Type and topic

Essays and writing about web and internet

Every link here is classified as essays and writing about web and internet.

Hall of Fame: 30
Candidates: 44
Median span: 6.0 yrs
First seen: 2008

Strongest Hall records

30 items

We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

web.mit.edu 58 submissions · 51 people · 18.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-04 Resurfaced 2026-01-29

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How to Disagree

www.paulgraham.com 15 submissions · 15 people · 14.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2012-11 Resurfaced 2018-02-24

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History of the browser user-agent string (2008)

webaim.org 37 submissions · 34 people · 17.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-03 Resurfaced 2026-01-27

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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

www.newyorker.com 8 submissions · 8 people · 6.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-03 Resurfaced 2025-04-02

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What I've Learned from Hacker News

www.paulgraham.com 14 submissions · 14 people · 17.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-02 Resurfaced 2022-02-19

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Thoughts on Flash

www.apple.com 15 submissions · 15 people · 11.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-05 Resurfaced 2021-05-06

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The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

apenwarr.ca 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2026-04-19

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The Tragedy of Google Books (2017)

www.theatlantic.com 17 submissions · 15 people · 8.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-10 Resurfaced 2024-10-22

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A Conspiracy to Kill IE6 (2019)

blog.chriszacharias.com 12 submissions · 10 people · 5.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-02 Resurfaced 2025-10-16

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“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful

meyerweb.com 10 submissions · 9 people · 14.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-05 Resurfaced 2023-05-11

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The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)

www.windytan.com 8 submissions · 8 people · 10.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-06 Resurfaced 2024-10-16

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How to crawl a quarter billion webpages in 40 hours

www.michaelnielsen.org 5 submissions · 5 people · 13.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-04 Resurfaced 2023-06-15

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How the Blog Broke the Web

stackingthebricks.com 9 submissions · 9 people · 4.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-01 Resurfaced 2023-01-15

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How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

features.jsomers.net 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-12 Resurfaced 2020-12-26

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Wireless Is a Trap

www.benkuhn.net 6 submissions · 6 people · 5.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-10 Resurfaced 2023-10-19

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Old CSS, New CSS

eev.ee 5 submissions · 5 people · 6.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-07 Resurfaced 2024-04-13

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The web sucks if you have a slow connection

danluu.com 7 submissions · 7 people · 5.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-06 Resurfaced 2021-06-05

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Trolls (2008)

www.paulgraham.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 14.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-02 Resurfaced 2011-12-14

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HN: The Good Parts (2017)

danluu.com 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.0 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2021-05 Resurfaced 2022-10-27

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Everyone Has JavaScript, Right?

kryogenix.org 8 submissions · 8 people · 4.5 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-04 Resurfaced 2024-04-21

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This Page is Designed to Last

jeffhuang.com 8 submissions · 7 people · 6.6 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-01 Resurfaced 2021-12-23

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Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)

www.matuzo.at 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.8 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-05 Resurfaced 2022-05-28

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FTP Must Die

mywiki.wooledge.org 5 submissions · 5 people · 8.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-10 Resurfaced 2016-03-09

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ADSL works over wet string (2017)

www.revk.uk 5 submissions · 5 people · 4.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2026-01 Resurfaced 2024-05-17

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Google and HTTP

this.how 6 submissions · 6 people · 5.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-07 Resurfaced 2023-07-04

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Why isn't the internet more fun and weird?

jarredsumner.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 3.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2022-07 Resurfaced 2022-07-06 archived copy

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A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page

endtimes.dev 5 submissions · 5 people · 2.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-07 Resurfaced 2025-07-19

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Rediscovering the Small Web

neustadt.fr 6 submissions · 5 people · 4.3 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-08 Resurfaced 2024-08-31

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The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)

hackernoon.com 7 submissions · 7 people · 3.1 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2019-10 Resurfaced 2019-10-21

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Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

www.theregister.co.uk 5 submissions · 5 people · 2.7 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2020-01 Resurfaced 2020-01-21

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Recently resurfaced

latest 20+ point return

The world in which IPv6 was a good design (2017)

apenwarr.ca 7 submissions · 7 people · 6.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2023-08 Resurfaced 2026-04-19

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We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

web.mit.edu 58 submissions · 51 people · 18.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2015-04 Resurfaced 2026-01-29

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History of the browser user-agent string (2008)

webaim.org 37 submissions · 34 people · 17.4 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2018-03 Resurfaced 2026-01-27

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A Conspiracy to Kill IE6 (2019)

blog.chriszacharias.com 12 submissions · 10 people · 5.2 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2024-02 Resurfaced 2025-10-16

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A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page

endtimes.dev 5 submissions · 5 people · 2.9 years

Hall of Fame Class of 2025-07 Resurfaced 2025-07-19

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Candidates

Browse 44 candidates

Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

www.newsweek.com 20 submissions · 20 people · 12.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-02-18

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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D J Bernstein – The IPv6 mess

cr.yp.to 8 submissions · 6 people · 17.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-08-14

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Chat Wars: Microsoft vs. AOL

nplusonemag.com 13 submissions · 13 people · 11.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2015-05-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Roy Fielding's Misappropriated REST Dissertation (2020)

twobithistory.org 5 submissions · 5 people · 5.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-10-27

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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What is the small web? (2020)

ar.al 7 submissions · 6 people · 3.9 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-01-02

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums (2020)

karl-voit.at 4 submissions · 4 people · 5.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-06-24

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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What No One Told You About Z-Index

philipwalton.com 7 submissions · 7 people · 13.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2016-03-10

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

gopher.floodgap.com 7 submissions · 7 people · 12.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-05-12

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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How SSH got port number 22

www.ssh.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 2.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-10-24

Needs:5 submissions

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The Bullshit Web

pxlnv.com 4 submissions · 3 people · 6.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-07-02

Needs:5 submissions

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OpenSSL is written by monkeys (2009)

www.peereboom.us 4 submissions · 4 people · 9.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2014-04-08

Needs:5 submissions

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An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecs (2018)

blog.mozilla.org 6 submissions · 6 people · 2.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-01-09

Needs:3 active years

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How did REST come to mean the opposite of REST?

htmx.org 5 submissions · 5 people · 3.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-03-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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No Comment

prog21.dadgum.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 15.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-08-05

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Google, Facebook, and Amazon have fundamentally transformed the web

staltz.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 6.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-11-24

Needs:5 submissions

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Why aren’t we using SSH for everything?

medium.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-02-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web (2017)

neustadt.fr 4 submissions · 4 people · 6.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-02-15

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Goodbye MongoDB, Hello PostgreSQL

developer.olery.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 6.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-03-11

Needs:5 submissions

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If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

tttthis.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-09-20

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Only 90s web developers remember this (2014)

zachholman.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-01-25

Needs:5 submissions

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The origin story of Google Analytics

urchin.biz 4 submissions · 4 people · 7.7 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2024-08-09

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

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Fight back against Google AMP (2018)

www.polemicdigital.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2019-12-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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What Was the Microsoft Network?

www.codersnotes.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-06-28

Needs:5 submissions

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I Quit Hacker News

mattmaroon.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.5 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2014-06-03

Needs:5 submissions

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Languages Which Almost Became CSS

eager.io 4 submissions · 4 people · 4.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-08-11

Needs:5 submissions

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Show HN: This page exists only if someone is looking at it

ephemeralp2p.durazo.us 3 submissions · 3 people · 8.3 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-09-06

Needs:5 submissions

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How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

by.graffino.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-10-22

Needs:5 submissions3 active years

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The poor, misunderstood innerText

perfectionkills.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 8.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-03-22

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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MathML is a failed web standard

www.peterkrautzberger.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 7.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-09-23

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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HATEOAS: An Alternative Explaination

htmx.org 4 submissions · 4 people · 3.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-07-31

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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I'm a fucking webmaster (2016)

justinjackson.ca 3 submissions · 3 people · 6.0 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-05-09

Needs:5 submissions

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Firefox Bug 111373 - don't allow animated site icons

bugzilla.mozilla.org 4 submissions · 4 people · 10.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2022-02-04

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Who Writes Wikipedia?

www.aaronsw.com 4 submissions · 4 people · 9.2 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2020-03-03

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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How I explained REST to my wife

tomayko.com 5 submissions · 5 people · 4.6 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2013-03-11

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart

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Why are hyperlinks blue?

blog.mozilla.org 3 submissions · 3 people · 4.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2025-10-02

Needs:5 submissions

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There’s more than one way to write an IP address (2019)

ma.ttias.be 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.8 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-04-28

Needs:5 submissions

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After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

cfenollosa.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-12-28

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart5 submissions

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Playing battleships over BGP

blog.benjojo.co.uk 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2021-10-05

Needs:5 submissions

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The Anti-hero of CSS Layout – “display:table”

colintoh.com 6 submissions · 2 people · 10.4 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2017-02-11

Needs:2 breakout events 720+ days apart3 submitters

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What Comes After Zoom?

www.ben-evans.com 3 submissions · 3 people · 3.1 years

Candidate Resurfaced 2023-08-08

Needs:5 submissions

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