Other recent comments of mine that I thought were good but didn't make it into the top 8:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29750891 (just quoting the Tipitaka on the list of games the Buddha would not play, upvoted to 25)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29704120 (on ways to generate the Sierpinski triangle, to which I would add http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/skitch#!@12rr[t[m@.5t]f...])

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29842158 (on the energy balance of industrial agriculture, current phosphate reserves, and the degree of sustainability of current nitrogen fixation and phosphate extraction practices)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678098 (on how to use coverage reports to improve software quality, upvoted to 21)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28592961 (a set of shitty shell scripts that constitutes a superior substitute for the YouTube Web UI, although right now youtube-dl and ytdlp seem to be getting throttled)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28333404 (complaining about line-extension fraud: "Pyrex" that isn't borosilicate, Saran Wrap containing no Saran, Sudafed without pseudoephedrine, and Western Digital's shingled disk drives, upvoted to 12)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28185545 (on how it's a problem that 90% of startup founders' jobs are storytelling, upvoted to 14)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29844706 (explaining why electrolytic hydrogen production with renewable energy is a viable option, though see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29857648 for some process efficiency issues)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28401159 (on why web hosting providers should not censor terrorists, upvoted to 28; see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28401109 on the history of liberalism, upvoted to 9 but with a followup downvoted to -1 and another upvoted to 8)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28611769 (on the problem of nonlinearity in hedonic utilitarianism, illustrated with the Cheesecake Factory and Michelin stars, though someone mistook it for an attempt at a Grand Unified Theory of Restaurant Hedonics; upvoted to 18)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834530 (on when rationality is or is not valuable, in particular on the importance of honoring Galileos rather than Maos)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28635172 (a perspective on electronic payment in Argentina and the tradeoffs of living there)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28721065 (on the history of refrigeration and the ice trade, upvoted to 10)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509068 (on why reasoning from fictional evidence is unreliable and has historically led to bad conclusions, also coincidentally mentioning heart and kidney transplants, upvoted to 8)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29833195 (why it is impossible for China to be exporting its coal in the form of Bitcoin: it imports coal and doesn't export Bitcoin, and the whole Bitcoin network uses only 0.3% of China's energy consumption)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28441895 (on whether it is possible for the humans to learn algebra, upvoted to 8)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28613812 (on common misconceptions about Bayesian statistics)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28362300 (on the relative path losses of active and passive sonar and what that implies for submarine warfare, upvoted to 9)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28440912 (on what sorts of extraterrestrial life could potentially evolve to be intelligent)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774257 (on the economic structure of why Google Search is no good any more)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28591650 (on including generalized lattice operators in programming languages, and the cognitive HCI aspects of programming language grammar design, upvoted to 8)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29735228 (on how Winnie-The-Pooh still is not in the public domain in many countries, apparently against the wishes of the Milne family)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28466492 (on some simple DSP for mouse wiggle detection to increase mouse pointer size in 12–18 instructions, upvoted to 2)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29712106 (on companies fraudulently claiming to use two-factor authentication)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28467260 (on the history of tracked vehicles in polar exploration)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29671402 (on user interface design for algebraic-notation calculator programs)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29558779 (on using pencil and paper as a user interface for computer programs by way of a camera)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29557929 (on FTDI's unprosecuted criminal vandalism of their customers' customers' customers' hardware)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29557730 (on the problems of archival and preservation of computerized documents such as HyperCard stacks)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29504940 (on murder in Oakland)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29477589 (a very short retrospective on the EPIC 2014 video and modern journalism)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29476060 (on why we should eliminate copyright; more detail in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29559952)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29332777 (on the mineral resources used in modern electronics)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29321232 (on why you should still pay attention to P/E ratios of stocks)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286058 (on why the University of California's decision to drop standardized test scores as an admission criterion is unpopular with the ethnic minorities they have benefited)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29171793 (on whether Perl was born at JPL or at Unisys)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29158664 (trying to figure out how much nuclear power PRC is actually building)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29152453 (complaining about people commemorating my dead friend's birthday by speculating that if he were alive he would support their political viewpoint, one which he steadfastly opposed his entire life)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29144483 (on how the time gap from scientific discoveries to their technological deployment has or hasn't changed over the last century)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29143312 (on what would enable unfunded physics experimenters to make significant discoveries, getting into the nature of the historical interplay between theoretical and experimental physics)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29136343 (on social mobility and social justice in the Roman Empire)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29072399 (on why nuclear reactor development, and some other aspects of progress, stagnated after 01960)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28937181 (on the non-glorification of violence in US popular culture by contrast with the Iliad)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28885057 (an overview of data structures used for efficient implementations of text editors)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28878848 (comparing the relative costs of tracing GC, reference counting, and manual memory management; see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28878635)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28853236 (on Jacque Fresco's utopian Venus Project and the resulting Zeitgeist Movement)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28733282 (on why it is bad for journalists to use "hacking" to mean "computer crime", which propagates confusion and fear of us)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731861 (on the benefits of notation as a tool of thought)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28679454 (what an urgent new feature with a short deadline on a software project might consist of)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28679139 (on which software project process practices are really valuable in my experience)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678845 (on why frequent releases in particular are very valuable)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28588402 (a totally wrong comment about oxalic acid for rust removal that prompted an excellent reply)