alt.hn

6/19/2026 at 12:45:11 PM

Leave a Trace

 https://www.jakeworth.com/posts/leave-a-trace

by surprisetalk

6/19/2026 at 2:03:25 PM

Similar idea: don't go through life anonymously.

Go to your professor's office hours, learn the names of your neighbors, become a regular at the local sandwich shop and shoot the breeze with staff, ask the people you're waiting in line alongside if they have any good jokes.

Don't be fooled that social media and conspicuous consumption are the best paths to community.

by randusername

6/19/2026 at 2:09:07 PM

That all sounds exhausting (introvert here).

The last thing I want to do when out in public is be stuck talking with strangers.

by jasonpeacock

6/19/2026 at 2:24:44 PM

As an introvert, one thing that works is that I repeatedly go to the same shops and restaurants so people know me and I know them, and we’re not strangers anymore.

by hk__2

6/19/2026 at 2:51:55 PM

"is be stuck talking with strangers."

Then learn not just how to start, but also how to end a conversation. I hated having to do small talk with people - until I learned that I had not to. I now can share something interesting - and then go back to minding my buisness. (If the other person is deaf on their end - strong signals to end a conversation are looking away, turning the body away, opening up ones laptop ... (or put out the damn phone) or put on earphones)

by lukan

6/19/2026 at 2:28:19 PM

The price of community is inconvenience

by jagenabler2

6/19/2026 at 2:47:34 PM

The price of a strong community is extreme annoyance (and it's worth every bit of frustration)

by forshaper

6/19/2026 at 3:45:29 PM

that's not a strong community, but an overbearing, suffocating one. but that behavior leads to disagreement or disunity. it's why i left germany/europe btw. a strong community stands by its members. it supports them. it doesn't annoy them.

by em-bee

6/19/2026 at 2:16:04 PM

As a fellow introvert, I would recommend that you see it as taking medication. Or getting exercise.

You don't do it because you like it. You do it because if you don't, then you'll be worse off years later.

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 2:26:05 PM

> You do it because if you don't, then you'll be worse off years later.

This feels hyperbolic. While I would agree that community and remaining connected are very important to overall health, I don’t feel like making a habit of talking to strangers is a prerequisite.

by jader201

6/19/2026 at 5:17:44 PM

> This feels hyperbolic.

In my experience, it is not.

I'm "on the spectrum." In my case, it has been a net positive, because it afforded me the career that I have, but it has made interpersonal relationships difficult.

I have also spent my entire adult life, in a community that forces us to have fairly intimate interpersonal relationships (a program of personal Recovery).

It has been exhausting (you'll always find me in the kitchen at parties), but it has also been seriously therapeutic.

These days, it's almost unnoticeable. Definitely still there (ask my wife), but most folks never have a clue.

by ChrisMarshallNY

6/19/2026 at 2:53:10 PM

"I don’t feel like making a habit of talking to strangers is a prerequisite."

But if you practise that skill, you will then also be able to pick up a conversation with people you do find interesting.

by lukan

6/19/2026 at 5:29:34 PM

You might not be interested in knitting, but if you keep a pair of needles around and practice a few stitches regularly, you will gain the necessary skill to do any knitting that you do find interesting. Humans are knitting animals.

by card_zero

6/19/2026 at 2:52:28 PM

You say this as if introversion is something to be "cured."

It's like telling a gay man that he just needs to try dating more women.

There's nothing wrong with being an introvert. It's not really a choice in the first place.

by SoftTalker

6/19/2026 at 5:29:06 PM

> You say this as if introversion is something to be "cured."

Not at all what I'm saying. You don't get cured by exercise either. You're never "done" exercising. It's just a thing you do, in order to have a long term better life.

I don't like talking to strangers. It still tastes like medicine. I have no expectation that I'll ever like it. But I still have to take my medicine, or I'll be worse off long term.

And like being sore if you've not exercised in a while, the aversion to being social is stronger after taking a "solitude vacation". But you can't not do it.

So yeah, you completely misunderstood.

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 5:44:11 PM

I still think when you use terms like "take my medicine" it's like you're trying to cure (or treat) a disease. Why will you be worse off? For me, being social is tiring and uncomfortable, but unlike exercise I don't see a benefit.

by SoftTalker

6/19/2026 at 8:59:11 PM

> I still think when you use terms like "take my medicine" it's like you're trying to cure (or treat) a disease.

Well, that's on you. Especially since I also added "Or getting exercise" and another clarifying paragraph after that.

> For me, being social is tiring and uncomfortable

Exactly my point. "But I don't wanna!". Yeah. That's why i compare it with taking your yucky tasting medicine, or exercising.

> I don't see a benefit.

Pearls before swine, I suppose. Shrug.

by knorker

6/20/2026 at 2:35:09 AM

You’re missing the parent’s point.

You’re still making introversion out to be something that you should work at to compensate or fix, because not doing so would be unhealthy.

E.g. you exercise because if you don’t, you risk disease, cancer, and a host of other physical issues.

There’s nothing unhealthy about never striking up conversations with strangers.

There are more natural and organic ways to meet and interact with people you don’t know (many have been covered in other comments).

But striking up conversations with random strangers in public shouldn’t be equated with exercise.

by jader201

6/20/2026 at 8:39:33 AM

> You’re still making introversion out to be something that you should work at to compensate or fix

Not fix. You just to hold your nose and do anyway, with no expectations if your experience of it ever changing.

Compensate? Not the way I think you mean it, no. Say you hate exercising or brushing your teeth. Ok. Nothing wrong with that. That's not good or bad. But you still have to do it.

Now, am I saying that only the social interaction with random strangers, that only inane smalltalk does it? Of course not.

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 2:27:00 PM

This is something I've definitely lived by for many years. Nearly all of my colleagues and friends don't believe me when I say I'm an introvert. I purposely put the effort in to make meaningful connections with anyone I can and it has paid off more times than I could ever count. Is it exhausting? Absolutely. But in my mind, the alternative is worse. People are great. Get to know them.

by xRyen

6/19/2026 at 2:21:04 PM

> ask the people you're waiting in line alongside if they have any good jokes.

I know no one who tries striking up a conversation with strangers, and I feel like the majority of strangers would be annoyed/uncomfortable with this.

by jader201

6/19/2026 at 2:33:53 PM

I feel the same.

Sometimes, I work against this and start conversations.

Rarely people are annoyed. Too often, they seem happy someone breaks their shell, they just don't want to be that person who takes the first step.

Every time I see a new person I still feel the same.

by aljgz

6/19/2026 at 2:33:30 PM

Somehow everyone gets friends - which means at some point in life everyone did talk to a stranger.

by bluGill

6/19/2026 at 3:47:31 PM

I feel like there are natural settings for making friends.

E.g.

- Frequenting the same restaurants/stores (HT earlier sibling comment)

- Joining clubs/communities/churches

- Parents of kids’ friends

- Networking: Friends of family / family of friends / friends of friends

- Workplace (obviously)

I feel like this is how friendships/relationships happen more organically vs. the OP’s suggestion of talking to “someone waiting in line”.

by jader201

6/19/2026 at 3:56:53 PM

for me the key difference is who initiates the conversation. i never do, unless i have to. but i want to talk to people, so my approach is to put myself into situations where they want to talk to me. the next issue is that sometimes the conversation is boring. that's stressful, but i have more control here because i can try to change the topic. i already know that this person wants to talk, so now it's my turn to probe and find out if they want to talk about something that i find interesting. it helps to have a wide range of interests, and for me the main problem is meaningless smalltalk, but anything deeper that is of interest to the other person is ok again. i act like i am amateur anthropologist. tell me something about yourself...

by em-bee

6/19/2026 at 7:22:19 PM

You make friends by meeting the same people in the same place(s) for a while: school, work, sport club, etc.

by hk__2

6/19/2026 at 2:45:57 PM

If you're going to strike up conversation with strangers, it's best if you make it easy for them. If you're asking for a joke, you're making it easy on yourself and setting a bar for them. I'm a jokester but I don't have a good repertoire of jokes on hand -- I respond to banter. So if you ask me if I have a joke, I often just sputter and throw out the last bad pun somebody shared with me.

Make a joke yourself, if you're feeling funny. But be warned... a stranger once asked me why I was going on a trip. I was visiting my dad who was presently in surgery for cancer that would go on to end his life. I was too emotional to answer with anything but the truth. I certainly wasn't going to respond well to humor.

by boothby

6/19/2026 at 2:50:41 PM

> I was visiting my dad who was presently in surgery for cancer

This is the risk of striking up conversations with strangers. You have no idea what their mood, concerns, or troubles might be. So please be prepared for a less-than-pleasant subject to talk about if you insist on intruding on someone else's thoughts.

by SoftTalker

6/19/2026 at 2:54:07 PM

This is great advice.

Although, the hardest part for me is the interaction with the neighbors, simply because it's not an easy relationship to sever if things go sideways. Still good to know the name of the crazy neighbor, I suppose.

by optikaluzion

6/19/2026 at 1:24:54 PM

> As a writer, receiving feedback on my work is welcome and rare. This blog gets thousands of readers a month, and yet the amount of direct feedback I’ve received over all the years is a small fraction of that.

If you don’t have any comment box it’s hard to give you any feedback.

by hk__2

6/19/2026 at 1:46:24 PM

What is the ideal approach for one? Assuming you don't want it to be a public one (to avoid moderation headaches), and you want to avoid automated spam, and your page is a static site, what is the ideal way to incorporate something like that?

by ChoosesBarbecue

6/19/2026 at 2:29:18 PM

Maybe giscus

https://giscus.app/

It works for static sites, you just need to embed their script, and spam and moderation would be handled by GitHub.

by uukelele

6/19/2026 at 2:22:34 PM

I have a static blog with a public comments system using Disqus; it’s just a JS snippet and it works great. I’ve seen people (ab)using GitHub issues too, or even use gists for blog posts.

by hk__2

6/19/2026 at 1:56:58 PM

Shaming people for not leaving comments anyway, I infer. /s

I put my email address on these things. All spammers already have it anyway. I get some feedback.

Or a normal web form with a captcha will create minimal spam. Certainly sufficient for someone not famous.

Or you can have a google form. Either with or without google verifying the senders email address.

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 1:36:53 PM

You're not kidding. There's neither comment box nor email address. Is he expecting us to cyberstalk him to find if someone has doxxed him, just to give a thumbs up?

"Why is nobody calling to invite me to parties", says man who unplugged his phone.

Edit: Ok, I'm old. For younger people, pretend I said "turned off his phone".

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 1:38:59 PM

There is a contact form on the Consulting / Hire Me page, but it takes a little poking around to find it.

by hoppyhoppy2

6/19/2026 at 1:48:13 PM

Yeah. Should we just magically infer that he likes getting non-gig contacts on his explicitly gig contact form? The form is under "Get in Touch", and under an offer for a 15 minute call. I don't want that.

This reminds me of a friend of mine who in a B2B setting contacted a potential vendor by filling in a form, with his email and phone number as contact details. Instead of emailing or calling back, this vendor continued the conversation by tracking down my friend on LinkedIn and messaging him there! They already had the email and phone number from their form.

I'm also not super impressed by the consulting gig's "Johnny Holton" reference talking about Jake's "engineering excellence". A google search says Johnny Holton is an American hand egg player.

If I were a potential client going in cold then this would not fill me with confidence in his attention to detail.

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 1:51:43 PM

In contrast: A few years ago I was hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). One of the few rules to follow there is to explicitly leave no trace, in respect to nature and others.

by suncemoje

6/19/2026 at 1:57:42 PM

People go to nature to interact with nature, not with traces of other human beings. You don't want to ride 4 hours to countryside only to find very same things you've been running away from.

In contrast, people go to blogs to find opinions, and traces of opinions of others are usually adding, not subtracting. One can say whole HN is a sandbox for sharing opinions, therefore "untouched" posts with no comments and low points are less attractive.

by smugglerFlynn

6/19/2026 at 5:57:22 PM

There’s a 501(c)(3) dedicated to this too: https://lnt.org/

by keane

6/19/2026 at 2:01:42 PM

The common saying is 'Take only photographs, leave only footprints.'

by OuterVale

6/19/2026 at 2:54:52 PM

Let me guess, there are signs posted all along the trail about this?

by SoftTalker

6/19/2026 at 7:03:33 PM

Nope, I never saw that one posted

by suncemoje

6/19/2026 at 8:55:36 PM

I used to go hiking in New Mexico and I actually liked when I came across little signs that someone was there: a small stack of rocks, sticks arranged in a crop-circley pattern, a makeshift bridge over a small stream, etc.

But the worst part of hiking was seeing brightly-colored bags of dog shit right next to the trail, so I guess overall I’m ok with a general “leave no trace” rule. Then again, someone inconsiderate enough to do that wouldn’t care if there was a rule against it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by mega_dean

6/19/2026 at 1:54:34 PM

For me it is more like, i should have started leaving a trace before the invention of modern genAI, now maybe is late. I could have had a trusted trace to prove that I am a genuine human, now I get the impression that faceless new accounts/profiles or whatever are all fake and automatically managed.

by logged4upvoting

6/19/2026 at 2:20:34 PM

It's never too late; the important part is to have a personality and your own opinions. AI is agreeable, they will just go along with whatever information they are prompted with, unless they get an explicit prompt to be disagreeable. But you as a human have morals, values, experience and knowledge that you can apply to e.g. leaving comments or writing things.

But this was good advice years ago too. The average Facebook or Youtube comment section feels like it's full of empty drones, repeated and predictable comments that don't actually add much. HN comments are a breath of fresh air in that regard. Reddit can be to some degree, as long as you filter out the predictable kneejerk reactions and "I also choose this guy's dead wife" meme comments.

by Cthulhu_

6/19/2026 at 2:12:07 PM

You were probably thinking about geeks leaving heartwarming comments under a forgotten repository while reading this.

But what really makes a trace valuable? Internet growth has proven that scaling traces does not really grow value to the same extent.

  > Leaving something adds a little humanity to the internet.
At this exact moment in time there are literal thousands of creators that chase external validation, and millions of lurkers leaving 1-bit "like" reactions under their content. Let's go to popular instagram pages in a search of humanity.

  > It helped you, so it’s likely a useful idea
Billions of reactions left on social media so far proved to be very poor indication of quality.

  > You now have a profile you can access that collects the things you found noteworthy
In a world of content abundance one rarely has time or motivation to re-visit everything he/she reacted upon. This also works increasingly worse the more "traces" you leave, see #1 and #2.

by smugglerFlynn

6/19/2026 at 2:31:04 PM

The "traces" I love most is people who post complicated enough issues on github repos that show the depth of their use case.

Where there's some detail that's causing them problems, and they would not hit it unless they were actually making use of the project in a productive way. It's sort of the ultimate proof of the work I did being useful for somebody and a genuine motivator to resolve that issue for them too.

by moffkalast

6/19/2026 at 2:33:49 PM

Few weeks ago someone here (let's call him $user) commented here that articles that would most benefited from picture often don't have one, to which someone replied calling it "$user's law", I wanted to comment how spot on the $user was but ultimately didn't and instead just upvoted. I was just about to complain here how I wish I commented so that could find it again, but then I thought, wait a minute, maybe hn tracks upvotes too, and sure enough it does, I was able to find the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48001607

> The more an article would benefit from photos, the less likely it’ll have them.

-- Waterluvian's Law

by dvh

6/19/2026 at 2:38:48 PM

Thanks for the article Jake. It tried twice to subscribe to your newsletter but the page stalled.

by ajpaulson

6/19/2026 at 2:23:09 PM

> Tell them it didn’t work and why.

I did that, once, and got an expletive-filled rant about ungrateful, entitled shits (meaning Yours Troolie), in response.

These days, I just quietly slip out the back, and close the door behind me.

by ChrisMarshallNY

6/19/2026 at 1:47:38 PM

I am one of those consumers of the internet, who believes in adding minimal noise. But I see the point being made in the post, and here I am, leaving a trace.

If the page had a comment box, would have done it there.

by bohrar

6/19/2026 at 1:54:07 PM

And, how does that make you feel?

by suncemoje

6/19/2026 at 2:30:28 PM

Surprisingly, it just makes me feel more invested in the topic than I would have been otherwise and frankly not worth the time. Also, not surprisingly, I am evaluating whether my comment added any value and I think it just added to the noise.

by bohrar

6/19/2026 at 2:54:15 PM

One way that I leave a trace, which is a practice I've adopted from Simon Willison, is to record blogmarks for interesting and useful things I come across. Sometimes I just leave a pull quote, but usually I try to add my own thoughts or make a connection to something else.

https://still.visualmode.dev/blogmarks

by jbranchaud

6/19/2026 at 1:44:25 PM

Ignoring the ironically missing way to respond to the post beyond the consult page, this is something I used to reliably do, for exactly this reason:

> First, it’s positive and affirming in the aggregate. Despite its scale, the internet can be a lonely place. Most creators create in a vacuum. ... Leaving something adds a little humanity to the internet.

I think I'll try better to re-establish this habit.

by quaunaut

6/19/2026 at 4:55:40 PM

There was nowhere to comment.

by snarky-comments

6/19/2026 at 1:36:31 PM

You can leave traces in the physical world too, although it's often looked down on as vandalism.

by Retr0id

6/19/2026 at 2:22:39 PM

There's non-destructive ways to do so; take a photo, post a review, write a blog post. Actually Facebook and Instagram are known platforms to "leave a trace" like that, its shady side aside.

But also, plenty of public places like museums, restaurants - at least where I live - have a "guest book" where you can leave a message. I like to believe other visitors and the staff have a leaf through those every once in a while.

by Cthulhu_

6/19/2026 at 3:53:27 PM

Guest books are neat, but it's rare for someone maintain a guest book for the underside of a road bridge for example (with some geocaches being an exception!)

by Retr0id

6/19/2026 at 1:51:14 PM

A teacher told us that if we ever jump off a building, we should make sure to land teeth-first so that we leave an impression.

by NopIdoN

6/19/2026 at 2:01:16 PM

Years ago I was stuck on a tricky JS bug, I Googled it and ended up on a decent answer on StackOverflow. I implemented it, and it worked! I went back to SO and upvoted the answer, and it said "You can't upvote your own answer" Huh!??? Yes, it was my own answer from years back. Thanks, me!

Glad I left a trace.

by mulhoon

6/19/2026 at 1:34:28 PM

I think this is pragmatic and useful advice. Often it also helps you work through what you think by writing it down. Left this comment as a trace.

by dabedee

6/19/2026 at 3:40:23 PM

"You live only as long as the last person who remembers you" ~ Westworld

by pythonbase

6/19/2026 at 2:21:15 PM

If you really want feedback, make sure you leave something needing correction.

"A stranger is wrong on the internet!" xkcd#386

by password4321

6/19/2026 at 2:27:46 PM

Gave up waiting after 30s of clustering

by bcjdjsndon

6/19/2026 at 2:47:40 PM

I've found the web is full of these little traces: https://xkcd.com/979/

by 1970-01-01

6/19/2026 at 2:05:07 PM

Nice try NSA.

by gravel7623

6/19/2026 at 1:43:51 PM

Great post!

by S7012MY

6/19/2026 at 1:59:53 PM

Leaving a trace is something I've been grappling with which seemed incredibly straight forward initially as an open source developer.

These days, I find myself questioning for whom am I leaving a trace for? What kinds of humans or entities? Do I care about the kinds of entities who will inhabit the future? Or will their value system be so different to my own that I'd prefer not to have anything to do with them.

Beyond human nature itself, I take issue with the trend of how human nature seems to be changing over time; for the worse.

by jongjong

6/19/2026 at 2:39:28 PM

I actually use this line of reasoning to motivate and inspire some of my own art and cultural artifacts. When a far future galactic civilization pauses to ask, “who are we and where did we come from“, they might just look back at the ledger of humanity’s written outputs. In this sense, the entire trace we manage to save to disk could be viewed as a body of work were any of it to survive. Even pieces of work that nobody reads today could have a long line of future audiences and help shape the galaxy’s understanding of its cultural heritage. (These future entities might have far more processing power and bandwidth to spend on the analysis of our work).

by DevDesmond

6/19/2026 at 3:14:48 PM

This is how I used to see it. It made my work feel special just knowing that other people would use it and appreciate it.

I think because I felt a stronger sense that other people were my kin.

Now I feel like I don't belong, I feel that I am different and I don't know how to interpret other people's appreciation because they probably don't feel it the way I do when I appreciate something. I feel more exploited than appreciated.

Part of me is wondering if some people who used my open source projects thought to themselves "What a sucker... Working for free so I can monetize his work." And getting some kick out of that. There's a fundamental difference of values there. It didn't occur to me that this is the lens through which a lot of people view the world.

by jongjong

6/19/2026 at 2:15:19 PM

In the context the article intends, the trace isn't really for you, it's for the people you interact with

by swiftcoder

6/19/2026 at 2:45:16 PM

I don't believe in that definition of altruism.

To me, true altruism is selfish. If helping people makes you feel good, then you're an altruist.

If helping others doesn't make you feel good innately but you do it all for others then I think there is some self-deception at play. Maybe it's a status or self-image thing? Because being an altruist is higher status and you want to see yourself as high status? I think you can always trace it back to a selfish motive at some level.

Denying the selfish root of altruism can lead to hypocrisy because there is a dissonance between who the individual really is in their natural state and who they want to believe themselves to be. They have to constantly work to be who they aspire to be; it's not second nature to them and they will frequently fall short whenever it slips their mind or when they occasionally give in to natural impulses. Good on them for trying I guess. Better than not trying at all. But they're not an altruist.

I believe Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" backs me up on this point. Altruism is a either a kin-selection process or a reciprocal (transactional) process.

by jongjong

6/19/2026 at 6:58:46 PM

> I don't believe in that definition of altruism. To me, true altruism is selfish.

A lot of people would disagree (and IMHO, Dawkins is a grade-A asshole)

by swiftcoder

6/19/2026 at 2:10:08 PM

> I find myself questioning for whom am I leaving a trace for? What kinds of humans or entities?

How's your reasoning there? You only want to be nice to people who have earned it? This sounds a bit too close to the "you have to EARN my respect", which is a hallmark of somebody nobody wants to be around.

You can only control your own actions. If your "good deeds" are conditional or transactional, then that very much diminishes their goodness.

by knorker

6/19/2026 at 2:23:53 PM

You're right. I have certain values and I'm OK if others expect certain values from me. To me this is ideal. Friendships should not be based on superficial things like money or social status to the point that you have to constantly change yourself over time to maintain alignment.

If you pay attention, you will notice that this is how the vast majority of people operate.

To me, that's transactional. Having fixed core values and expecting other people to share certain core values is not transactional, it's genuine. These are the kinds of relationships which don't require constant maintenance; you can not talk with the person for years and then resume the friendship like no time has passed, no matter how your situations have changed. If you can change your values based on the latest social trends, then you have no values. The friendship is held together by mutual material benefits; that's transactional.

I have no genuine interest in being friends with people who don't have core values. Because then I'd know I'm only in it for the money, and that's a lot of work and stress for me. Maybe second nature to some people. But I'm no good actor. To me it's work.

My view of humanity is most people are actors and most people lie to themselves constantly.

by jongjong

6/19/2026 at 2:00:41 PM

[dead]

by gnofoente

6/19/2026 at 1:21:14 PM

[dead]

by RiOuseR