Mat Duggan
matduggan.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2021
Mat Duggan, an infrastructure engineer, writes about DevOps, observability, Docker alternatives and the web, plus essays on tech and society.
What HN saysCommenters link his posts as excellent and relevant, such as those on metrics, cyberlibertarianism and VMware's download site, and he says he enjoys writing them.
80HN people shared it
13linked it in comments
135stories submitted
6.1Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
2021people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1You can have an RSS dependent website in 20265 people · 6 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 2Replace Docker Compose with Quadlet and Systemd4 people · 31 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 3Why are Containers Insecure by Default?4 people · 11 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 4ClickHouse is winning the Observability Wars4 people · 7 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 5The Worst Website in the Entire World3 people · 391 points · first shared 2024 · 190 comments on HN
- 6Common Infrastructure Errors I've Made3 people · 386 points · first shared 2021 · 155 comments on HN
- 7How Does FaceTime Work?3 people · 204 points · first shared 2021 · 163 comments on HN
- 8Coding for non-programmers: Why we need better GUI automation tools3 people · 97 points · first shared 2021 · 43 comments on HN
- 9Slack: The Art of Being Busy Without Getting Anything Done3 people · 12 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Are Dockerfiles Good Enough?3 people · 9 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Serverless Functions Post-Mortem3 people · 6 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 12I Sold Out for $20 a Month and All I Got Was This Perfectly Generated Terraform3 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 13I Can't See Apple's Vision3 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 14Help Everyone Do Better Security3 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 15Developers Guide to Moving to Denmark3 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
mduggles · 2023-07-04
https://matduggan.com/
I love to write this stuff. Sometimes people like it, sometimes they don’t. It’s still a lot of fun to do.
commandersaki · 2024-07-14
I use UTM on Mac, it's a great experience. Donated a little to them using github sponsors because of how useful the tool is, and how easy it is to obtain and install unlike VMware Player (see: https://matduggan.com/the-worst-website-in-the-entire-world/ ).
telotortium · 2023-08-03
Pointed to by this excellent post https://matduggan.com/were-all-doing-metrics-wrong/ (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36469147)
deepsun · 2026-05-16
A good answer: "The Intolerable Hypocrisy of Cyberlibertarianism" [1]
And discussion [2].
[1] https://matduggan.com/the-intolerable-hypocrisy-of-cyberlibertarianism…
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074952
riffraff · 2026-01-23
there was a very interesting blog post on this a few weeks ago
https://matduggan.com/the-year-of-the-3d-printed-miniature-and-other-l…
apparently some do, most don't.
j_bum · 2025-10-24
This travel blog was posted a bit ago on HN [0]. Much of the nature of Greenland was a shock for me to learn about, including the severe mosquitos.
[0] https://matduggan.com/greenland-is-a-beautiful-nightmare/
toomuchtodo · 2025-01-20
The AI Bubble Is Bursting - Jan 2025
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42770561
https://matduggan.com/the-ai-bubble-is-bursting/
rado · 2024-05-23
The P.S. links to an interesting article about the Broadcom site UX peculiarities: https://matduggan.com/the-worst-website-in-the-entire-world/
joshka · 2024-04-06
The author is in devops[1], which intuitively seems like the sort of job that would have that 'not making any significant changes, just working on single files' type of flow that isn't the same flow as a standard dev approach (where it's common to work across an entire repo). So it's understandable from that perspective that they might come to that conclusion.
Put another way, in a software product, you bring down those 500 files because you want to locally make sure that your changes to the 3 files you care about are compatible with the 500 files you don't. In a dev-ops repo, perhaps they are dealing with a situation where small amount of files they deal with have less impact on the whole.
[1]: https://matduggan.com/about-me/
mnky9800n · 2023-11-06
How to move to Denmark as a software developer
https://matduggan.com/developers-guide-to-moving-to-denmark/
jiveturkey · 2023-11-01
https://matduggan.com/passkeys-as-a-tool-for-user-retention/
> It is also, as currently implemented, one of the most effective platform lock-ins I've ever seen.
codazoda · 2023-02-09
There was a pretty good article about why layoffs don’t work here a few days ago too. Backed by studies and such.
https://matduggan.com/us-layoffs-are-unspeakably-cruel/
acatton · 2026-05-20
Don't worry about the small web. Most people running the small web don't do it for others but themselves. They don't care whether they have 5 visitors or 1 million. Visitors are just the cherry on top, my main reason for maintaining a small web page is to put down my thoughts, organize them, go back to them if I need to, and helping whichever stranger stumbles upon them along the way.
The small web and indie web audience doesn't use google. They use RSS readers:
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/rss-feeds-send-me-more-traffic-than-g…
https://matduggan.com/you-can-absolutely-have-an-rss-dependent-website…
Small web is there to stay, big tech can't do much about it:
https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/
The only threats to small web are:
* the lack of net neutrality
* lack of competition in the the PC component industry which is the backbone of cheap VPSes and hosting services
* browser monopoly, as any monopolistic browser could impose their small-web-unfriendly version of the web