All Topics

Discussions center on analyzing trends in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and testing rates, primarily in the US, with debates on whether numbers are rising, falling, or misleading due to testing variations, often sharing data from sources like Worldometers and CDC.

Comments debate the rapid pace of change and instability in JavaScript frontend frameworks, tools, and ecosystems, questioning if the high churn persists or has stabilized in recent years.

This cluster features comments where users share links to other similar projects, tools, or past Hacker News discussions resembling the main post's project.

Users ask for or share URLs to websites, Discords, forums, and communities related to projects or topics discussed in Hacker News threads.

Comments revolve around the number zero's properties, usage, and implications in programming and math, including debates on allowing zero values, division by zero, zero vs. non-zero, and starting at zero versus one.

Discussions revolve around the merits, shortcomings, openness, and implementation challenges of communication protocols, often contrasting them with proprietary implementations and advocating for standardization like RFCs.

The cluster centers on debates about whether Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) should be imprisoned prior to conviction for his role in the FTX collapse, contrasting presumption of innocence and wrongful conviction risks with demands for pretrial detention due to the severity of alleged crimes.

Discussions focus on traditional car manufacturers' challenges with innovation, EVs, software, and competition from tech companies like Tesla, highlighting core competencies in engines, outsourcing, and failure to adapt.

Cluster centers on users asking what various acronyms and abbreviations stand for in Hacker News posts and comments, with responses providing explanations or humorous takes. Discussions highlight confusion over neologisms, tech jargon, and context-specific shorthands.

Users discuss complaints about unexpected NSFW content on websites, requests for default filtering, API restrictions, and policies for handling adult material on platforms like Hacker News.

Commenters use sarcastic humor to compare an article's subject—likely a product, behavior, or business practice—to illegal drugs, addiction, and drug dealer rules like 'never get high on your own supply'.

Discussions focus on the physics of how airplane wings generate lift, debating common misconceptions like Bernoulli's principle versus air deflection and Newton's laws, including topics like stall speed, stability, and upside-down flight.

Discussions recommend ripgrep as a faster, more reliable alternative to traditional grep for code searching, praising its performance, fewer bugs, and sane defaults while comparing it to tools like ag and git grep.

The cluster debates the rapid pace of AI advancements, with commenters emphasizing explosive progress in recent years (e.g., AlphaGo, GPT models, multimodal AI) and countering skepticism about stagnation or goalpost-moving.

The cluster centers on comments expressing disbelief that others are surprised by a predictable event, outcome, or revelation in the parent discussion, often emphasizing its foreseeability.

Cluster focuses on debates about the pros and cons of checked exceptions in Java, comparing them to unchecked exceptions, error codes, and alternatives like Rust's Result types.

Discussions center on the necessity of technical co-founders for startups, challenges faced by non-technical founders in finding them, and advice on alternatives like learning to code or hiring.

Cluster centers on debates about whether Virtual DOM (as used in React and similar frameworks) is faster than direct DOM manipulation, questioning performance benefits, diffing overhead, and comparisons to vanilla JS or alternatives.

The cluster centers on recommendations for using Firefox on Android due to its support for browser extensions like uBlock Origin, enabling ad-blocking and a better web experience compared to other mobile browsers.

Discussions debate the severity, radiation effects, exclusion zones, casualties, and long-term habitability from Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents, often comparing them to other scenarios or defending nuclear safety.

Comments criticize Google's search results for heavy personalization, filter bubbles, ideological biases, and prioritizing ads or popularity over neutral relevance.

The cluster discusses AWS's market leadership, advantages over competitors like Azure and Google Cloud, and risks of dependency due to Amazon potentially launching competing services against its customers.

Comments debate the 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' argument, opposing government surveillance, backdoors, and privacy invasions justified for catching criminals, while emphasizing risks of abuse and the need for strong privacy rights.

Commenters discuss copyright concerns with AI-generated music, questioning if generated tracks violate copyrights on compositions or recordings, potential YouTube claims, and legal risks of using or distributing them.

The cluster focuses on advice and debates about effectively rejecting requests or saying 'no' in professional and social contexts, emphasizing directness over passive-aggressive responses.

Users repeatedly ask for direct, downloadable PDF links to documents or papers shared in the discussion, often expressing frustration with Scribd embeds or unavailable direct access.

Discussions revolve around grammatical gender in languages like German, Spanish, and Russian versus English, debates on gender-neutral terms such as 'guys', 'he', or 'females', and whether they are sexist or offensive.

Users jokingly lament that the HN post or thread is so engaging it will consume the rest of their day, derailing productivity.

Discussions focus on various API pricing strategies, including usage-based billing, pay-as-you-go options, fixed subscriptions, per-request costs, and comparisons of affordability and predictability.

Discussions center on the importance, best practices, and debates around writing effective Git commit messages, emphasizing whether they should explain 'why' changes were made versus just 'what' changed, with examples of good and bad messages.

Cluster focuses on how pixel sizes, DPI/PPI, and scaling behave across screens with varying resolutions like Retina displays, iPhones, and laptops, especially in web rendering where CSS pixels differ from device pixels. Debates cover why content appears smaller on high-density screens and the need for proper handling in apps and browsers.

Commenters discuss preferences between online shopping (especially Amazon) and physical stores, comparing factors like price, convenience, selection, returns, and product quality.

Comments primarily blame bad management and leadership for workplace issues such as employee underperformance, antagonism, and low productivity, rather than faulting the workers themselves. Discussions highlight how dysfunctional managers create environments that hinder thriving teams and advocate for better incentives and accountability at the top.

The cluster focuses on comparisons between AMD Ryzen processors and Intel CPUs, debating performance, price, power efficiency (TDP), single-core vs multi-core speeds, and value for money across desktop, laptop, and server use cases.

Users repeatedly ask or speculate about which specific city the original post refers to, mentioning places like NYC, Amsterdam, Pittsburgh, and others while expressing interest in their own cities.

Discussions debate the value of creating jobs without economic productivity, often criticizing make-work employment and proposing alternatives like universal basic income, while referencing the broken window fallacy.

Users discuss frustrating US car buying experiences involving dishonest dealership tactics, haggling, bait-and-switch schemes, and alternatives like no-haggle services such as CarMax or Carvana.

The cluster focuses on debates about admissions processes at top universities like Ivy Leagues, including criteria such as merit, SAT scores, diversity, extracurriculars, lotteries, and rejecting highly qualified applicants due to limited spots and prestige concerns.

Discussions revolve around the nature, value, and types of 'thinking' in AI, such as chain-of-thought, fast vs slow thinking, and whether it improves outputs or merely simulates human cognition.

This cluster centers on debates about remote work versus return-to-office (RTO) mandates, including employee choice, company policy changes, flexibility preferences, and arguments for or against forcing in-office work.

Comments overwhelmingly recommend yt-dlp (a fork of youtube-dl) as a superior, versatile tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other sites, often questioning why the article's solution isn't using it.

The cluster discusses how flat or non-hierarchical organizations inevitably develop hidden power structures and informal hierarchies, referencing 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness' and the Iron Law of Oligarchy, with critiques of boss-less companies like Valve.

Commenters debate whether the discussed topic is about actual video games or gaming versus game development or tech tools, often dismissing it as not 'real gaming' and questioning its fit on Hacker News.

Comments debate whether US Democrats and Republicans are fundamentally similar or distinct, often critiquing 'both sides' arguments, partisanship, and the illusion of choice in the two-party system.

The cluster discusses criticisms of venture capital funding in startups, highlighting how it drives unsustainable hypergrowth, prioritizes acquisitions or IPOs over profitability, and leads to business failures when funding dries up.

The cluster discusses Apple's limited support for running Linux on Mac hardware, the challenges involved due to proprietary components, and debates over opening macOS to non-Apple hardware versus the company's closed ecosystem approach.

The cluster revolves around discussions of compensation levels in tech jobs, including advice on negotiating higher salaries, regrets over low pay at startups, and comparisons to FAANG-level pay.

This cluster focuses on the importance of deliberate practice and the 10,000 hours rule for achieving expertise, debating quality versus quantity of practice and concepts like 'practice makes permanent'. Comments reference research by Anders Ericsson, Bruce Lee quotes, and examples from music, sports, and skills development.

The cluster focuses on debates about decentralized social networks as alternatives to centralized platforms like Facebook and Twitter, discussing their benefits, existing projects like Diaspora and Appleseed, and challenges such as network effects, user adoption, and the chicken-and-egg problem.

The cluster discusses the challenges and economics of repairing consumer electronics, appliances, and devices, including high labor and parts costs, parts availability, design choices hindering repairs, and comparisons to buying new replacements.

Comments discuss Reddit's perceived decline in quality and user engagement, with users citing overmoderation, loss of power users to alternatives like Hacker News, and corporate changes ahead of IPO, while others argue it's still growing by attracting mainstream audiences.

The cluster revolves around debates on the feasibility of building new cities from scratch versus organic growth, critiques of urban planning, density issues, and why planned cities often fail.

Users compare a new fitness tracking tool to established apps like Strava, Garmin, Fitbit, and Apple Watch, discussing differences, integrations, accuracy, and alternatives for running, biking, and activity monitoring.

Comments debate the necessity of living in Silicon Valley or NYC for top tech jobs and career success, weighing factors like high costs, networking, talent concentration, and opportunities in other cities like Austin, Seattle, or remotely.

Debates on the merits of HTTPie and alternatives like Hurl compared to curl for CLI HTTP requests, highlighting curl's versatility and questioning the need for replacements.

Commenters debate whether various brands are independent companies or subsidiaries/brands owned by the same parent companies, holding companies, or conglomerates, often citing specific examples and sources.

The cluster discusses Apple's resistance to FBI demands for backdoors and phone unlocks, particularly the 2016 encryption dispute where Apple fought court orders under the All Writs Act. Comments reference historical refusals, legal battles, and government pushes for access to encrypted device data.

The cluster discusses alternatives to traditional cron jobs for scheduling and running background tasks, frequently mentioning tools like Celery, task queues, and distributed schedulers, while debating their advantages over cron in terms of reliability and scalability.

Comments advocate for WebAuthn, FIDO2/U2F, passkeys, and hardware tokens like Yubikeys as superior, phishing-resistant authentication solutions compared to alternatives like TOTP or SMS.

The cluster focuses on international corporate tax strategies, tax havens, Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) rules, and mechanisms like global minimum taxes to prevent multinationals from shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions and avoiding home-country taxes.

The cluster focuses on allegations of Google employees improperly accessing or leaking user data, with commenters referencing past scandals, internal incidents, and WikiLeaks documents questioning Google's ethics and transparency.

The cluster focuses on the widespread lack of reliable high-speed internet in rural, remote, and underserved areas globally, including discussions of spotty cell service, satellite options, and the implications for technology adoption outside urban centers.

Users repeatedly compare the discussed hardware or project to the ESP32 (and sometimes ESP8266), emphasizing its superior cost, availability, power efficiency, and features as a preferred microcontroller alternative.

The cluster debates whether public transportation should be profitable, highlighting its heavy subsidization by taxes similar to roads and cars, and emphasizing societal benefits like reduced congestion and traffic over direct profitability.

Discussions center on preferences for traditional forum software like phpBB and vBulletin versus modern alternatives like Discourse, with comparisons to Reddit, Discord, and debates on the decline and potential revival of forums.

The cluster focuses on discussions about accepting, requesting, or using Bitcoin for payments, donations, and transactions on various platforms and services.

Discussions center on the paradox where greater gender equality leads to fewer women pursuing STEM fields like computer science, debating biological interests, cultural factors, and discrimination versus free choice.

Commenters debate the taste of a particular food, frequently describing it as weird, icky, disgusting, or an acquired taste while emphasizing that taste is subjective.

Users share links to similar 3D-printed kinetic sculptures, physical hacks, and fun mechanical builds from Thingiverse, YouTube channels like Simone Giertz and Sebastian Lague, and personal projects.

Commenters repeatedly question, mock, or affirm that the Hacker News submission resembles art, an art project, or belongs in a gallery, often requesting to see associated artwork.

Discussions focus on the role of debt in everyday life, debating whether it is a useful tool for assets like homes and education or a harmful burden leading to misery, with views on debt-free living versus leveraging cheap credit.

The cluster discusses frustrations with poorly optimized mobile websites that often force app downloads or provide inferior experiences compared to desktop versions, leading users to frequently request desktop sites on mobile browsers.

Commenters frequently question whether described pay structures, company wages, or economic models equate to, exceed, or violate minimum wage laws, often highlighting legal, regional, and practical implications.

Comments observing and speculating on websites linked from HN that are down, discontinued, abandoned, hacked, or shuttered, often due to acquisitions, sales, or traffic spikes.

The cluster focuses on debates about the high cost of a specific microcontroller development board, with users recommending and comparing cheaper alternatives like ESP8266, ESP32, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi Pico available for $2-5 from sites like Aliexpress.

Users reminisce about the early internet era of personal blogs, forums, independent sites, and a sense of discovery, contrasting it with the modern commercialized, siloed web dominated by social media and ads.

The cluster debates the problem of treating housing as an investment asset, which drives up prices and reduces affordability for average people, advocating that homes should primarily serve as places to live rather than wealth-building vehicles.

Discussions center on best practices for managing package dependencies, debating exact version pinning, lockfiles, and risks of automatic updates or loose versioning across package managers like npm, Cargo, pip, and Go modules.

This cluster focuses on advice for validating product or startup ideas before full development, recommending customer interviews, landing pages, prototypes, and Lean Startup methods to confirm demand and avoid wasted effort.

The cluster focuses on discussions about lack of health insurance, coverage denials for medical treatments, and alternatives like ACA/Obamacare or COBRA in scenarios involving unexpected or high medical costs.

This cluster centers on discussions promoting walking as a simple, effective form of exercise, sharing personal routines, health benefits, and suggestions to walk more daily instead of driving, gym, or sedentary habits.

Discussions center on using AirTags or trackers in airplane checked vs carry-on luggage, including security risks, x-ray compatibility, gate-checking issues, and airline policies.

Comments compare a featured precise or high-end cooking device to simple toaster ovens and other small kitchen appliances, often recommending the latter as cheaper, effective alternatives without smart features.

Cluster focuses on debates about whether Knuth's 'The Art of Computer Programming' (TAOCP) is suitable as an introductory or practical algorithms book, its difficulty and hype, and comparisons to alternatives like CLRS or Kleinberg.

The cluster centers on debates about Apple's security practices, with criticisms of their iOS security claims, failure to backport patches, and prioritization of control over user safety, contrasted by defenses of their track record and user-centric model.

Users complain about poor, blurry, or unreadable font rendering on websites specifically in Chrome on Windows, with some suggesting browser switches, extensions, or reloads as fixes.

The cluster focuses on debates about GPS accuracy, availability (especially indoors or without line-of-sight), battery consumption, and comparisons to alternatives in smartphones and tracking devices.

Comments discuss tools, frameworks, generators, and low-code platforms like Lowdefy, Calque, and Anvil that enable quick setup, prototyping, and deployment of full-stack web applications to minimize boilerplate and setup time.

Comments lamenting, critiquing, or reflecting on the current state of the world, often expressing pessimism about global conditions, human society, and future trends.

Discussions center on Google arbitrarily removing or banning apps and developers from the Play Store, often to protect their business model or services, with debates on impacts, alternatives like sideloading, and potential lawsuits.

This cluster debates whether the general public cares about data privacy, surveillance, and tracking by companies and governments, with arguments citing apathy, lack of understanding, or resignation versus claims of genuine concern.

The cluster discusses the accelerated development, testing, and approval timelines for COVID-19 vaccines compared to traditional multi-year processes, raising concerns about safety, efficacy, side effects, and potential corner-cutting.

The cluster discusses the economics of cryptocurrency mining, particularly Bitcoin and Ethereum, focusing on profitability factors like electricity costs, difficulty adjustments, block rewards, transaction fees, and miner incentives.

Cluster focuses on challenges with React's state management, comparisons to Redux and alternatives like MobX, Svelte, and Vue, with frequent MobX recommendations for simpler reactive state.

Users repeatedly ask if a CVE has been assigned to the discussed vulnerability, share CVE links, and debate issues like bogus CVEs and the CVE assignment process.

Users complain about a website manipulating browser history to break or hijack the back button, making navigation frustrating and trapping them on the page.

The cluster focuses on debates about the reliability, government backing, and value of fiat currencies, frequently comparing them to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and questioning whether alternatives merely reinvent fiat money.

This cluster focuses on Apple's policy allowing macOS to be virtualized only on Apple hardware, with discussions on legal permissions, tools like Virtualization Framework and Parallels, and workarounds or debates for non-Apple hardware.

Discussions explain Microsoft's seemingly unprofitable decisions in hardware or consumer products as strategic moves to maximize revenue from Windows licenses, Office subscriptions, and enterprise contracts by increasing platform adoption and lock-in.

The cluster focuses on debates about the rivalry between W3C and WHATWG in web standards, browser vendors' dominance through WHATWG living standards, and criticisms of W3C's declining authority.