Autumn Skerritt
skerritt.blog · Personal blog · on HN since 2019
Autumn Skerritt writes about programming, open source, security and apps, including Tor explainers and a hacked Anki exploit.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for its Tor explainer, open source tips and a post accusing a company of harvesting user emails.
21HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
30stories submitted
1.1Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Tips For Making a Popular Open Source Project in 20215 people · 235 points · first shared 2021 · 102 comments on HN
- 2How Does Tor Work? The Definitive Visual Guide (2020) – Skerritt.blog5 people · 8 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 3Over-engineering my document storage system with Paperless-ngx4 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4Timsort (2019)2 people · 194 points · first shared 2022 · 61 comments on HN
- 5Show HN: My app just won best iOS Japanese learning tool of 2025 award2 people · 30 points · first shared 2025 · 2 comments on HN
- 6Learn Functional Python in 10 Minutes2 people · 4 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 7Public key cryptography explained2 people · 4 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 8We hacked Anki – 0 day exploit from studying someone else's flashcards2 people · 4 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 9The Ultimate Guide to Writing Effective Commit Messages2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 10Timsort, the Python sorting algorithm1 people · 407 points · first shared 2019 · 131 comments on HN
- 11In Response to My first impressions of Web31 people · 219 points · first shared 2022 · 254 comments on HN
- 12How Does BitTorrent Work? A Plain English Guide1 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 13Set Theory for Programmers1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 14ScreenPipe AI company will harvest your email without your permission1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 15All You Need to Know About Big O Notation [Python Examples]1 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
flobosg · 2025-12-29
The app seems to be Manabi Reader, by the way: https://skerritt.blog/best-japanese-learning-tools-2025-award-show/#%F…
Aegaeus10111 · 2019-03-05
Bad design choices are a waste of time. Good ones are necessary. from an article about TOR as a great example:
Tor needs a lot of users to create anonymity, if Tor was hard to use new users wouldn't adopt it so quickly. Because new users won't adopt it, Tor becomes less anonymous. By this reasoning it is easy to see that usability isn't just a design choice of Tor but a security requirement to make Tor more secure.
https://skerritt.blog/how-does-tor-really-work/
bbno4 · 2026-07-23
This company harvested user data and abused it by the https://skerritt.blog/screenpipe-ai-company-will-harvest-your-email-ag…
wizerno · 2022-08-04
This is another resource which carries useful tips along the same lines: https://skerritt.blog/make-popular-open-source-projects/