All Topics

This cluster centers on discussions about the varying legal status of cannabis across US states and countries like the Netherlands, preferences for regulated dispensary products over illegal street weed, and debates on legalization policies, regulations, and market impacts.

This cluster focuses on calls for holding companies accountable for data breaches through fines, lawsuits, and regulations due to negligence in securing user data like PII. Commenters criticize minimal current consequences and advocate for stronger incentives to improve security practices.

The cluster focuses on user frustrations with poor unsubscribe mechanisms in newsletters and spam emails, including login walls, ignored requests, and debates on whether to unsubscribe or report as spam instead. Discussions also cover services that automate unsubscribing and advice for handling unwanted emails effectively.

Comments where users accuse each other of making unwarranted assumptions, jumping to conclusions, questioning motives, or acting in bad faith during discussions.

Comments revolve around critiquing, satirizing, or riffing on the hyperbolic or metaphorical use of 'war' to describe the article's topic, often distinguishing it from literal warfare with quotes and jokes.

Discussions center on best practices for storing dates and times in software, debating UTC-only storage versus preserving local timezone information due to issues like DST changes and future events.

Comments focus on inquiring about, recommending, and lamenting the lack of good GUI libraries, frameworks, and support in programming languages and tools, with requests for cross-platform options and examples.

Comments discuss personal experiences of toxic, stressful, or abusive workplaces, often advising to quit and seek healthier job environments instead of trying to endure or change them.

Comments primarily criticize the TSA's effectiveness, bizarre policies, and overreach in airport security, often in response to a specific article or incident involving the agency.

The cluster focuses on skepticism towards AI startups, portraying many as superficial LLM wrappers or marketing ploys chasing hype, funding, and buzzword appeal rather than genuine innovation, often compared to dotcom excesses.

Comments where users emphatically confirm or agree that a description, tool, or concept precisely matches the topic being discussed.

The cluster discusses the scope of copyright protection for software, emphasizing that it covers literal source code expression but not ideas, algorithms, APIs, or functionality, while distinguishing from patents and clean-room reimplementation.

Commenters debate the practical utility of a technology, tool, or project, questioning its real-world applications while others defend its value for specific use cases or audiences.

Discussions center on comparing vaping to traditional cigarette smoking, debating its health benefits as a harm reduction alternative, nicotine delivery without combustion, and associated risks.

Commenters repeatedly ask how the featured project or tool differs from similar existing alternatives like Ghost, Cursor, orbstack, and others, often requesting comparison tables or README updates for differentiation.

Comments debate the legal principle of 'innocent until proven guilty,' often criticizing perceived reversals to 'guilty until proven innocent' in legal, surveillance, or societal contexts.

Discussions center on compiler support for C language standards such as C99, C11, and C89, including incomplete implementations, reliance on legacy code, and debates over adopting newer vs. older standards.

Comments discuss the pros and cons of printing documents on paper, including home printing versus using services like Staples or print shops, paper quality, and questions about why printing is still necessary in a digital world.

This cluster groups comments where users repeatedly label people, ideas, actions, or situations as stupid, idiotic, or dumb across various topics.

Discussions center on clarifying that Chromium is open source while Google Chrome is proprietary, with emphasis on the ability to fork Chromium and distinctions between the two.

The cluster focuses on discussions about choosing open source software licenses, with many commenters recommending permissive licenses like MIT, BSD, or Apache over copyleft options like GPL.

This cluster focuses on debates about whether COVID-19 originated from a laboratory leak, including discussions on evidence, scientific opinions, censorship of the hypothesis, and its implications.

Discussions center on prime numbers, including their properties, algorithms for primality testing and generation, factorization, infinitude proofs, and related topics like Primecoin.

Users discuss tools, services, and recommendations for curating high-quality, non-clickbait news from diverse sources to combat overload and avoid mainstream media biases, while debating what qualifies as 'news'.

Comments recommend websites like Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, Library Genesis, and Internet Archive for free access to public domain and other digital books.

Parents discuss allowing young children to walk to school, bike around neighborhoods, or play unsupervised, contrasting past freedoms with current US societal fears, legal restrictions, and car-centric suburbs versus more permissive norms elsewhere.

The cluster focuses on Uber's business model of subsidizing rides with VC money, paying drivers more than customer fares to gain market share and undercut competitors, while debating driver costs, exploitation, and long-term profitability.

The cluster focuses on the difficulties of finding a new job or switching employment in a challenging job market, where many people cannot easily secure better opportunities or be selective.

The cluster focuses on discussions about companies collecting, selling, or profiting from user data as a primary business model, including skepticism about privacy promises and suggestions that users should be paid for their data.

Discussions center on the suitability, productivity, frameworks, maturity, and experiences of using Rust for building web applications, often debating it against JavaScript, Go, or other stacks.

Cluster focuses on debates about the effects of screen time on children's cognitive development, parenting strategies for managing or limiting screens, and personal experiences with kids' media use.

Comments debate whether various user interface designs and practices constitute dark patterns, referencing definitions from darkpatterns.org and examples from companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Programmers share personal experiences and reasons for preferring C over C++ (or vice versa), citing factors like simplicity, productivity, control, enjoyment, and comparisons to other languages like Rust or Go.

Comments in this cluster encourage relentless effort, trying despite difficulties, and not giving up, portraying persistence as key to success and personal growth.

Users provide feedback on a challenging game's difficulty, praising the concept while suggesting adjustments to the starting levels, controls, and progression for better accessibility.

Discussions center on bugs, crashes like BSOD, and reliability problems in Windows, especially those triggered by updates, with debates attributing issues to Windows design, updates, or hardware.

Users discuss achieved network transfer speeds, hardware bottlenecks like 100Mbps Ethernet on Raspberry Pi, and comparisons of wired, wireless, gigabit, and multi-gigabit connections.

Cluster debates the trade-off between rapidly shipping software to meet business demands and prioritizing code quality, stability, and long-term maintainability, often highlighting technical debt from rushed development.

The cluster centers on reactions to AI-generated images and art in articles and presentations, debating their quality, distracting nature, fun value, and appropriateness versus traditional visuals.

Discussions center on nostalgia for the Commodore Amiga's pioneering hardware features like multitasking and graphics, comparisons to modern systems, and recommendations for emulators or new peripherals.

Discussions revolve around users experiencing shadowbans, bans, or rate limits on Hacker News, including advice to email moderators at [email protected] and explanations of HN's anti-spam and moderation practices.

The cluster centers on criticism of online mobs, pitchfork outrage, cancel culture, and disproportionate harassment or slander over opinions, words, or mild offenses, often referencing Hacker News incidents involving figures like Stallman or Linus.

This cluster consists of comments expressing confusion or frustration over the unclear or missing point in other users' posts, often requesting elaboration or more explicit statements.

Comments criticize web development as not 'real' programming and lament its overemphasis on Hacker News, often mocking web developers while asserting the existence of broader software development domains.

Commenters overwhelmingly question the truthfulness of the main article's anecdote, calling it made-up, fake, or embellished. Discussions focus on reasons why the story seems implausible or contrived.

The cluster centers on debates about whether a specific AI system qualifies as AGI, questioning the definition of AGI, if it's already achieved, and comparisons to human intelligence.

The cluster revolves around debates on migrating from Python 2 to Python 3, including compatibility concerns, library support, end-of-life for Python 2, and calls to adopt Python 3.

The cluster centers on debates comparing the translation quality of large language models (like GPT-4 and ChatGPT) to Google Translate, with users arguing LLMs often outperform traditional services in understanding context, style, and nuance.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the British Empire's colonial history, its exploitation of resources and people in colonies like India, and the lasting economic and social impacts on both the UK and former colonies.

The cluster discusses whether Steam dominates PC game distribution as a monopoly, highlighting its voluntary popularity, features like discoverability and network effects, the 30% developer cut, and competition from stores like Epic, GOG, and itch.io.

The cluster centers on discussions about the pros and cons of freemium business models, including how free tiers drive user growth and word-of-mouth while being subsidized by premium users, and debates on their long-term sustainability.

This cluster centers on discussions urging users to abandon Google Chrome in favor of alternatives like Firefox, Brave, Safari, or Edge, due to concerns over Google's dominance, privacy, and Chromium monopoly, with some defending Chrome's usability.

The cluster centers on debates about Europe's economic struggles, social issues like migration and welfare, declining standards of living, and unfavorable comparisons to the US, with many commenters highlighting policy failures and self-sabotage.

The cluster discusses flaws in tech industry hiring processes, particularly how interviews, HR involvement, and subjective criteria fail to identify top engineering talent and often reject strong candidates while retaining underperformers.

Users vent frustration about YouTube's recommendation algorithm repeatedly suggesting already-watched videos, flooding feeds with similar content, and failing to promote subscriptions or new discoveries. Many share workarounds like clearing history or using incognito mode to avoid poor suggestions.

Comments discuss how people exhibit more rudeness, anger, and lack of empathy in online interactions compared to in-person ones, due to factors like anonymity, absence of body language, and disinhibition effects.

This cluster primarily consists of comments where users notify each other that their accounts appear to be shadowbanned on Hacker News, meaning their posts and comments are hidden from other users unless specifically vouched for.

Discussions center on the use of Chromebooks, laptops, and other devices in schools, highlighting challenges like limited IT support, teacher training needs, slow technology adoption, and vendor lock-in to Google or Microsoft ecosystems.

Users debate claims by contrasting them with their own personal anecdotes, emphasizing that individual experiences vary and do not generalize universally.

Users frequently recommend flashing LineageOS or similar custom Android ROMs like GrapheneOS and CalyxOS on older devices for extended support, updates, and reduced bloatware.

Commenters repeatedly reference China as a precedent, counterexample, or comparison for whether the article's topic (a policy, technology, or issue) is already implemented, banned, or occurring there.

Discussions center on using iCloud for automatic backups, file syncing, and data management in the Apple ecosystem, debating its reliability, deep device integration, pros/cons, and alternatives like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Comments criticize Google's pattern of launching innovative products only to discontinue them shortly after, eroding trust and highlighting failures outside core ad business like Search and Gmail.

The cluster discusses the possibility of life on other planets like Mars or Venus, debates on panspermia as a mechanism for life's origins or spread, and challenges to Earth-centric assumptions about life's requirements such as carbon and water.

This cluster debates the merits of using external libraries versus implementing functionality from scratch, focusing on dependency management, development speed, code understanding, and avoiding over-engineering.

Cluster focuses on debates about TypeScript's type system capabilities, limitations, and type safety in handling scenarios like unions, inheritance, and structural typing, often with playground examples and GitHub issues.

Comments focus on Smalltalk, its implementations like Pharo, Squeak, and Cuis, praising its interactive environment, IDE features, and simplicity while questioning its lack of modern popularity.

The cluster discusses the significant risks and fears associated with losing employment, especially when considering quitting a job to pursue startups, side projects, or other ventures, highlighting concerns like financial instability, health insurance, and unemployment in tough job markets.

The cluster focuses on debates about organizing software development teams, contrasting product-aligned cross-functional teams with siloed functional teams (e.g., frontend/backend, dev/ops), and issues like coordination, scaling, dependencies, and code reviews.

Comments in this cluster debate contrasts between rural and urban areas, highlighting how city-dwelling HN users often misunderstand rural lifestyles, services, infrastructure, and perspectives.

This cluster centers on the decline of trust in institutions, governments, media, science, and broader society, frequently referencing 'low trust society,' its causes like institutional failures, and irreversible consequences.

Users frequently request links to demos, code examples, repositories, screenshots, or working samples to better understand and evaluate the software projects discussed in HN threads.

Users debate a new calendar or scheduling tool's features, frequently comparing it to Google Calendar, Outlook, and phone apps while recommending alternatives like Onetastic and aCalendar+.

The cluster discusses the US opioid epidemic stemming from overprescription of legal painkillers, their addictive potential despite marketing as safe, and the subsequent backlash causing doctors to under-prescribe, leaving chronic pain patients underserved while fearing addiction and liability.

The cluster focuses on Amazon's practices of competing against third-party sellers on its platform by using their sales data to launch cheaper private-label products like Amazon Basics, highlighting conflicts of interest and anti-competitive behavior.

The cluster debates the workplace dilemma of completing tasks ahead of schedule, whether to signal availability for more work or enjoy free time, and how busyness perceptions and Parkinson's Law influence management views and productivity.

Users frequently inquire about internship availability, pay, eligibility, and company hiring practices in response to Hacker News posts, with discussions on paid vs. unpaid internships and student requirements.

Comments discuss how people complain about anything and everything, often dismissing specific grievances as trivial or ironic meta-complaints about complaining itself.

Comments criticize venture capitalists, particularly a16z, for prioritizing investments in founders' reputations and hype over solid products or business viability, citing examples like Theranos and Juicero as evidence of poor due diligence.

Discussions center on advanced typing concepts in Haskell like type classes, phantom types, linear types, structural typing, and type families, with comparisons to features in languages like OCaml, SML, and Rust.

Commenters repeatedly ask about the database technology used in the discussed project, highlight its absence or performance issues like scaling problems, and make jokes or suggestions related to databases.

The cluster focuses on debates about the reliability, reproducibility, manipulation, and real-world relevance of performance benchmarks in software and hardware contexts.

Comments focus on inquiring about JVM compatibility or support for a featured technology, suggesting alternatives like Kotlin, Scala, or Clojure on the JVM, and debating the JVM's performance, stability, and suitability for non-Java languages.

Discussions focus on the availability, speeds, and limitations of residential internet services like fiber (FTTH/FTTC), DSL, cable, and alternatives such as LTE/Starlink, highlighting regional disparities, provider shortcomings, and international comparisons.

The cluster consists of arguments over whether specific software features are useful, necessary, or used by anyone, including debates on their removal, implementation, and business justification.

Cluster centers on debates about Java's runtime performance, speed, memory usage, startup time, and JIT optimizations compared to C/C++, Rust, and other native languages, challenging myths of Java's inherent slowness.

The cluster discusses bug bounty programs, including their effectiveness in encouraging responsible vulnerability disclosure, fairness of payouts, company obligations, and comparisons to alternatives like black market sales.

Commenters speculate on specific Boeing and Airbus aircraft models like 747-8, 777, 787, A320, and A380 involved in news or incidents, debating their ages, reliability, and comparisons between old and new designs.

Discussions center on whether specific actions or statements constitute discrimination, and debates over if discrimination is inherently wrong or acceptable in certain contexts like hiring or business.

The cluster debates the merits and drawbacks of take-home coding assignments in software engineering job interviews, with users sharing experiences from both candidate and hiring perspectives, comparing them to whiteboarding, and suggesting improvements like paid tests or better scoping.

Discussions focus on the ease or difficulty of repairing consumer electronics like smartphones, including DIY fixes with tools, glue, tape, or replacements, and complaints about glued or soldered components.

The cluster focuses on debates about the flaws, subjectivity, gameability, and validity of a specific online test used in hiring or evaluation, with criticisms of its design, retake options, and measurement accuracy.

The cluster focuses on strategies for effective decision making, including satisficing, avoiding analysis paralysis and decision fatigue, and delegating trivial choices to AI or random selection.

Users share personal stories of quitting or reducing alcohol consumption, discussing health benefits like better sleep and mental clarity, social challenges, and life improvements after sobriety.

The cluster debates the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, focusing on claims of 95% efficacy, waning protection against variants like Delta and Omicron, prevention of infection versus severe disease, and the need for boosters.

Discussions recommending and comparing various existing blockchain platforms, Web3 projects, and decentralized technologies like Ethereum, Polkadot, and Stacks as alternatives to the main post's idea.

Comments criticize websites and landing pages for failing to clearly explain what the product or service does, leaving users confused about its purpose and functionality.

Commenters question, speculate, and argue over the magnitude, significance, and consequences of the impact from the thread's central event or change.

Users speculate, ask for details, and debate a weird or unnamed file extension from the post, distinguishing it from filenames, types, and formats, with mentions of SingleFile extension.

The cluster discusses how content studios are withdrawing licensed material from Netflix to launch their own exclusive streaming services, leading to market fragmentation, higher costs, and challenges for aggregator models like Netflix.