All Topics

Discussions center on whether the economy is currently in a recession or one is imminent, referencing indicators like yield curve inversions, unemployment rates, public sentiment, and historical patterns.

Comments in this cluster repeatedly emphasize that a suggested task, solution, or achievement is more difficult than it appears, countering simplistic views with phrases like 'easier said than done' or 'harder than it sounds.'

The cluster discusses the use, advantages, disadvantages, and necessity of macros in languages like C, C++, Rust, and Elixir, debating their role in handling boilerplate, code generation, hygiene, and as alternatives to other language features.

Comments highlight the irony of privacy-focused sites and tools using Google Analytics despite its tracking concerns, debating its ethics, alternatives, and prevalence on the web.

Users express surprise at forgetting a mentioned fact, product, event, or trivia from the past and thank commenters for jogging their memory, often with nostalgic tones.

This cluster centers on discussions about using Steam for games, including its advantages, whether games require the Steam client to run, comparisons to alternatives, and suggestions to just use Steam instead of other solutions.

Users request links to, share examples of, and discuss obscure, personal, or niche websites with unique content, while suggesting directories or wikis to collect them.

Users recommend and discuss various blogging platforms, self-hosting solutions, and simple tools for creating personal blogs, including options like Pagecord, Bear Blog, and Markdownblog.

Comments overwhelmingly praise the aesthetic beauty, elegance, mesmerizing quality, and artistic merit of a visually stunning technical demonstration, animation, or artwork featured in the post.

Discussions center on ageism in the tech industry, particularly hiring biases against older programmers (30s-50s+), with personal anecdotes of employability challenges, successes at FAANG/startups, and debates on skills, energy, and demographics.

The cluster centers on debates about the pros and cons of using spreadsheets like Excel for data analysis, business processes, and modeling, often highlighting maintainability issues, comparisons to programming tools like Python, and anecdotes of over-reliance in critical operations.

Discussions center on recommendations for Neovim, comparisons with Vim including benefits like Lua support and richer plugins, and debates on switching editors or using VSCode integrations.

Discussions heavily criticize Oracle databases for high costs, poor reputation, and inferiority to free alternatives like PostgreSQL and MySQL, questioning why companies still choose them over open-source options.

Cluster centers on skepticism and accusations of FUD regarding warnings about a tech bubble, impending crashes, and failures of big tech companies like FAANG.

The cluster focuses on debates about the qualities and effectiveness of managers, including the idea that employees quit bad managers rather than companies, and what good management entails.

The cluster revolves around discussions of how for-profit companies prioritize maximizing profits over societal good, ethics, or altruism, with sarcasm, defenses, and criticisms of this behavior.

Users share links to Hacker News threads and articles about various lawsuits, particularly defamation cases involving tech companies, journalists, and data breaches.

Discussions focus on experiences, prompting techniques, and tools like Claude Code and Aider for using LLMs to edit, refactor, and manage real-world codebases.

The cluster discusses Reddit's subreddit bans, moderation policies, and accusations of arbitrary censorship, often highlighting political bias and comparisons to free speech issues.

The cluster focuses on debates about the importance of website load speeds, with commenters arguing that even small optimizations in performance significantly improve user experience, retention, engagement, and SEO rankings.

Commenters repeatedly suspect that the linked blog post or article was written by ChatGPT or GPT-3, identifying hallmarks like fluffy prose, formulaic structure, and bland style.

Comments primarily debate and contrast differences between the US and Europe in attitudes, policies, culture, economy, and other societal aspects, often correcting perceived US-centric views with European perspectives.

Users complain about excessive, shifting, and obstructive advertisements on websites that make articles nearly unreadable, especially on mobile, often recommending ad blockers.

Comments debate TikTok's recommendation algorithm, its personalization of content, effects on attention spans and generational mindsets, and whether its videos are brainless, addictive, or valuable.

Comments revolve around the 'apples to oranges' idiom, debating the validity of comparing different fruits, apple varieties, their qualities, breeding, taste, and storage.

Commenters express surprise and frustration that a significant news event or story is receiving little to no attention from mainstream media outlets. Discussions highlight why it should be bigger news and question the underreporting.

Commenters debate whether a tool, approach, or article aligns with the classic Unix philosophy of simple, composable tools, frequently quoting sayings like 'Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.' and discussing its ongoing relevance.

Users express surprise and speculate about why a highly upvoted post suddenly disappeared from the Hacker News front page, often attributing it to flagging, moderation, or penalties.

Discussions revolve around SSD read/write speeds, latencies, and bottlenecks compared to RAM, HDDs, and NVMe drives in various workloads, questioning their real-world performance limits.

Comments focus on discussing, questioning, and expressing surprise about the number of employees at various tech companies like Google, OpenAI, and Twitter, often citing specific figures from sources like Wikipedia or SEC filings.

The cluster centers on debates about Elon Musk's true role as a genius innovator, engineer, or leader versus a marketer and businessman who takes undue credit for Tesla and SpaceX achievements, alongside discussions of his personality, Twitter behavior, and vision.

This cluster features comments where users express eagerness to purchase the featured product or item, often demanding a buy option, questioning why it's not available, or humorously stating they would buy it immediately.

Comments sarcastically mock a cloud provider's outage, emphasizing irony with puns on 'cloud' and the quote 'there is no cloud, just someone else's computer'.

Comments in this cluster primarily urge other users to write articles, blog posts, or detailed write-ups about ideas, experiences, or topics discussed on Hacker News. This reflects a common pattern of prompting contributions to share knowledge.

This cluster centers on widespread skepticism and criticism of large banks, highlighting their fraudulent practices, scandals, lobbying against regulations, mutual distrust, and vulnerability to failure.

This cluster centers on commenters recommending tablets (Android, Samsung, Remarkable, PineTab, Linux, e-ink, etc.) as superior or more suitable alternatives to the device or setup described in the parent post, debating their availability, quality, and advantages.

Discussions revolve around recommending Erlang (and Elixir/OTP) as a solution for concurrency, fault-tolerance, and distributed systems in response to the article, including critiques, learning resources, and comparisons to other languages.

Discussions center on Microsoft Edge's adoption of the Chromium engine, its similarities to Chrome, comparisons to Firefox, and debates over its merits versus alternatives.

Commenters debate using spiders and natural predators like ladybugs to control indoor insects such as ants, flies, and cockroaches, weighing benefits against risks of attracting more pests or vermin.

Discussions center on government agricultural subsidies, particularly for corn and other crops in the US and EU, including their rationale for food security, market distortions, and calls for reform.

This cluster debates the necessity of blockchain for applications where a centralized database would be more efficient and sufficient, arguing that blockchain's primary advantage is only in trustless, decentralized scenarios without a trusted authority.

Commenters debate the subjective and relative nature of ethics, questioning whether ethical standards are universal or vary by individual perspectives and definitions.

Cluster debates the value of Raspberry Pi compared to more powerful and cost-effective alternatives like used x86 mini PCs, Odroids, and N100 systems, emphasizing better performance, RAM, storage, and power efficiency unless GPIO or specific Pi features are required.

Users discuss frustrations and suggestions for improving Hacker News comment interface, such as collapsible threads, hiding read comments, better organization, and avoiding distractions when viewing comments.

Users share links to online JavaScript code playgrounds like JSFiddle, CodePen, and JSBin, along with interactive demos, libraries, and visual effects such as bling.js as alternatives or similar tools to the main post.

The cluster focuses on discussions about maximum speeds of cars, including EVs, their feasibility at highway speeds like on the Autobahn, real-world performance claims, and comparisons to speed limits and efficiency.

Users debate and compare Apple MacBooks to alternatives like ThinkPads, Dell XPS, and others, focusing on build quality, keyboards, battery life, performance, and OS compatibility for development.

This cluster features comments that label statements as opinions rather than facts, often dismissing them or requesting explanations and evidence.

Users compare Reddit to Hacker News, traditional forums, and Usenet, debating its quality, user experience, breadth of topics, and alternatives like Lemmy.

Commenters repeatedly ask for links, sources, or availability of data referenced in the original post, expressing interest in accessing the datasets for further exploration.

The cluster debates the advantages and disadvantages of using web technologies and browsers as a platform for applications compared to native desktop or mobile apps, focusing on performance, distribution, cross-platform compatibility, and limitations.

Comments discuss Prolog's real-world applications, viability today, learning resources, strengths, limitations, performance, and alternatives like Mercury or Picat.

The cluster centers on the underrepresentation of women in tech and other fields, debating causes like sexism, innate differences, or biases, and solutions such as quotas or affirmative action.

The cluster debates whether large sums like $3M-$8M are sufficient for comfortable early retirement in one's 30s or 40s, factoring in lifestyle inflation, safe withdrawal rates, healthcare costs, and frugality strategies, often in the context of high tech salaries in areas like the Bay Area.

Discussions revolve around the performance costs of heap allocations, garbage collection pauses, and alternatives like arenas, stack allocation, object pools, and manual management in languages such as Rust, C++, Java, and Go.

Discussions center on NSA's access to user data from tech companies like Google, referencing Snowden leaks, PRISM, Tempora, and debates over legality, warrants, and government spying programs.

Comments criticize the power of payment processors like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe to refuse service to legal businesses, viewing it as financial censorship or deplatforming, and discuss alternatives like crypto, new processors, or regulation.

Comments focus on how a product, service, or solution is significantly cheaper or more cost-effective than competing alternatives, often highlighting affordability as the primary advantage. Discussions emphasize price comparisons across various contexts like tech, health, and business.

The cluster revolves around complaints and debates about suboptimal user experience (UX) in software products, emphasizing its impact on usability, traction, and user satisfaction.

Users express profound surprise, shock, and amazement at a groundbreaking AI demonstration, such as fluid video generation, often likening it to sci-fi like Black Mirror and noting its surreal implications.

The cluster focuses on debates criticizing the anthropomorphization of large language models, arguing they lack human-like agency, understanding, intent, or reasoning, and instead produce outputs statistically without true knowledge or the ability to admit uncertainty.

Cluster focuses on macOS security features like Gatekeeper, code signing requirements, and sandboxing that restrict running unsigned or third-party apps, debating user freedom versus protection from malware.

Commenters debate and correct the accuracy of time durations mentioned in posts, often challenging estimates around 5 years as too short or imprecise.

The cluster debates the principles of free (as in freedom) software versus proprietary software, including whether FOSS projects should restrict use in proprietary products to protect user freedoms and the trade-offs involved.

Debate on .NET's suitability as a tech stack for startups, including its strengths like performance and maturity, drawbacks like corporate image and licensing costs, and comparisons to alternatives like Java, Python, and Ruby.

Discussions center on the pros and cons of Windows 8's Metro/Modern UI, including the removal of the traditional Start menu, full-screen apps, and shift toward touch interfaces on desktops, often comparing it to Windows 7 and later versions.

The cluster debates the safety, performance, and idiomatic use of smart pointers like shared_ptr and unique_ptr versus raw pointers in modern C++, including RAII, memory management risks, and whether they fully solve correctness issues.

The cluster focuses on debates about hiring strategies in tech, emphasizing hiring the smartest or best people versus factors like culture fit, personality, attitude, and the challenges of identifying competent talent without perfect matches.

Users recommend classic and popular mathematics books like 'What Is Mathematics?' by Courant and Robbins, 'Proofs from the Book', and 'The Princeton Companion to Mathematics' for understanding mathematical ideas, proofs, and concepts.

The cluster focuses on debates about Julian Assange's status as a journalist, his charges related to helping Chelsea Manning leak secrets, claims of persecution for exposing US war crimes, and his ongoing legal battles including extradition.

Cluster focuses on debates about innovative personal aircraft like eVTOLs, hybrids, and drones disguised as planes, questioning if they qualify as true planes versus gliders, with historical comparisons to Wright Flyer and Spruce Goose.

Comments discuss why specific articles and posts are being flagged on Hacker News, debates over their appropriateness for the site, and interactions between user flagging and moderator interventions.

The cluster discusses the Chinese government's extensive control and influence over major Chinese companies, including forced compliance with censorship and data laws, barriers for US firms in China, and risks of Chinese firms advancing CCP interests abroad.

Users frequently share personal stories of having recently visited the specific location or attraction featured in the HN post, describing it as impressive, cool, or memorable.

The cluster debates appropriate conversations and behaviors among coworkers, including handling arguments, controversial topics like politics or social issues, and maintaining professionalism to avoid awkwardness or HR issues.

Comments centered on questioning, challenging, or seeking clarification on claims that something is 'better,' often asking for specifics on metrics or definitions in tech discussions.

Discussions center on the feasibility of extraditing non-US citizens for hacking US systems or violating US laws, including extradition treaties, dual criminality requirements, and country-specific policies.

Comments where users urge others to search on Google or discuss difficulties and results from searching specific terms related to the article's topic.

This cluster features comments congratulating teams and individuals on product launches, milestones, and achievements in tech and startups.

This cluster debates the productivity benefits, limitations, and role of LLMs as tools for coding, learning, and software development, with users sharing experiences on how they augment or fall short compared to human programmers.

Commenters repeatedly use driving a car as a metaphor or counterexample for trusting AI agents or automation with high-risk tasks, questioning why people delegate control like in self-driving cars.

Users frequently request links to browser-based or multiplayer games mentioned in discussions and share their own web games, platforms, or similar projects with direct links. The cluster revolves around promoting, recommending, and playing casual online games accessible via web browsers.

The cluster focuses on recommendations and comparisons of Figma as a superior web-based UI/UX design and prototyping tool, often suggested over alternatives discussed in the thread.

This cluster consists of comments where users identify or reveal the authors of Hacker News posts, often highlighting notable tech figures, developers, or creators of popular tools and projects.

Discussions revolve around using IMAP with clients like Thunderbird for Gmail and other email access, backups, and offline use, often as a simpler alternative to new tools or web interfaces.

This cluster discusses whether salaried workers receive overtime compensation for hours beyond 40 per week, labor laws varying by country, and employer strategies to avoid paying overtime premiums.

Comments discuss and criticize actions, policies, and PR moves by the Canadian government, particularly under Trudeau and Freeland, including concerns over freedom of speech restrictions and political divisions.

Users share and recommend links to various cybersecurity tools, websites, blogs, and research platforms like Shodan, HackerOne, Krebs on Security, and honeypots for security awareness and vulnerability research.

Cluster focuses on discussions about the Hacker News voting mechanism, where users are repeatedly advised to use vote buttons to express disagreement with popular content instead of complaining in comments.

Discussions center on techniques for blocking web advertisements via browser extensions, JavaScript restrictions, and content filters, along with countermeasures by sites and advertisers to detect and evade blockers.

Users recommend science fiction novels and authors, including Cixin Liu's Three-Body Problem, Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, Stanislav Lem's Solaris, and Ted Chiang's stories.

Commenters repeatedly reference the Apple Watch, often highlighting its existence, features, and relevance as an alternative or superior option to other wearables in various contexts like notifications, apps, and market dominance.

Users criticize companies for unexpected, excessive, or predatory fees, debating the ethics of charging for services that seem unfair or overpriced compared to costs or competitors.

Comments revolve around the UK's Brexit referendum, debating voter choices, its wisdom, consequences, and use as an analogy for current political or social issues.

Commenters challenge claims or estimates about quantities, costs, times, complexities, or scales, asserting they are understated, insufficient, or a stretch.

The cluster discusses the challenges, importance, and strategies for finding co-founders for startups, often comparing it to dating and debating whether one is truly necessary.

Comments discuss problematic practices of domain registrars like GoDaddy, such as locking in customers, seizing domains, and difficulties in transferring to better alternatives like Gandi.net or Namecheap.

Comments focus on a recent company or product rebranding, debating the name change's effectiveness, suggesting further renames due to confusion, and questioning reasons like trademarks.

The cluster discusses the fairness and adequacy of equity grants to early employees versus founders in startups, debating risk-reward ratios, salary tradeoffs, and negotiation strategies.

The cluster focuses on debates distinguishing biological sex from social or cultural gender, with commenters frequently correcting conflations and discussing transgender identities, intersex conditions, and their implications.