L
Luke Smith
lukesmith.xyz · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Luke Smith writes opinionated posts on Linux, minimalist computing, browsers, licensing, language learning, and philosophy, alongside his videos.
What HN saysHN commenters call him opinionated but interesting, cite his Michel Thomas language learning article, and one criticizes his vegan post as crazy and reactionary.
55HN people shared it
27linked it in comments
37stories submitted
683story points
3 months agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1I Use the GPL and Not Cuck Licenses14 people · 20 points · first shared 2022 · 10 comments on HN
- 2The hardest technical solutions are right in front of your face9 people · 7 points · first shared 2021 · 2 comments on HN
- 3Every web browser sucks (2021)3 people · 9 points · first shared 2021 · 6 comments on HN
- 4Matrix vs. XMPP3 people · 5 points · first shared 2021 · 5 comments on HN
- 5Using RSS to replace social media2 people · 241 points · first shared 2020 · 119 comments on HN
- 6Modern “Freedom” Means Being a Slave to Impulses2 people · 21 points · first shared 2021 · 30 comments on HN
- 7Blockchain Blasphemy and the Technological Antichrist2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 8Hedonism, Asceticism and the Hermetic Answer2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 9Vegan2 people · first shared 2021
- 10Blog2 people · first shared 2021
- 11Parable of Alien Chess1 people · 139 points · first shared 2021 · 171 comments on HN
- 12Basically Everyone Should Be Avoiding Docker1 people · 95 points · first shared 2025 · 99 comments on HN
- 13Science vs. Soyence1 people · 48 points · first shared 2022 · 32 comments on HN
- 14Notes on Learning Languages1 people · 45 points · first shared 2020 · 27 comments on HN
- 15Only Use Old Computers1 people · 16 points · first shared 2024 · 15 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
bean469 · 2026-03-29
My favorite big-brained way of quitting is ZZ (save and quit) and ZQ (quit without saving). Learned these shortcuts from a video by the legendary Luke Smith [1].
1. https://lukesmith.xyz
MarsIronPI · 2026-03-09
Maybe not the best, but I like the direction Luke Smith takes with his site: https://lukesmith.xyz
robocat · 2026-02-23
I tried to find a good article summarising Michel's language teaching method.
This references his tapes: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/learning-european-languages-michel-thom…
ChatGPT gave a reasonable looking answer to my prompt "Summarize what is special about how Michel Thomas teaches Language".
Maybe just another case of a highly intelligent person coming up with an "obvious" solution that is great: yet is not quite so obvious to others. He clearly was talented - but also he avoided explaining the rationale behind his method for years.
svalee · 2021-05-28
https://lukesmith.xyz/ -- very opinionated, but interesting person
https://martin.kleppmann.com/archive.html - reading about distributed systems and db are extremely interesting
https://danluu.com/ - his metrics articles is how I found him out, but other articles really good too.
https://paulefou.com/ -- This is my blog. I write about self-development for software engineers and my experience with different strategies on the path
andrepd · 2021-03-11
His blog is pretty crazy https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/vegan
> Long story short, a bugman is someone who rejects the purpose and role of humans in their natural environment. They reject tradition, religion, their family, gender roles.
Ah, I can smell the rank mold from here.
> you're given for your acceptance some inane religious platitudes like "equality" and "rights" along with vaguely Marxist notions of "exploitation" and "slavery" and "oppressed classes,"
Plus the usual inane stuff about vegans being fundamentalist skinny soybois who will die at 40 and become impotent from their diet. Oh, and also global warming is a myth. Lovely stuff.
chrishannah · 2023-09-23
It's by Luke Smith. https://lukesmith.xyz
kamikazechaser · 2026-06-24
> Futo License (shit)
Clearly not a cuck license (https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses… so looks good to me.
PhilipRoman · 2026-04-02
This hilarious meme continues to prove itself correct again and again https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
throwaway81523 · 2026-02-16
Catholic University Compiler Kit? It would have to use one of the eponymous licenses if it didn't want to cause a paradox, heh.
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
aeve890 · 2025-11-30
Big fan of this opinion on the matter https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
0xpgm · 2025-08-06
I'm with Luke Smith [1] when it comes to non-copyleft licenses like MIT.
Andrew Tanenbaum of the MINIX fame was similarly surprised to find that Intel had quietly included the OS he wrote in Intel chips, making it perhaps the most widely used OS in the world. He seemed disappointed no one ever reached out to him to tell him about it [2]
[1]: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
[2]: https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/
homebrewer · 2024-10-02
They explicitly allowed it. If you don't want to be taken advantage of, put it in the license. It's honestly hard to feel sympathy for companies that release a product under a what some meme circles have called a "cuck license"¹ and then complain when some other entity adheres to the license.
1: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
(GPL would not help in this specific case — I believe the project is already under the GPL — but his general point still stands.)
dongobongo · 2022-10-31
From Luke Smith's post on GDP: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-its-bad-to-have-high-gdp/
"GDP is only a measurement of how reliant a place or country is on the global economy. Self-sufficiency has a GDP of 0. Wasteful consooomerism has an extremely large GDP."
cowtools · 2022-08-23
I disagree. Work on permissively licensed software typically has the net effect of decreasing global freedom by reducing the costs of corporations to produce proprietary software. I try to avoid contributing to permissively-licensed software when possible, and I prefer to co-operate with businesses that use free software to avoid vendor lock-in as much as possible.
Why should we all do free work for corporations? At least with the GPL you can negotiate a commercial license in exchange for money, but with a permissive license you forfeit your ability to do that.
This article accurately sums up my point of view: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
Also, the GPL does not require you to share the source code for programs that you do not distribute outside your company.
boberoni · 2022-07-25
The link goes to the site's homepage, not the article. The correct link should be https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses…
jeffreyrogers · 2022-07-13
Ooops, you're right, but it's too late to update the URL, which should be https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/obvious-technical-solutions/
ComradePhil · 2022-01-17
I came across this analysis of that incident: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses
I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.
woodruffw · 2021-09-25
"unJewgled Chromium"[1] was the first one that came to mind. He's normally a little bit more subtle, but I guess he was feeling randy that time.
I'm not going to dig further through his blog posts (they're insufficiently interesting from a technological perspective; mostly longform versions of what someone with only opinions from 4chan would write), but you're welcome to.
[1]: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/every-web-browser-absolutely-sucks
young_unixer · 2021-09-14
This article summarizes the issues:
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/monero-and-other-privacy-coins
easygenes · 2021-07-27
What's your take on this analysis? https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/matrix-vs-xmpp
It seems like the connection to Amdocs and their interest in collecting metadata for surveillance is a stain on the privacy-focused image.
klaudius · 2021-05-27
gaws · 2021-05-27
> https://lukesmith.xyz/blog
Luke Smith has some interesting ideas about free software and his Linux/Vim tutorials are very good. However, he's someone who harbors a lot of racist and hateful views. Don't believe me? Watch his livestreams.
His recent crusade to get many people on Monero likely stems from him getting busted[1] for accepting a $30,000 donation in Bitcoin from a French white nationalist who donated[2] $500,000 in Bitcoin earl to far-right groups last year, some of whom were directly involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/12/far-right-open-source-te…
[2]: https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/capitol-riot-bitcoin-donation-alt…
dcchambers · 2021-05-27
Miscellaneous technical stuff:
- https://danluu.com/
- https://blog.jessfraz.com/
- https://adamwathan.me/
- https://jvns.ca/
- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/
- https://dankim.org/
- https://mtlynch.io/
- https://rgz.ee/
- https://markdotto.com/
- https://thorstenball.com/
- https://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/writing/
- https://lukesmith.xyz/ - Quirky minimalist linux & free software stuff. I don't agree with many of his opinions but his rants are entertaining + offer a refreshing view on certain things.
Non-technical:
- https://bernoid.com/
Sigmoid · 2021-04-29
Vegan food will never be able to match to a natural human diet.
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/veganism-is-the-pinnacle-of-bugmanism.h…
boltorx · 2021-03-11
Little heads up for all searching vegan receipts there. The author has an article named "Veganism is the Pinnacle of Bugmanism" on his personal webpage: https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/vegan
krebs_liebhaber · 2021-01-04
> 1. when I feel that urge during the workday, my emotional brain thinks "oh boy! a whole hour of this at the end of the day! I can totally wait because it will be an hour!" 2. when that hour comes, I find I only browse around for maybe 10 minutes before I get bored.
This happened to me when I moved all my YouTube / News-Aggregator consoomption to checking RSS feeds[0] once a week - I went from watching hours of videos a day to almost none. And those blog articles look a lot less compelling when you aren't using them to escape from schoolwork.
[0] https://lukesmith.xyz/blog/a-guide-to-using-rss-to-replace-social-medi…