Boing Boing
boingboing.net · Group blog · on HN since 2007
A group blog on technology, digital rights, culture, and oddities, with Cory Doctorow as a frequent contributor.
What HN saysHN commenters mostly link to it as a source for specific stories, such as a passport leak, a busted-person story, and a YouTube ASMR crackdown.
2.2KHN people shared it
946linked it in comments
2.4Kstories submitted
50Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Lockdown – The coming war on general-purpose computing (2012)64 people · 673 points · first shared 2012 · 96 comments on HN
- 2The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)25 people · 695 points · first shared 2012 · 210 comments on HN
- 3The Coming War on General Purpose Computation17 people · 157 points · first shared 2011 · 26 comments on HN
- 4A Tribute to Steve Jobs16 people · 11 points · first shared 2008 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Mit student arrested12 people · first shared 2007
- 6A project to make expensive, legally-mandated standards documents public7 people · 161 points · first shared 2012 · 24 comments on HN
- 7Our Generation Ships Will Sink (2015)7 people · 68 points · first shared 2015 · 84 comments on HN
- 8How to decode the images on the Voyager Golden Record7 people · 20 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 9The Intel ME subsystem can take over your machine, can't be audited6 people · 654 points · first shared 2016 · 271 comments on HN
- 10Swedish ISP Blocks Elsevier for Forcing It to Block Sci-Hub (2018)6 people · 167 points · first shared 2018 · 13 comments on HN
- 11Yakuza 3 reviewed by Yakuza6 people · 165 points · first shared 2010 · 24 comments on HN
- 12Expired patent of the day: Lego6 people · 149 points · first shared 2011 · 27 comments on HN
- 13Cory Doctorow Reading Bruce Sterling's “The Hacker Crackdown” (2008)6 people · 4 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 14Pedagogy of the Depressed: my experiences as a special ed student in the 1990s6 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 15Seymour cray liked t6 people · first shared 2015
What HN people wrote when they linked it
blasdel · 2010-07-07
SuperUser is Jeff Atwood's hobbyist self-identity manifested as a Q&A site. The allowed categories neatly cover everything he's blogged about on CodingHorror that wouldn't fit into SO or SF first. There are a lot of Jeff Atwoods out there, so it works.
You know what would make a really hilarious and likely-successful StackExchange site? One focused on http://BoingBoing.net -- it'd be all about how best to anagramize a subway map or break functioning consumer electronics by hot-gluing brass gears onto them, but there's clearly already an audience for Cory Doctorow's self-identity (just as there was for Jeff).
k310 · 2026-08-03
Use the source, Luke [0] (or equivalent. I am not paywall jumping unless necessary today.)
YouTube crackles down on ASMR content (Boing Boing)
Boing Boing is published under a Creative Commons license except where otherwise noted.
For us who are not familiar with ASMR:
> Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, describes the tingling feeling that some people get when hearing certain sounds; it’s become shorthand for a genre of content where ASMR artists whisper, brush, tap or make other sounds near a microphone. A lot of ASMR content is meant for relaxation, mindfulness, and sleep.
I prefer classical music. Some works really do transport one to great places in the heart, because they are magnificent human expressions.
[0]https://boingboing.net/2026/07/31/youtube-crackles-down-on-asmr-conten…
emayljames · 2026-06-29
This is the best one. Not a shady company website, or a paywalled site:
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/28/a-million-passports-leaked-online-by…
PostOnce · 2026-01-30
Some of them are, most of them are standard typesetting, which you would think would be all the easier to OCR, due to the uniformity.
But because you're curious, there are some fairly famous handwritten books that maintain their handwriting in publication, my favorite being: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/31/getting-started-in-electronics.html
Old manuscripts are another one, there are a LOT of those. Is that handwriting? Maybe you'd argue it's "hand-printing" because its so meticulous.
fragmede · 2025-10-21
https://boingboing.net/2005/10/06/guy-who-was-busted-f.html/amp was the best link I could find for that story
nailer · 2025-03-05
This seems fitting, Doctorow was also on https://boingboing.net/ which started as a place for whimsical or intellectually curious content but now every third article is obsessed with US politics.
PlunderBunny · 2024-02-27
I love the picture on BoingBoing [1] for the corresponding article - an Apple Magic Mouse with little wheels crudely drawn on the side.
1. https://boingboing.net/2024/02/27/apple-reportedly-cancels-electric-ca…
toomuchtodo · 2023-10-02
Favorite Costco Fact: Costco co-founder to new CEO: "If you raise the price of the fucking hot dog, I will kill you."
https://boingboing.net/2020/09/25/costco-co-founder-to-new-ceo-if-you-…
(Costco hasn't raised the price on their infamous $1.50 hot-dog-and-soda combo since 1984)
madars · 2023-09-05
There's probably an even stronger claim. It is not that Razor is not making things worse, rather a release from a reputable group is a strong indication that it works and that it will continue to do so many years in the future after activation servers are long gone/DRM methods are deprecated/etc. Quality and reliability is probably the reason why Microsoft used DeepzOne's Sound Forge [1] and Turner Classic Movies used subtitles from Karagarga [2] :-)
[1] https://boingboing.net/2006/07/19/windows-xp-sounds-cr.html
[2] https://torrentfreak.com/turner-classic-movies-airs-a-film-with-pirate…
KerrAvon · 2023-04-03
Remember that he’s not actually that smart. Rob Beschizza has the best description of Musk:
“I love how childish and petty it is. There is no depth or human complexity to Musk whatsoever: he's just a rich kid who got lucky and now we marvel at his exertions day in, day out. The New York Times still casts Musk as a public intellectual, even now, because its editors live in a floating world of narrative imagination and are impervious to the facts of the matter. In return, he calls it ‘diarrhea.’ They completely deserve one another.”
https://boingboing.net/2023/04/02/petulant-musk-rants-about-new-york-t…
criddell · 2022-11-22
> why don't we have "text assistants"
I used to use a text-based assistant service called I want Sandy and it was great. Then Twitter bought the company and they went away.
http://boingboing.net/2007/11/14/i-want-sandy-perfect.html
cratermoon · 2022-09-26
The article recommends having a good dictionary at hand, and that is absolutely correct advice. What I'd like to suggest is that, aside from writing that absolutely must use terms from the last 100 years, use the Webster 1913[1] as your dictionary of choice. It's become a fetish, of sorts, among writers like Cory Doctorow [2] and others who approvingly link to James Somers' May 18, 2014 post, "http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary"[3].
Try it. Read its
[1] https://www.websters1913.com/
[2] https://boingboing.net/2014/05/29/you-should-try-the-1913-webste.html
[3] http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
perihelions · 2022-09-17
Also, access to international sulfur markets.
That wouldn't be a barrier for Canada though, which has access to an unlimited supply from (ironically) its oil industry. Athabasca oil sands are somewhere around 5% sulfur, most of which gets extracted and piled up into useless pyramids (since no one is buying it).
https://www.businessinsider.com/there-are-mountains-of-sulfur-growing-…
https://boingboing.net/2016/07/05/the-great-sulphur-pyramids-of.html
Area12 · 2022-09-12
I find Boing Boing ( https://boingboing.net/ ) is a good newsletter of weird stuff.
mjparrott · 2022-07-13
Didn't the FTC make it illegal to "click to subscribe, call to cancel"? The issue is just that it is not enforced at all.
https://boingboing.net/2021/11/17/ftc-says-click-to-subscribe-call-to-…
kqr2 · 2022-06-06
Forrest Mims III books on electronics are considered classics in teaching electronics:
https://boingboing.net/2020/08/31/getting-started-in-electronics.html
https://www.forrestmims.com/
dontbenebby · 2022-05-30
Most of them just used their words, one split my head open so badly I need stitches, and another who used to to hurl racial slurs does TV spots for the democrats.
I one day hope to achieve the special type of antisocial but not crazy that allows you to get a PA teaching credential.
(This was my middle school, Cory doesn't return my emails because I made too many jokes about his love of... cartoons): https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.html
torvald · 2022-05-24
And some type of encrypting would be nice. I find it very exciting that The Punkt phone is picking up Signal at least.
https://boingboing.net/2021/04/08/the-best-dumbphone-gets-signal-messa…
_Algernon_ · 2022-05-14
https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
>There will be programs that run on general-purpose computers, and peripherals, that will freak even me out. So I can believe that people who advocate for limiting general-purpose computers will find a receptive audience. But just as we saw with the copyright wars, banning certain instructions, protocols or messages will be wholly ineffective as a means of prevention and remedy. As we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits, and all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship. This stuff matters because we've spent the last decade sending our best players out to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it's just been an end-level guardian. The stakes are only going to get higher.
wfleming · 2022-04-24
My favorite audiophile product remains the nearly-$500 wooden volume knobs: https://boingboing.net/2005/11/07/astronomically-overp.html
maneesh · 2022-01-04
Easy. I'd just work through everything on this time travel guide I carry in my wallet. I'm always prepared.
https://boingboing.net/filesroot/201001131242.jpg
From this fantastic book
https://www.amazon.com/How-Invent-Everything-Survival-Stranded/dp/0735…
chrisweekly · 2021-09-23
A couple venerable pillars:
https://news.slashdot.org
https://boingboing.net
aorth · 2021-09-21
This strikes me as being part of the larger war on general purpose computing. Microsoft is saying that, in order to use your expensive device, you need another expensive device, and you need to involve a third party as an arbiter.
See Cory Doctorow's excellent 2011 keynote to the 28th Chaos Computer Club conference entitled "The Coming War on General Purpose Computing": https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html
What do we do about this? I can (and do) run open-source software on my laptop, but what about my parents, kids, friends, et al? Some of them care, but can't be bothered. Others are oblivious.
fab1an · 2020-11-30
The workplace RPG character sheet model is pretty promising I think, great to see more innovation in this space (akin to https://boingboing.net/2004/03/16/ninjas-and-pirates-d.html)
userbinator · 2020-11-08
Apple clearly does not want you to have a general-purpose computer:
https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
Everything is done with "security" as an excuse because it's hard to argue against[1], but I think people are slowly starting to see through that. Apple wants to control every aspect of your life, and if you let it, it will. I wonder whether those who work at Apple and are responsible for doing such things really understand the implications, and whether they agree with it...
[1] Except with that classic Franklin quote.
basicplus2 · 2020-07-14
I prefer these...
https://boingboing.net/2016/06/08/the-amazing-shitty-robots-of.html
ehsankia · 2020-06-17
Well your information is outdated, because there's been a long game of cat and mouse between chrome and sites likes NYT about detecting incognito, with every alternating version a new method coming up, and it being patched in the following version.
[0] https://boingboing.net/2019/07/20/cookie-managers-r-us.html
wyldfire · 2020-03-09
It was coming since before ARM's rise [1]. But you are right that it is coming. Signed bootloaders are simultaneously fantastic and horrible. I think open hardware initiatives may be a potential way out.
But will we see a ban on anonymity in the coming decades? Only licensed devices could connect to the Internet? It would be similarly fantastic and horrible IMO.
[1] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
pdkl95 · 2020-03-01
> Who decides what qualifies as a general purpose
Alan Turing and Alanzo Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness
However, my use of the term is an explicit (my previous [2]) reference
to these important talks by Cory Doctorow about the War on General
Purpose Computing, which I strongly recommend watching/reading:
https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
DonHopkins · 2019-12-31
The AAA was by far the best most luxurious terminal a programmer could have. The Guru XL could display 66 lines of 170 characters, and came in either portrait or landscape orientation!
https://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/reviving-an-ann-arbor-ambassad.html
https://books.google.nl/books?id=-tNb_j8ivU0C&pg=RA1-PA36&lpg=…
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/datapro/alphanumeric_terminals/Datapro_C2…