January 3, 2026
Chart wars and comment carnage
The Most Popular Blogs of Hacker News in 2025
Simon keeps the crown, Jeff squeaks by, and the comments go feral
TLDR: Simon Willison stayed #1 on Hacker News’ 2025 blog list, while Jeff Geerling nabbed #2 by just nine votes. The comments erupted over who counts as a blogger, why past titans faded, and why curation wins—revealing what the community actually wants to read now.
Hacker News just dropped its 2025 “most popular blogs” chart, and the crowd did not disappoint. Simon Willison pulled a three‑peat at #1—so obvious that one user joked, “Without looking I knew who was #1.” The love isn’t just for his AI deep-dives; people adore his link‑blogging superpower, where he drags cool finds out of the walled gardens and onto the open web. One reader called that “surprisingly valuable,” while others cheered that Simon and Jeff actually hang out in the threads like normal humans. Exhibit A: Simon’s bite-size hits like “I’m worried that they put co‑pilot in Excel” kept the feed spicy.
Then came the nail-biter. Jeff Geerling clinched #2 by just 9 upvotes—a 0.08% photo finish—with #4 only 100 points back. Cue jokes about a “VAR review” and a Raspberry Pi vs. AI drag race. Jeff also scored respect for writing real posts to pair with videos, not dumping auto-transcripts—HN’s version of “no notes, just vibes.”
But the real drama? Defining “blogger.” Fans lobbied for newsletter king J.B. Crawford to be counted, while others noticed missing heavyweights: Stratechery and Julia Evans didn’t crack 2025’s top 100 despite long-run dominance. Theories flew—paywalls, pace changes, shifting tastes. And in true HN fashion, Simon rolled in with CSVs to tinker with, turning the thread into a data playground. Internet, start your engines.
Key Points
- •Michael Lynch ranked the most popular individual bloggers on Hacker News for 2025, excluding company/team blogs per his methodology.
- •Simon Willison is #1 for the third consecutive year, focused on AI/LLMs, vendor-agnostic testing, and prolific publishing (over 1,000 posts; 118 full articles).
- •Willison’s approach includes surfacing content from platforms like TikTok and Twitter, often via short quotes or links with commentary.
- •Jeff Geerling is #2 in 2025 with 10,813 upvotes, narrowly ahead of #3 by 9 points and #4 by 100, as of Dec. 31.
- •Geerling, a YouTube creator with 1M+ subscribers, accompanies videos with text-structured blog posts on topics like Raspberry Pi and hardware, improving HN performance.