There's a reason that went through the IEFT and not the…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2004/06/10/AtomIETFYes
on “Twitter funding a team to develop an open standard for social media” Submitted Parable of the Sofa as a story · 547 points
HN discussionThis must be somewhat validating for Tim Bray, the VP/xml guy who quit over their firing https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon
on “Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds”Submitted Software in 2014 as a story · 471 points
HN discussionYour comments strike me as unaware or complacent. https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A... https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/youre-just-dispos... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo... https://nypost.com/2019/07/13/inside-the-hellish-workd…
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2020/05/06/Answers
on “Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees”Submitted Old Geek as a story · 462 points
HN discussionSpeaking up? https://mobile.twitter.com/timbray/status/963115533825527808 https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/06/26/Shorting-...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/202x/2021/06/26/Shorting-Bitcoin
on “AWS and Blockchain”Submitted Not an Amazon Problem as a story · 428 points
HN discussionhttps://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2013/04/09/I-bought-... https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2017/05/13/Not-Belie...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/201x/2017/05/13/Not-Believing-in-Blockchain
on “AWS and Blockchain”Submitted On Password Managers as a story · 393 points
HN discussionBack in 2003, Tim Bray hit that nail: "Are You a Sharecropper?" https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePl...
Comment linking /ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
on “Fear of Apple”Submitted Refresh Is Sacred as a story · 370 points
HN discussion
