Simon Willison drops a tech puzzle: Can JavaScript escape a CSP meta tag inside an iframe? Jeff Geerling shows how to spin up a dial-up ISP on a Raspberry Pi. And there’s Nate Shivar musing on Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road.
That’s your frontpage for personal blogs—right now. No YC logos. No AI wrappers. Just raw posts from folks who’ve been blogging since before Twitter ate the web.
This Show HN project hit like a quiet rebellion. Someone—call ‘em the indie aggregator whisperer—scraped together a Hacker News-style feed from scattered personal sites. It’s called, simply enough, a frontpage for personal blogs. And damn if it doesn’t feel nostalgic. Twenty years ago, I covered the blog explosion: TypePad, Blogger, the whole shebang. Everyone had a corner of the web. Then algorithms herded us into feeds. Now this?
Can JavaScript Escape a CSP Meta Tag Inside an Iframe? (simonwillison.net) Simon Willison’s Weblog — 34 minutes ago
Simon’s post alone justifies the scroll. Sharp, technical, zero fluff. That’s the gold here—stuff HN buries under funding rounds.
Why a Frontpage for Personal Blogs in 2024?
Look. Personal blogs are zombies. Substack pays some, Ghost hosts others, but most limp on WordPress with zero eyes. HN? It chews them up if they’re lucky, spits ‘em out linkless. This frontpage pulls RSS from real writers—Climb to the Stars on AI tasks, Creole Ned hunting logos, Writing at Large on stress journaling. Fresh. Human-scale.
But here’s the cynical vet kicking in: who funds this? Show HN screams side project. No ads yet, I bet. No venture slop. It’s pure—it pulls from 40+ feeds, timestamps ‘em like HN, even mimics the ranking. Effort poured into vibes, not virality.
Short answer? Indie web fatigue. We’re drowning in platform slop. Twitter’s a sewer, Bluesky’s a club, HN’s a startup echo chamber. Blogs? They’re the underground pub where devs still think aloud. This aggregates ‘em without the gatekeep.
One para wonder: Genius.
And it works. I bookmarked it after five minutes. That’s rare.
Will a Frontpage for Personal Blogs Kill RSS Readers?
Remember RSS? The killer app of 2004. Google Reader died, and we all scattered. Planet sites popped up—curated blog rolls for niches. They withered too. Too much maintenance, too little stickiness.
This? Smarter. HN skin means instant familiarity. No client needed; it’s a web page. Submits via RSS, auto-ranks by recency with subtle points (I assume, like HN’s formula). Posts from kottke.org, simonwillison.net, jeffgeerling.com—names you know, voices you trust. Even World of Reel sneaks in Hollywood tea. Eclectic as hell.
My unique angle—and the original Show HN misses this—it’s a stealth revival of the blogroll. Back in ‘05, every site had one: links to friends’ pages. Reciprocal traffic, community vibe. Algorithms nuked that. This frontpage? Centralized blogroll 2.0. If it catches fire, expect indie devs to game it like HN karma. But without PG’s heavy hand, it could foster real discourse. Prediction: six months, niche forks emerge—one for tech, one for essays, one for coffee roasts (yeah, there’s those too).
Cynical twist: PR spin screams ‘decentralize discovery!’ Nah. It’s one dev’s server. Falls over? Poof. But hey, better than Meta’s algo.
Who Actually Makes Money Here?
That’s my Valley mantra. Always ask. Creator? Zero, unless donations kick in. Bloggers? Traffic bump—Simon gets HN-level eyes without the noise. Readers? Free signal in the feed hellscape.
Big tech? Crickets. No data harvest. No upsell. It’s anti-everything we’re fighting. Anthropic scaling policies? Molly White worrying about machines? That’s on the list too. Real talk, not hype.
Downsides. Dupe posts—World of Reel twice. French titles slipping in (clins d’œil?). No comments yet, I wager. But it’s day zero.
Dense dive: Check the spread. Tech heavy—MarkerHighlight.js, Scour update—but poetry, music reviews, even sowthistle soup recipes. kottke.org dominates, as expected. It’s a mirror of the passionate web, unfiltered. In an era where every post’s A/B tested, this rawness slaps. Yet, sustainability? One person can’t wrangle 100 feeds forever. Open source it, fool.
Does This Fix the Indie Web’s Discoverability Problem?
Yes—and no. Discoverability’s the blog killer. No algo push, no eyes. This surfaces gems like Eli Li’s ‘The Seed Beneath the Snow’ or Ren Powell’s ‘Oppvarming’. But scale? HN has millions. This has… you and me.
Bold call: If it hits 10k dailies, Substack panics. Indie writers bolt for custom domains. We’ve seen echoes—Micro.blog, Mastodon blogs—but this HN clone? Stickier.
Fragment. Love it.
Wrapping the scroll: Build your own dial-up ISP? Hell yes. Axios supply chain social engineering? Vital read. It’s the web I miss.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a frontpage for personal blogs?
It’s a Hacker News-style aggregator pulling fresh RSS from indie sites—tech, essays, personal rants. No paywalls, no ads.
Will a frontpage for personal blogs replace Hacker News?
Nah. Complements it. HN for startups; this for souls.
How do I submit my blog to the frontpage?
RSS feed, I presume. Watch the Show HN thread for deets—likely simple ping.
