Clive Thompson
clivethompson.medium.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2021
Clive Thompson is a technology journalist who writes about programming, games, Linux and how technology affects culture.
What HN saysHN commenters link his essays, such as the one on owning more books than you'll ever read, in side discussions about reading and online communities.
26HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
25stories submitted
2.6Kstory points
4 months agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Processing and P5 got newbies into coding3 people · 198 points · first shared 2021 · 45 comments on HN
- 2Programming Isn’t Hard – But It’s Frustrating2 people · 7 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 3Instagram Has Become SkyMall1 people · 652 points · first shared 2021 · 327 comments on HN
- 4Linux on the laptop works so damn well that it’s boring1 people · 587 points · first shared 2022 · 619 comments on HN
- 5The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft1 people · 567 points · first shared 2021 · 364 comments on HN
- 6Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does1 people · 416 points · first shared 2021 · 358 comments on HN
- 7Teenagers Are Rediscovering an Old Game About Authoritarianism1 people · 72 points · first shared 2021 · 27 comments on HN
- 8It’s Time To Subsidize E-bikes1 people · 53 points · first shared 2023 · 33 comments on HN
- 9A search engine that finds weird old books1 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Why Printers Are So Terrible1 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 11Becoming Athletic in My 50s1 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 12The Disappearance of the Ashtray1 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 13What It’s Like to Stop Using Google Search1 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 14“Timed” Math Tests Destroy Kids’ Love of Math1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 15The Laptop That Won't Die?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
mananaysiempre · 2023-07-02
> [Reddit] relies on a vast amount of unpaid volunteer moderation labor – $3.4 million’s worth a year, by one estimate.
I’ve noticed the link to a member-only Medium article[1] that serves as a source for that estimate, but I have to ask—is that a vast amount? It doesn’t feel like a vast amount. It’s at most 30 first-world full-time employees (and even that is a huge stretch) or 4e-3 $/MAU/yr (per a 2021 estimate of 900M monthly active users I picked from search results at random). It feels too small to even pay for the maintenance of the third-party mod tools, let alone the actual (far more numerous) moderators.
Does this number seem plausible to anyone with actual domain knowledge?
[1] https://clivethompson.medium.com/reddit-moderators-do-over-3-4-million…
pmg101 · 2026-07-10
Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, novels were regarded as the video games or TikTok of their age — shallow, addictive, and dangerous [0]
You can interpret that as either "there's always a moral panic about anything new" or (my own take) "this is how far we have fallen".
[0] https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-novels-will-destroy-your-mind-796…
belter · 2024-01-06
Your post makes me sad.
"The Value Of Owning More Books Than You’ll Ever Read" - https://clivethompson.medium.com/the-value-of-owning-more-books-than-y…