The article identifies the most popular bloggers on Hacker News in 2025, focusing on individual bloggers rather than company or team blogs. It explains the methodology used to determine which blogs qualify for inclusion in the ranking.
The article discusses the Friend-Of-A-Friend (FOAF) concept for establishing trust relationships through social graphs. It notes that FOAF implementations have varied over time, ranging from complex cryptography and key-signing ceremonies to XML RDF formats.
RSS Club is a WordPress feature that creates posts visible only to RSS/Atom subscribers, not on the website itself. The article explains how to implement this functionality for WordPress sites.
The human.json protocol allows humans to assert authorship of their site content and vouch for others' humanity using URL ownership as identity. The author implemented this protocol on their website, making it available at evanhahn.com/human.json.
In 2025, the author published 141 blog posts, with 33 reaching the front page of Hacker News. The blog peaked at 1.3 million monthly views in August and gained over 2,500 email subscribers. The author was the third most popular blogger on Hacker News for the year.
The author introduces RSS Club, a series of posts exclusively visible to RSS/Atom subscribers and not accessible via web search engines or social media syndication.