All Topics

Users request Markdown support for the featured web app or tool and recommend various Markdown editors, renderers, and alternatives like mark.show, Markdeep, Marp, and Typora.

The cluster centers on debates about video game addiction, whether gaming wastes time or provides value, personal experiences of excessive play, and comparisons to other leisure activities like TV or board games.

Comments debate the worth of college education, emphasizing benefits like personal growth, social experiences, and learning to learn versus criticisms of its cost, job relevance, and alternatives like self-study.

Commenters discuss a new car-related product or service, questioning compatibility with specific vehicles and models, comparing to Tesla and others, and expressing skepticism that it's just a standard car.

Cluster focuses on discussions about open source project maintainers quitting or losing interest, the sustainability of such projects, and solutions like forking or community takeover.

Users predominantly advocate for using browser bookmarks, Pinboard, or other established services over a new bookmarking tool, sharing experiences, management tips, and alternatives like Obsidian.

Commenters strongly prefer traditional pen and paper notebooks over digital apps and devices for note-taking, emphasizing benefits like better memory retention, drawing flexibility, portability, privacy, and tactile experience.

Comments focus on criticizing a specific linked video for poor production quality, unengaging presentation, unpracticed speaker, and overall ineffectiveness in conveying its message.

Discussants compare and recommend existing remote desktop protocols and tools like RDP, VNC, xrdp, X2Go, and TeamViewer as alternatives or sufficient options to a newly introduced solution, often highlighting performance and Linux compatibility.

This cluster revolves around users questioning and requesting specific performance metrics, speedup factors, and benchmarks to verify claims that a software tool, library, or update is significantly faster.

The cluster centers on discussions questioning or sarcastically dismissing considerations for homeless people as edge cases in some advice, product, or scenario, debating their prevalence, choices, and needs.

The cluster centers on discussions about automating laundry tasks like washing and folding clothes using machines, robots, or services, often contrasting these with manual methods or laundromats and responding to claims about machine limitations.

Discussions critique the role of recruiters in tech job hunting, focusing on misaligned incentives, their value to candidates versus employers, and alternatives like candidate-paid agents.

Commenters emphasize Google's vast resources, history of innovation, and market dominance to counter skepticism about its involvement, acquisitions, or ability to succeed in the discussed technology or startup.

Users express enthusiasm, enjoyment, and appreciation for a cool, fun game, frequently thanking the creator and noting its surprising quality and addictiveness.

Comments discuss various hash table techniques like cuckoo hashing, robin hood hashing, swiss tables, and probing vs chaining, comparing their speed, space efficiency, and performance against alternatives.

Discussions center on a persistent, intermittent bug in macOS causing app hangs, freezes, or beachballs on MacBooks (especially Pros), linked to dual GPU switching, affecting various models and OS versions from Mojave to recent, with debates on fixes in M1/Apple Silicon.

The cluster centers on discussions about a specific YouTuber's (LockPickingLawyer) short, entertaining lockpicking videos, his effective use of YouTube's algorithm, clickbait thumbnails, and debates over content authenticity and value.

Comments in this cluster express agreement or sudden understanding by repeatedly stating that an explanation, idea, or conclusion makes logical sense.

Users complain about Imgur's issues like redirecting direct image links to ad-heavy pages, blocking by networks and VPNs, mobile browser crashes, and censorship, while suggesting alternatives or self-hosting.

The cluster debates how social media provides illusory connections that replace or hinder genuine in-person socializing, with many advocating for real-life interactions over online surrogates.

Discussions recommend Linux container technologies like LXC, LXD, and Incus as simpler, more secure alternatives to Docker, often noting Docker's roots in LXC and kernel features like namespaces and cgroups.

Comments debate the priority of space colonization and becoming multi-planetary for humanity's long-term survival versus first addressing Earth's environmental and sustainability challenges.

Discussions focus on which US cellular carriers (e.g., T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon) support a specific phone or service, including LTE band compatibility, hotspots vs. phones, and workarounds like VoWiFi.

This cluster consists of comments expressing appreciation and gratitude for clear, helpful, and detailed explanations provided by other users in discussions.

The cluster focuses on debates about client-side (end-to-end) encryption versus server-side or at-rest encryption in cloud services, emphasizing privacy risks when providers hold decryption keys.

This cluster consists of comments questioning or expressing suspicion about users creating new or throwaway accounts on Hacker News solely to post a single comment, often implying motives like trolling, spam, or avoiding accountability.

The cluster discusses frustrations with US pharmacy policies requiring prescriptions for medications, comparisons to countries where drugs are available over-the-counter, and workarounds like online services or international purchases.

Users repeatedly criticize a Hacker News article's title as clickbait, debating its sensationalism and misleading nature while some question or defend the label.

Comments focus on identifying, acknowledging, debating the severity of, or comparing various problems and issues in the context of the main post, often noting larger or additional concerns.

The cluster centers on debates about the font used in a project or website, with users criticizing its readability and style, requesting its name, or suggesting alternatives.

The cluster discusses privacy concerns with mobile apps, including data collection without consent, excessive permissions like location and device ID access, tracking by developers and platforms like Apple/Google, and skepticism about apps claiming no surveillance.

This cluster consists of discussions about editing, changing, or complaining regarding the titles of Hacker News submissions, often involving submitters, moderators, and requests for more accurate or less clickbaity titles.

Comments criticize or sarcastically question government money printing as a solution to economic problems, emphasizing its role in causing inflation, currency debasement, and hyperinflation risks.

Comments frequently compare the discussed platform or issue to eBay's practices, including seller fraud, buyer protections, competition, and reasons to prefer or avoid it.

Commenters frequently point out that the US is behind or worse than other countries in legal, social, and systemic aspects, challenging US-centric assumptions in discussions.

Discussions center on challenges and strategies for international developers obtaining work visas like H-1B for jobs in the US, Europe, Canada, and elsewhere, including alternatives like remote work or easier immigration paths.

This cluster discusses how companies exploit cheaper foreign labor through offshoring, outsourcing, and H-1B visas to cut costs and boost profits, often at the expense of higher-wage domestic (especially US) workers.

The cluster discusses parallels between Walmart's business practices—like poor search, supplier pressure, and market dominance—and those attributed to Amazon, often noting Walmart has done it first or similarly.

Cluster centers on users sharing personal opinions, experiences, pros, cons, and comparisons of Python with other languages, often debating its quirks, simplicity, performance, and suitability for various tasks.

The cluster focuses on debates about the affordability and starting prices of electric vehicles, particularly comparing Tesla Model 3 prices ($30k-$50k range) to competitors like Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and MG across regions like US, AU, and EU.

Cluster focuses on personal stories, tips, and experiments for minimizing smartphone usage, including switching to dumb phones, disabling notifications, leaving phones behind, and embracing boredom to regain focus and real-life engagement.

Cluster focuses on discussions debating the pros and cons of monorepos versus multi-repo strategies, citing examples from companies like Google and Twitter, and their scalability for large codebases.

This cluster features comments that direct users to the original article, emphasizing that the raised points, questions, or concerns are already covered or discussed within it.

The cluster focuses on criticisms of Australia's government as a 'nanny state' or police state, particularly regarding privacy erosion, encryption backdoors, civil liberties restrictions, and COVID measures.

The cluster centers on criticisms of Java's verbosity, excessive boilerplate, abstraction bloat, and bloated ecosystem, often blaming the language, libraries, frameworks, or programmer culture.

The cluster focuses on Joel Spolsky's 'Architecture Astronauts' essay, critiquing over-engineered software architectures while debating the role, importance, and best practices of software architecture.

Comments debate the merits of simple plain-text configuration files versus alternatives like code-as-config, JSON, or YAML, emphasizing human-readability, editability by non-programmers, and criticism of reinvented or tedious formats.

Users express frustration with Medium's paywall, membership requirements, and overall decline, urging others to stop using or posting on the platform and suggesting alternatives.

The cluster centers on debates about the value and effectiveness of reading books versus consuming short-form online content like Hacker News articles, often referencing 'Why Books Don't Work' by Andy Matuschak and books like 'How to Read a Book'.

Discussions center on skepticism that companies actually delete user data upon request, citing soft deletion practices, deactivation confusion, and legal or liability reasons for retention.

Commenters debate whether small reported percentages like 1%, 5%, or 10% are surprisingly high, too low, generous estimates, or insignificant in the article's context.

Discussions focus on the shift from Objective-C to Swift in Apple iOS/macOS development, debating Objective-C's declining relevance, continued use in legacy apps, and preferences between the languages.

Comments attributing changes, trends, or phenomena from the article to the COVID-19 pandemic, often debating if effects persist post-lockdown or noting positive outcomes from it.

Comments in this cluster criticize mainstream media for being deceptive, biased, propagandistic, and untrustworthy, often urging skepticism toward media narratives and reporting.

Experienced programmers discuss burnout, disillusionment with software development careers, and desires or decisions to quit the industry for more fulfilling work or personal projects.

Comments praising, noting, or highlighting a particular question in the discussion as important, valid, good, or the key one to ask, often phrased as 'that's the question' or 'begging the question'.

This cluster consists of comments where users repeatedly label or dismiss each other's claims and arguments as conspiracy theories, often in a sarcastic or rebuttal manner.

Users repeatedly complain about the frequent bugs, frustrating UI/UX quirks, and overall un usability of a specific software application, often expressing disappointment despite trying multiple times or paying for it.

Discussions debate the purpose and best practices for code comments, emphasizing that they should explain 'why' the code behaves a certain way rather than 'what' it does, versus self-documenting code.

The cluster centers on sarcastic critiques and debates about the widespread advice that everyone should 'learn to code,' questioning its practicality, universality, and value for non-programmers or career changers.

Discussions argue that San Francisco is not representative of the average US city or other places, highlighting its distinct problems, culture, and lifestyle in contrast to generalizations.

This cluster discusses foundational issues in quantum mechanics, including interpretations, the measurement problem, lack of intuition, hidden variables, and pilot wave theory.

Comments debate the military status and likely outcome of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, emphasizing Russia's struggles to capture territory, high losses, Ukraine's resilience with Western aid, and attrition warfare.

The cluster discusses why developers often write insecure code, debates on whether security should be handled by languages/frameworks or individual programmers, and criticisms of normalizing poor security practices in software development.

Commenters advocate for directly taxing undesirable activities, luxuries, or consumption instead of regulations, surcharges, or other interventions, emphasizing taxes' role in discouraging behaviors and shaping incentives.

Users frequently recommend various SaaS tools, apps, and startups as alternatives to the product or service discussed in the parent thread.

Discussions center on criticism of a specific CEO's public statements, debating their sincerity, accuracy, and perceived thin-skinned or defensive tone, with some defending or providing context.

Cluster focuses on Gmail's features like ignoring dots in usernames (e.g., [email protected] equals [email protected]) and plus-sign aliases (e.g., [email protected]), including issues with misdirected emails from name variations and comparisons to other providers.

The cluster centers on arguments dismissing or questioning economists' opinions and expertise, often in response to claims that economists disagree with a particular economic view or model.

This cluster centers on the debate over whether social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, as private entities, have the right to moderate or ban content without violating free speech, distinguishing them from public squares or utilities.

This cluster groups positive comments admiring the appearance, design, and slickness of shared projects, tools, or products on Hacker News, typically including thanks for sharing.

The cluster focuses on debates over the effectiveness, necessity, costs, and consequences of COVID-19 lockdowns, including comparisons to no-lockdown strategies and arguments on whether they saved lives or caused more harm.

Cluster focuses on arguments about whether taxation constitutes theft or a legitimate societal exchange, with users debating the morality, necessity, and implications of taxes.

Comments focus on questioning, sarcastically critiquing, or debating proposals to 'fix' software, systems, or features that many argue are not broken or don't need changing.

This cluster features comments normalizing and defending human errors, emphasizing that everyone makes mistakes, often in response to criticism of a specific incident or failure in a technical or professional context.

Discussions compare Bing and Google search quality, with users debating Bing's effectiveness, inferiority claims, and its role as backend for services like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo.

This cluster features comments enthusiastically recommending Emacs as a versatile solution or superior alternative to the article's topic, often with humor or direct comparisons claiming Emacs can already do everything needed.

This cluster captures comments where users express curiosity about a discussed topic and repeatedly ask for links, books, articles, or other resources to learn more. It reflects a common pattern of seeking recommendations for deeper exploration across various subjects on Hacker News.

The cluster centers on debates about developers' frustrations with Apple's strict iOS and App Store policies, including calls to switch to platforms like Android versus arguments that Apple prioritizes users and profitability keeps developers engaged.

The cluster focuses on AI-powered tools that generate, explain, or provide cheat sheets for command-line commands, with users sharing experiences, comparisons to alternatives like ShellGPT and commandlinefu, and suggestions for CLI helpers.

Comments discuss bankruptcy as a strategy for companies facing large liabilities, debts, or lawsuits, debating its viability, protections, asset sales, and tactics like the Texas two-step.

Comments repeatedly emphasize that everyone dies eventually, often sarcastically dismissing concerns about mortality risks or longevity in various debates.

Discussions center on whether a software project or library is licensed under GPL or LGPL, highlighting confusion, implications for usability, compatibility, and preferences for more permissive licenses like LGPL over the stricter GPL.

This cluster debates the comparative safety of human versus autonomous vehicle driving, focusing on accident rates, crash frequencies, fatality risks, and the role of human error.

Comments in this cluster overwhelmingly criticize a specific Hacker News article for being poorly written, incoherent, nonsensical, and low-quality. Users express frustration at its front-page appearance without engaging its substantive content.

Comments highlighting that the current Hacker News story or article has been posted and discussed multiple times before, often with links to previous HN threads.

Discussions focus on the flaws of academia, including its disconnect from practical realities, feudal structure, poor worker treatment, and prioritization of careers over knowledge advancement.

Discussions center on Pi-hole as a DNS-based network ad and tracker blocker, including its features, limitations like only blocking DNS requests, setup tips, and comparisons to alternatives such as AdGuard Home and NextDNS.

Commenters debate whether an article implies or involves racism and racial discrimination against people of color, arguing over the relevance of race, denying racism, or criticizing attempts to downplay it.

The cluster focuses on discussions about browser-based WYSIWYG and rich text editors, including comparisons to alternatives like ProseMirror, Wick Editor, Editor.js, and CodeMirror, as well as debates on their capabilities versus native editors.

The cluster centers on FilePilot and similar web-based tools for easy, registration-free uploading and sharing of large files from browsers, including comparisons to alternatives like file.io, Firefox Send, and WeTransfer, along with feature requests like APIs and privacy concerns.

Users debate the iPad's suitability as a laptop replacement, praising it for consumption tasks like reading and note-taking while criticizing limitations in productivity such as coding, writing, and heavy app usage.

Users question, correct, and debate specific percentage figures from the original post or comments, suggesting alternatives like 20%, 33%, 50%, 75%, or error margins.

Comments debate whether software development has progressed, stagnated, or regressed since the 1970s-1990s, contrasting nostalgia for simpler times with modern tools, abstractions, and increased complexity.

This cluster features comments where users enthusiastically announce they have just bought, ordered, or intend to buy a product recommended or showcased in Hacker News discussions.

The cluster focuses on discussions about companies going bankrupt, failing, or dying, often advocating for letting unprofitable or poorly managed businesses fail rather than propping them up.

Comments debate the authenticity and effectiveness of learning from various methods, questioning if engagement leads to genuine understanding, the role of motivation and focus, and skepticism about superficial or passive learning.

Discussions focus on the difficulties of scaling PostgreSQL horizontally, setting up high availability with replication and failover, and experiences with self-hosted versus managed cloud deployments.

The cluster centers on discussions about merchants and services accepting Bitcoin payments, including the role of processors like Bitpay and Coinbase for converting BTC to fiat, transaction fees, ease of use, and practical challenges.