The Best Hacker News Posts of May 2009

1

Deny This, Last.fm techcrunch.com · jasonlbaptiste · 23 May 2009

312 pts 68 comments

2

A brief, incomplete and mostly wrong history of programming languages james-iry.blogspot.com · toddc · 8 May 2009

303 pts 14 comments

3

HN Frontpage ranked using only votes from accounts over a year old news.ycombinator.com · pg · 13 May 2009

300 pts 107 comments

4

My $3.3M Mistake sivers.org · sivers · 27 May 2009

251 pts 44 comments

5

Is There Anything Good About Men? denisdutton.com · Zarathu · 2 May 2009

232 pts 88 comments

6

How to Teach a Child to Argue figarospeech.com · dsil · 29 May 2009

217 pts 54 comments

7

Hacker News Disease mattmaroon.com · sant0sk1 · 1 May 2009

215 pts 104 comments

8

PDF presentations on Data Mining, Bayesian Networks, Game Theory, Search Algorithms autonlab.org · coconutrandom · 14 May 2009

197 pts 7 comments

9

Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned miltonglaser.com · ivankirigin · 4 May 2009

194 pts 33 comments

10

Can you trust 37signals with your password? jgc.org · l0stman · 2 May 2009

189 pts 130 comments

11

Don’t! The secret of self-control newyorker.com · alextp · 11 May 2009

186 pts 69 comments

12

My Personal Credit Crisis nytimes.com · cake · 15 May 2009

185 pts 201 comments

13

Spolsky: Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives inc.com · wyday · 5 May 2009

185 pts 79 comments

14

Why it's expensive to be poor washingtonpost.com · tialys · 20 May 2009

183 pts 194 comments

15

The speed, size and dependability of programming languages gmarceau.qc.ca · trjordan · 31 May 2009

176 pts 56 comments

16

Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005) zedshaw.com · vaksel · 26 May 2009

174 pts 116 comments

17

Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web. techcrunch.com · blazamos · 28 May 2009

169 pts 99 comments

18

The night I met Einstein akshar.co.in · dfield · 2 May 2009

167 pts 39 comments

19

How to Be Persuasive moskalyuk.com · mixmax · 17 May 2009

160 pts 26 comments

20

Homebrewed CPU Is a Beautiful Mess of Wires wired.com · naish · 28 May 2009

159 pts 53 comments

21

The "C is Efficient" Language Fallacy scienceblogs.com · silentbicycle · 4 May 2009

157 pts 124 comments

22

How To Build Something Real (In Your Spare Time) messynotebook.com · thomanil · 29 May 2009

155 pts 41 comments

23

"If you move your mouse pointer continuously... the query may not fail." support.microsoft.com · iamelgringo · 25 May 2009

155 pts 29 comments

24

Curing Python's Neglect zedshaw.com · twampss · 29 May 2009

149 pts 91 comments

25

The Git Parable (building a Git-like system from the ground up) tom.preston-werner.com · mojombo · 18 May 2009

147 pts 20 comments

26

Ask HN: Zillow is trying to acquire my app + domain for "a couple hundred bucks", advice? auston · 1 May 2009

145 pts 119 comments

27

The Ultimate Lock Picker wired.com · simonb · 30 May 2009

144 pts 14 comments

28

Oh Yeah? Where's Your Patches Zed? zedshaw.com · inklesspen · 30 May 2009

140 pts 100 comments

29

Clojure 1.0 Released groups.google.com · drewr · 4 May 2009

139 pts 31 comments

30

Github founder on how to become a famous^Wgood Rails developer gist.github.com · aditya · 6 May 2009

137 pts 19 comments

31

Dear American Airlines... dustincurtis.com · kyro · 18 May 2009

136 pts 87 comments

32

eieio alumnit.ca · soundsop · 29 May 2009

136 pts 13 comments

33

ServerFault launches - it's StackOverflow for sysadmins serverfault.com · spolsky · 27 May 2009

135 pts 27 comments

34

Burnout alistapart.com · sant0sk1 · 26 May 2009

131 pts 23 comments

35

A Life Offline aaronsw.com · imgabe · 18 May 2009

130 pts 83 comments

36

VPS Comparison between Slicehost and Prgmr: is an $8 instance as good as a $20 one? journal.uggedal.com · uggedal · 3 May 2009

128 pts 69 comments

37

Oberon, a delightfully insane system ignorethecode.net · blasdel · 4 May 2009

128 pts 30 comments

38

The First Digg Developer Dispels the Myths Surrounding Digg & Startups in General blog.mixergy.com · NewWorldOrder · 15 May 2009

127 pts 37 comments

39

Renowned reverse engineer Fravia says goodbye fravia.com · ilitirit · 5 May 2009

126 pts 52 comments

40

Stephen Wolfram’s Introduction to Wolfram Alpha (screencast) blog.wolframalpha.com · callahad · 13 May 2009

126 pts 41 comments

41

Dear Mozilla community: I screwed up. Big time. hackademix.net · robin_reala · 4 May 2009

124 pts 40 comments

42

Excerpts From the Diary of an [iTunes] App Store Reviewer daringfireball.net · tumult · 29 May 2009

124 pts 24 comments

43

Ruby on Rails and the importance of being stupid blogs.law.harvard.edu · lackbeard · 18 May 2009

120 pts 92 comments

44

A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education edutopia.org · jasonlbaptiste · 7 May 2009

119 pts 84 comments

45

Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995) chomsky.info · mapleoin · 9 May 2009

119 pts 53 comments

46

Malcolm Gladwell: How David Beats Goliath newyorker.com · mlinsey · 4 May 2009

116 pts 36 comments

47

Amazon EC2 gets statistics, auto scaling and elastic load balancing aws.typepad.com · ropiku · 18 May 2009

115 pts 42 comments

48

How SQLite Is Tested sqlite.org · d0mine · 30 May 2009

115 pts 28 comments

49

Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle amazon.com · jrockway · 6 May 2009

112 pts 106 comments

50

Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension voices.washingtonpost.com · smharris65 · 30 May 2009

112 pts 37 comments

51

How to make your application viral - A guide to getting users danieltenner.com · swombat · 18 May 2009

112 pts 32 comments

52

The TED commandments - rules every speaker needs to know timlonghurst.com · amilr · 20 May 2009

111 pts 11 comments

53

Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today radar.oreilly.com · ajbatac · 28 May 2009

110 pts 33 comments

54

The Security Implications Of Google Native Client matasano.com · ilitirit · 15 May 2009

110 pts 23 comments

55

Magic Ink worrydream.com · cubicle67 · 9 May 2009

109 pts 13 comments

56

3D Realms shuts down. No Duke Nukem forever shacknews.com · vaksel · 7 May 2009

108 pts 51 comments

57

Ask HN: Please, review wordoid.com, a smart naming webapp wordoid.com · op · 22 May 2009

106 pts 78 comments

58

Building a house for under $5000 simondale.net · arihelgason · 20 May 2009

106 pts 65 comments

59

Steve Blank: Gravity Will be Turned Off steveblank.com · lrm242 · 13 May 2009

106 pts 11 comments

60

What lies beneath New York's rivers nymag.com · tjic · 12 May 2009

105 pts 20 comments