All Topics

Comments debate the value of movie theaters versus home streaming, highlighting high ticket and concession prices, annoyances like noisy patrons and long previews, and preferences for cinema's big screens and immersion.

The cluster focuses on debates about the difficulties of building, maintaining, and designing roads, particularly their role as entrenched infrastructure for cars versus alternatives or improvements.

Comments debate whether the OpenAI board or Sam Altman lied about the reasons for his firing and rehiring, focusing on conflicting statements, transparency, and credibility.

Discussions center on the meaning, origins, and connotations of a specific internet slang term used in tech and online communities, debating whether it is harmless jargon, a euphemism to evade moderation, sarcasm, or a veiled derogatory insult like an obfuscation of 'pussy'.

This cluster features comments where users express thanks for book recommendations, add them to reading lists, or plan to check them out.

Discussions critique Bash scripting for its pitfalls, poor readability, and gotchas in complex tasks, advocating alternatives like Python or Perl, while defending its use for simple pipelines and ubiquity.

Comments overwhelmingly reject a proposed idea, decision, or action as bad, terrible, irresponsible, or poor, with core comments repeating near-identical phrases of disapproval.

The cluster revolves around commenters repeatedly requesting links, sources, or specific texts for laws cited in debates about legal compliance, violations, or regulations.

Users intensely debate whether the discussed project, system, or investment is a Ponzi scheme, questioning definitions, similarities to pyramid schemes, and distinctions from legitimate businesses.

The cluster focuses on debates questioning whether a specific technical feature, tool, or technology is actually used by anyone in practice, with skepticism about its utility countered by claims of niche adoption.

The cluster discusses how large corporations, particularly tech giants, use loopholes, profit shifting, and accounting tricks to minimize or evade taxes, contrasted with small businesses that cannot, and debates on fair corporate taxation and closing loopholes.

The cluster discusses various incidents of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency thefts from exchanges, wallets, and users, including famous cases like Mt. Gox, phishing attacks, transaction malleability exploits, and challenges in tracing or recovering stolen funds on the blockchain.

The cluster debates the trade-offs between personalized, targeted advertising—which many see as more relevant—and the privacy invasions from user tracking and data collection, with strong preferences for non-targeted or contextual ads to avoid surveillance.

The cluster centers on debates about the nature of consciousness, particularly the 'hard problem' of explaining subjective experience (qualia) and whether it emerges from physical brain processes, is fundamental to the universe, or requires physics beyond current understanding.

Comments debate stock market strategies like buying the dip, selling highs, and timing the market versus long-term holding, often referencing the adage 'buy low, sell high'.

Discussions center on OCR engines like Tesseract and Mistral, their APIs, performance on tasks such as handwriting recognition, and AI-based alternatives or improvements.

Discussions center on Git's user experience problems, debates over whether issues are Git's fault or user errors, and suggestions for extensions like git-bug or better alternatives.

Discussions focus on who owns copyrights to photographs, distinguishing between photographers, subjects, and public domain images, including debates on using images without permission and stock agencies like Getty claiming rights.

Commenters debate Saudi Arabia's government, human rights abuses, terrorism financing, oil influence, tech investments, and US alliance hypocrisy, often comparing it to criticisms of other nations like China.

The cluster centers on debates about the concept of 'hallucinations' in large language models (LLMs), with many arguing that all LLM outputs are hallucinations—some coincidentally accurate—and critiquing the term as misleading or anthropomorphic.

This cluster focuses on meta-discussions critiquing the giving and receiving of advice, often highlighting its contradictions, lack of context, or unsolicited nature in a self-referential way.

This cluster focuses on debates about startups and tech companies attempting to disrupt or enter the banking industry, emphasizing regulatory hurdles, legacy systems, poor customer service in traditional banks, and skepticism about the feasibility and profitability.

Commenters repeatedly recommend using, editing, or referencing Wikipedia as a superior or sufficient alternative to the discussed tool, site, or feature.

Users express dissatisfaction with Windows 11, highlighting UI changes, hardware requirements like TPM, bloat, ads, and performance issues while preferring Windows 10 or alternatives.

This cluster debates comparisons between US government actions abroad and China's domestic oppression, highlighting hypocrisies, whataboutism, and differences in human rights, surveillance, and civil liberties.

Comments discuss NASA's constraints due to government funding, congressional politics, bureaucracy, and pork-barrel spending, often contrasting it with efficient private companies like SpaceX.

Comments debate the merits, drawbacks, and ongoing relevance of NoSQL databases compared to traditional SQL/relational databases, with many arguing that SQL options like Postgres suffice for most use cases.

Debate on whether hiring practices discriminating against non-protected classes are legal under US employment law, including discussions of protected classes, disparate impact, and proxies for discrimination.

Users complain about a webpage's text column being too narrow on wide desktop screens, wasting space, or too wide on smaller screens, causing readability issues like long lines or horizontal scrolling.

Cluster focuses on Hacker News' flagging mechanism, including how users flag bad comments and submissions, moderator interventions for unfair flags, flagging abuse patterns, and explanations of its effects on visibility and ranking.

This cluster discusses effective techniques, personal experiences, and recommended resources for learning new languages, emphasizing immersion, massive input via reading and listening, structured courses like Pimsleur and Assimil, and speaking practice.

This cluster captures short, enthusiastic comments praising a shared project on Hacker News, primarily thanking the author and expressing interest in using or exploring it.

This cluster consists of highly positive comments enthusiastically praising a featured app for its usefulness, simplicity, design, and overall impressiveness. Users express thanks for sharing and highlight it as much-needed or amazing.

This cluster focuses on discussions about Snapchat's features, user appeal particularly among youth, comparisons to competitors like Facebook and Instagram, innovation, and skepticism regarding its business model and future success.

Users discuss, react to, or seek explanations for puns, wordplay, Freudian slips, typos, and obscure cultural references in Hacker News comments and posts.

The cluster focuses on discussions of various job search tools, platforms, and AI-powered copilots that help streamline job hunting, including alternatives to LinkedIn and Indeed, with many users sharing their own projects and seeking feedback.

Comments focus on pointing out, questioning, or explaining the irony in the article or post, with users debating its presence and nature.

Users debate and recommend US cities like Seattle, Austin, Denver, Nashville, and Detroit as established or emerging tech hubs outside Silicon Valley, focusing on startup ecosystems, job opportunities, cost of living, and quality of life.

Discussions challenge assumptions about universal English proficiency, emphasizing that it is not native for most people worldwide, especially in Europe and non-Western regions, while acknowledging its role as a lingua franca.

The cluster discusses Mozilla's update to Firefox terms of use, debating whether it helps users or restricts extensions and freedom, alongside criticisms of Mozilla's past actions eroding user trust like unwanted features and privacy issues.

Users debate the featured device's utility by proposing WiFi routers, mesh networks, extenders, and relays as simpler or better alternatives for networking and device connectivity.

The cluster revolves around discussions of poverty, infrastructure, development challenges, and stereotypes in African countries, often contrasting them with Western contexts or correcting generalizations about Africa.

The cluster centers on debates about whether Elon Musk's reputation, behavior, and political views are deterring potential Tesla buyers and harming the brand, contrasted with defenses of Tesla's products independent of Musk.

This cluster debates the suitability of Windows as an operating system for software development compared to macOS or Linux, with most comments criticizing Windows and advocating for Unix-like environments.

This cluster centers on the idea that failure is essential for learning, innovation, and ultimate success, with commenters emphasizing mantras like 'if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough' and stories of entrepreneurs persisting through setbacks.

Discussions center on comparing gold's intrinsic value from physical uses like jewelry, electronics, and conductivity to Bitcoin's perceived lack of utility beyond speculation as a store of value.

The cluster focuses on debates over whether intellectual property (IP) is legitimate property, with many arguing it is not real property but a government-granted monopoly that restricts use of physical property and should not exist.

This cluster revolves around users admitting to and correcting their own mathematical miscalculations, numerical errors, or arithmetic mistakes in Hacker News discussions.

This cluster centers on complaints about extreme partisanship and lack of nuance in US political discussions, where differing views provoke hostility, downvotes, and 'us vs them' mentalities instead of civil debate.

Discussions focus on Hacker News' usability issues, especially mobile experience with small buttons, poor accessibility, and lack of features like notifications, alongside praises for alternatives like HACK and newz.dev.

The cluster discusses police hypocrisy and double standards, particularly how law enforcement applies rules like surveillance or legal privileges to themselves that they deny to civilians, with criticisms of misconduct and calls for accountability.

Comments overwhelmingly agreeing or confirming that a proposed idea, hypothesis, or explanation is likely or true.

Cluster discusses hiring, mentoring, challenges, and value of junior developers versus seniors, including experiences with their growth, team dynamics, and whether companies should invest in them.

Comments criticize the excessive size of JavaScript bundles on websites, often 1MB+ for simple pages, and debate acceptable limits compared to minimal alternatives.

This cluster centers on Nokia's fall from mobile phone dominance, debating management decisions like sticking with Symbian/MeeGo, pivoting to Windows Phone with Microsoft under Elop, and whether adopting Android or other strategies could have prevented their downfall.

Comments observe and question how situations, norms, or practices have evolved from the past to the present, often contrasting 'then' vs. 'now' in tech culture or industry contexts.

This cluster centers on debates comparing autonomous robotaxis to traditional human-driven taxis, highlighting that concerns like ride refusals, scams, high costs, discrimination, and regulatory issues are prevalent or worse with regular taxis.

This cluster focuses on criticisms of SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) due to vulnerabilities like SIM swapping and SS7 attacks, with recommendations for secure alternatives such as TOTP or hardware keys.

Users lament a startup's abrupt shutdown of a popular consumer app despite strong user love and traction, speculating on acquihire, pivot to B2B, or greedy motives, and suggesting open-sourcing or selling as alternatives.

Discussions center on the prevalence of bots on Twitter, their impact on authentic interactions and activity levels, and challenges in detecting or labeling them, with mentions extending to bots on other platforms like Reddit and HN.

Comments revolve around humorous puns, memes, and exclamations about death, RIP, hugs/pings of death, and things being dead, reacting to the failure, shutdown, or overload of a project, site, or submission on Hacker News.

This cluster primarily consists of comments where users ask the original poster to share a useful script they mentioned, often praising its potential value. Sample comments discuss various scripting examples, tools like bash and screen, and links to shared scripts on GitHub or gists.

This cluster discusses the value, pitfalls, and processes of personal self-awareness, introspection, recognizing flaws like ego and self-defeating thoughts, and pursuing self-improvement.

Users in this cluster frequently ask for and recommend tutorials, articles, books, and other resources to get started with or become proficient in the Rust programming language.

The cluster discusses why email lacks end-to-end encryption, its inherent insecurity due to plaintext transit and interoperability needs, and challenges like PGP key management and protocol inertia.

This cluster focuses on recommendations for ClickHouse as an OLAP database and comparisons of its performance, latency, and suitability against alternatives like Druid, Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, and Pinot.

Users complain about the declining quality of Google search results, including spam, irrelevant links, SEO junk, and poor relevance for specific queries like programming documentation, often preferring alternatives like Bing or DuckDuckGo.

Comments focus on identifying, confirming, or speculating about whether commenters are the authors of the linked article or post, with authors often chiming in directly.

Discussions compare Slack to competitors like Microsoft Teams and Discord, debating its superiority in integrations, pricing, network effects, and potential replacements amid concerns over its Salesforce ownership.

Discussions debate whether software engineers qualify as 'real' engineers like those in traditional fields such as civil or mechanical engineering, often arguing that software work is more akin to coding, programming, or craftsmanship without the rigor or licensing of true engineering.

Discussions recommend open-source and self-hosted alternatives to Slack, such as Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Zulip, and Matrix, for team communication, often highlighting self-hosting options and comparisons to proprietary tools.

Comments discuss why the standard 40-hour workweek persists despite massive productivity gains since the 1950s, debating shorter workweeks, historical labor hours, economic incentives, and leisure time.

Debate on whether AI tools like LLMs and Devin will replace software engineers, with arguments viewing them as productivity aids versus job disruptors that could thin out programmer ranks.

The cluster focuses on debates about the need for constant driver vigilance and readiness to intervene when using semi-autonomous systems like Tesla's Autopilot, questioning their safety, true autonomy level, and risks of driver inattention.

Discussions revolve around hiring standards, processes, and critiques of companies' hiring decisions, often in the context of Hacker News 'Who's Hiring' threads, including sarcasm about lax standards and recruiter experiences.

This cluster discusses frustrations with companies not providing feedback or reasons for rejecting job applications, including pre- and post-interview stages, legal liabilities, employer perspectives, and calls for better communication.

The cluster centers on discussions explaining the fundamental role of insurance in covering unlikely but catastrophic financial risks, with many commenters responding to perceived misunderstandings by stating 'that's what insurance is for.'

Comments primarily question or assert whether a specific practice, service, or technology discussed in the parent post is illegal, often referencing various jurisdictions like the US, Canada, or Germany.

The cluster discusses the extreme difficulties of launching successful mobile apps, highlighting market saturation, intense competition, lack of user traction, and the need for unique features and massive marketing budgets.

This cluster centers on comments pointing out that other users have replied to the wrong parent comment, thread, or post, often suggesting they meant to respond elsewhere.

Comments debate the definitions, merits, and real-world implementations of capitalism, socialism, and communism, often distinguishing mixed economies like social democracies from pure ideologies and citing examples from the US, Scandinavia, USSR, and China.

Commenters repeatedly demand names, links, or lists of specific projects referenced in the discussion to challenge or verify claims about project quality, scale, or suitability.

Comments primarily compare new serverless tools or products to AWS Lambda, debate its strengths and limitations, share production experiences, and discuss deployment options or alternatives.

Users discuss problems with Gmail's spam filters, such as legitimate emails being incorrectly marked as spam (false positives), spam slipping into inboxes, and inconsistent filtering performance.

Comments debate the purpose and utility of cryptocurrency, questioning whether it solves real problems or is a solution in search of a problem, often criticizing its decentralization and societal value.

Commenters repeatedly argue against imposing personal preferences or judgments on others, advocating for individual autonomy and the right to make personal choices without interference.

The cluster debates whether software development qualifies as true engineering like civil engineering or construction, highlighting differences in physical constraints, rapid evolution, incomplete specifications, reliability, and viewing it more as a craft.

Discussions center on TOTP as a standard for two-factor authentication, with recommendations for apps like Google Authenticator, Authy, and Bitwarden, comparisons to proprietary alternatives, and debates on its security and usability versus other methods like U2F keys.

Comments repeatedly propose or joke about using machine learning (ML) as a solution to the discussed problem, often referencing ML hype, its absence, or suitability for the task.

The cluster discusses whether individual votes matter in elections, debating the rationality of voting versus abstaining, the effects of not voting or third-party choices, and voter participation in two-party systems.

Discussions focus on managing browser cookies for privacy, blocking tracking, using extensions like CookieAutoDelete or Ghostery, and comparing alternatives to traditional cookies.

The cluster debates whether ordinary Chinese people genuinely support their government and accept restrictions like surveillance and censorship, contrasting claims of widespread approval and normal life with accusations of repression, disappearances, and coerced silence.

This cluster revolves around debates on whether to have children, emphasizing that it's an optional choice rather than a default or sacrifice, with discussions on selfishness, cultural pressures, regret, and personal freedom.

Discussions center on ISP practices like oversubscribing bandwidth, throttling or deprioritizing heavy users, data caps, and whether providers deliver advertised speeds amid shared network constraints.

Comments speculate on, debate, and compare the physical weight of devices, components, and objects like motors, laptops, planes, and payloads, often questioning implications for design, transport, and usability.

Comments debate whether IQ tests accurately measure intelligence or general cognitive ability (g factor), their predictive power for success, cultural biases, legality in hiring, and comparisons across time.

Cluster focuses on reactions to Joe Biden withdrawing from the 2024 US presidential race, including speculation on his decision, expectations of it happening, and sarcastic commentary on his past behavior and health.

The cluster debates whether time spent on non-work activities like internet browsing, TV, gaming, or relaxing is wasted or valuable leisure, challenging the need for constant productivity. Commenters defend enjoyable downtime, family time, and hobbies as meaningful uses of free time against societal pressure for perpetual usefulness.

Commenters advocate leaving phones at home or not relying on them due to risks like loss, theft, battery failure, or simply preferring not to carry them everywhere, often as alternatives to phone-dependent systems or habits.

Users discuss and often criticize the requirement of paid subscriptions for full access to an app or feature, preferring one-time payments or questioning the pricing model.