All Topics

Discussions center on the merits, challenges, and examples of building new operating systems from scratch, often debating whether to reinvent the wheel instead of contributing to established projects like Linux, with mentions of SerenityOS and other hobby OS efforts.

Discussions center on competition among ridesharing apps like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, including low barriers to entry, network effects, viability of new entrants, and ideas for aggregators or alternatives.

The cluster debates whether cryptocurrencies can achieve independence from government oversight, regulation, and control, or if governments will inevitably regulate, ban, or co-opt them to maintain power over monetary systems.

Cluster focuses on advice for handling rude, antagonistic, or troll-like comments on Hacker News by ignoring, flagging, or not responding in kind to prevent escalation and maintain civility.

The cluster centers on debates about the utility of time zones, including arguments for abolishing them in favor of universal UTC or single national times like China's, their role in scheduling and daily life, and distinctions from daylight saving time.

Users draw parallels between online platforms or games and casinos, emphasizing how the 'house' bans exploits, advantage plays, or consistent winners to ensure profitability, much like real-world casinos with card counting or edge sorting.

Discussions revolve around critiquing the application of 'virus' as a metaphor, with commenters explaining biological viruses' replication, host dependency, lack of intentions, spread mechanisms, and evolutionary behaviors.

The cluster debates the pros and cons of joining startups versus established companies like Google or FAANG, emphasizing career growth, hands-on experience, risks, pay, and work-life balance for developers.

This cluster features job postings, freelance opportunities, and individuals seeking work as full-stack Ruby on Rails developers, frequently highlighting remote positions and specific tech stacks like Postgres and AWS.

Users discuss whether specific features are available in the free plan, inquire about limitations of free tiers, and debate freemium models versus paid options.

The cluster discusses Docker's implementation on macOS, emphasizing that it runs inside a Linux VM rather than natively, leading to performance issues, high resource usage, and preferences for alternatives like Podman, Colima, or Rancher Desktop.

The cluster centers on discussions of REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) features, experiences, and REPL-driven development in programming languages like Lisp, Clojure, Python, and others, comparing their interactivity and capabilities.

This cluster discusses capital gains taxation, focusing on when gains are realized versus unrealized, comparisons to income tax rates, and variations across countries like the US and EU.

Discussions focus on strategies for developers and employees to handle unreasonable requests, poor priorities, and directives from management through effective communication, polite pushback, and expectation management.

Users recommend open-source distributed, NewSQL, and similar databases like CockroachDB, FoundationDB, ElectricSQL, FalkorDB, and Yugabyte as alternatives or comparisons to a featured database project.

The cluster focuses on Edward Snowden's revelations about illegal NSA surveillance of US citizens, government officials lying to Congress like James Clapper, and the lack of accountability and oversight in intelligence agencies.

The cluster debates whether lobbying constitutes legalized bribery or corruption, its legality in the US, and its role in influencing politicians through money and access.

Comments debate the impact of EU regulations on businesses, especially US tech giants, questioning if they are protectionist, overly burdensome, or beneficial for consumers and competition.

Comments speculate on and debate the age distribution of Hacker News users and commenters, often referencing brackets like 18-25, 20s/30s, millennials, and perceptions of youthfulness versus older participants.

Users share links to various online mapping services, interactive maps, and visualization tools while requesting recommendations and more up-to-date map resources.

Comments discuss governments and courts ordering ISPs to block access to sites like torrent and porn platforms, often via DNS or IP level, with talks on enforcement, bypass methods like alternative DNS, and examples from UK, India, and others.

The cluster centers on discussions advocating for simple dental hygiene practices like brushing teeth with fluoride toothpaste and flossing, often in response to alternative products or methods, emphasizing their effectiveness over more complex solutions.

Users discuss how snow, ice, and harsh winter conditions limit the usability of a product or service, contrasting experiences from snowy regions with those in milder climates.

Comments speculate that the NSA implants backdoors, withholds vulnerabilities, or compromises hardware and software like Windows, Intel CPUs, Cisco routers, and OpenSSL for surveillance, often referencing Snowden leaks and supply chain attacks.

Comments focus on questioning, criticizing, or defending the complexity of a proposed system, technology, or solution, often probing for specifics on what makes it overly complicated and discussing alternatives or trade-offs.

Cluster focuses on recommendations for OpenAI's Whisper model and implementations like whisper.cpp for accurate, local speech-to-text transcription, with comparisons to alternatives like Vosk and DeepSpeech.

Users debate and correct the launch or start dates of a featured project or software, citing GitHub commits, old HN submissions, Internet Archive, and READMEs to show it predates recent claims.

Commenters debate what constitutes comfortable temperatures, share personal tolerances from various climates, and discuss factors like humidity, acclimation, and wet-bulb effects on perceived heat.

Users share personal stories of reading Gödel, Escher, Bach as teenagers or children, describing its profound, mind-blowing impact on their thinking and lives, often noting how age at reading influenced resonance.

This cluster revolves around comments predicting that an ongoing negative situation will deteriorate further, using phrases like 'it's going to get much worse before it gets better' or 'this isn't going to end well.'

Users discuss a web-based analog clock demo, debating its precision, readability, accuracy compared to real clocks, and making jokes about broken clocks being right twice a day.

This cluster features comments strongly advising the original poster to seek professional therapy or mental health counseling for personal issues, rather than relying on Hacker News advice.

Users complain about search engines ignoring double quotes for exact phrase matching, delivering fuzzy, irrelevant, or 'did you mean' results instead of precise matches. Discussions highlight deteriorated functionality in tools like Google and calls for better support for operators, verbatim modes, and keyword intersections.

The cluster discusses controversies over what qualifies as true open source software, focusing on licenses with field-of-use restrictions like the Commons Clause that allegedly violate FSF/OSI definitions and the spirit of FOSS.

Comments debate the economics of self-hosting servers versus cloud or dedicated hosting providers, focusing on monthly fees, electricity costs, and hardware expenses.

Users share personal experiences and criticisms of Google's interview and recruitment practices, including bad recruiter interactions, lengthy processes, lack of feedback, and rejections.

Comments debate the inevitability and social utility of religion, arguing that humans require it for psychological and communal purposes, and that it persists or morphs into secular ideologies like politics, technology worship, or AI cults even as traditional faiths decline.

Users debate the merits of using a smartphone or small device docked with external keyboard and monitor for productivity versus traditional laptops, focusing on portability, convenience, and different use cases.

The cluster centers on discussions and critiques of American exceptionalism, the belief that the US is uniquely superior, leading Americans to overlook domestic issues, assume global representation, or deny problems seen elsewhere.

Discussions center on the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, including threats, deterrence, potential NATO responses, and escalation to full-scale nuclear war.

Users frequently inquire about, request, or complain about the lack of desktop applications for various products, often preferring them over web or mobile versions and noting that some desktop apps are merely web wrappers.

Commenters repeatedly question why magnets or magnetic fields aren't used more to achieve the technological or physical effect described in the article, discussing feasibility, strength, and comparisons to machines like MRI scanners.

Users recommend routers and hardware compatible with OpenWRT open-source firmware, highlighting its security, customizability, and superiority over stock firmware, while discussing supported devices like TP-Link, Turris, and Ubiquiti.

The cluster focuses on comparisons between SRAM (used in CPU caches) and DRAM (main system memory), discussing differences in speed, latency, power, density, and refresh requirements, often in the context of new on-package or integrated memory in chips.

Commenters frequently express wishes for GPU acceleration or support in a project, debate its feasibility and performance benefits, and compare it to existing GPU implementations.

Comments discuss the rocket equation's exponential impact on fuel needs for space launches, comparing efficiency from Earth versus space or low-gravity environments like the Moon.

Commenters express amusement, surprise, and criticism at the heated, serious discussions and outrage over what they view as a light-hearted, joking, or innocuous remark or post.

This cluster debates why women are more likely than men to leave or reduce work for childcare responsibilities, societal valuation of stay-at-home parenting versus careers, and modern gender expectations around family and work.

This cluster consists of comments where users repeatedly thank others and express appreciation for helpful responses, advice, or information shared in discussions.

The cluster centers on debates about whether GDPR applies to non-EU companies, EU citizens abroad, and services blocking EU IP addresses to avoid compliance.

This cluster centers on debates about the effectiveness of bicycle helmets in preventing injuries, risk compensation effects, barriers to cycling adoption, and arguments for or against mandatory helmet laws.

The cluster revolves around criticisms of Israel's military actions in Gaza and occupied territories, including accusations of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, and terrorism, alongside defenses citing bias, whataboutism, and context from other conflicts.

Discussions center on the problems with Python's packaging and dependency management ecosystem, including criticisms of tools like pip, pipenv, poetry, and conda, frequent new alternatives, and comparisons to other languages.

Debate distinguishing engineering from science, with commenters arguing that certain technical practices or achievements (e.g., prompt engineering, design processes) are engineering rather than science, exploring definitions and nuances of engineering.

Cluster centers on sharing variations of the proverb 'those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those doing it,' along with similar motivational quotes about ignoring naysayers, persistence, and achieving the impossible through action.

Comments repeatedly asserting that proposed actions, features, or outcomes are impossible, often emphasizing that this limitation is intentional or by design ('that's the point').

The cluster focuses on debates about the performance of new language models compared to state-of-the-art ones like GPT-4, Llama, and Mistral, questioning missing benchmarks, overfitting, and real-world validity.

Comments debate whether universal cash transfer programs like UBI are equivalent to traditional welfare, critiquing means-testing, work incentives, and government handouts.

Users propose, debate, and request various filters to improve content quality, customization, or user experience in a software product or platform discussed in the thread.

Discussions distinguish between acceptable online ads and harmful invasive tracking/surveillance, criticizing the ad industry's privacy violations and advocating for ethical, privacy-preserving alternatives.

Comments debate whether a new virtualization or emulation tool offers novel benefits over QEMU and KVM, with many arguing QEMU already provides equivalent or superior functionality for running x86 VMs with good performance.

This cluster focuses on users asking for, estimating, sharing, and debating revenue figures and run-rates for the discussed company or product, often in relation to its valuation or profitability.

The cluster centers on accusations and debates about election interference, rigging, tampering, and integrity issues, including polls, information suppression, and manipulation of outcomes.

The cluster debates the distinction between extending lifespan and improving healthspan, with discussions on longevity claims, quality of life in old age, lifestyle factors like blue zones, and skepticism about living longer versus living healthier.

Discussions center on X11's legacy status, its technical shortcomings, compatibility issues, and the transition to Wayland as a modern display server alternative.

This cluster features numerous job listings and hiring announcements from startups and companies seeking frontend engineers, UI/UX designers, web developers proficient in HTML/CSS/JS, and related roles, often with remote or specific location options.

This cluster discusses vulnerabilities and risks associated with private cryptographic keys, including theft by hackers, insiders, or governments, secure storage in HSMs, and scenarios like key escrow or client-side exposure.

This cluster centers on widespread complaints about Google's inadequate and inaccessible customer support, particularly for free services, with users sharing negative experiences, noting it's better for paying customers, and expressing frustration over the lack of human assistance.

The cluster focuses on self-sovereign identity (SSI), decentralized identifiers (DIDs), verifiable credentials, and cryptographic methods for proving real-world identity or personhood online without revealing personal details. Discussions debate technical feasibility, privacy preservation, centralized vs. decentralized systems, and challenges like proof of humanity.

Commenters emphasize adjusting absolute statistics (e.g., user counts or views) relative to country populations, frequently comparing to the US, China, India, or Europe to provide fairer per capita context.

Users share YouTube links to songs, covers, remixes, and music videos that remind them of the post's title, content, or theme, often with phrases like 'sound familiar' or 'check out this song'.

Discussions debate React's performance overhead from virtual DOM diffing and re-rendering, questioning its efficiency benefits versus alternatives like avoiding React altogether.

The cluster debates the merits and risks of adding new features to software products, including feature creep, prioritization over core improvements, user requests, and management incentives.

This cluster debates the pros and cons of solo developers versus team-based software development, focusing on productivity, bus factor risks, collaboration challenges, and suitability for different project scales and organizations.

The cluster centers on debates about the harmful effects of sugar consumption, portraying it as addictive, a primary cause of obesity and health issues, and worse than fats or salts, with calls to reduce or eliminate it from diets.

The cluster centers on debates about the necessity and use of semicolons in programming languages, with frequent references to JavaScript's optional semicolons, language design choices, and related syntax issues like automatic insertion.

Users acknowledge errors or typos in their Hacker News comments or posts but lament being unable to edit them due to the expired time window, often thanking others for corrections.

Users recommend audiobook services like Audible and Scribd, inquire about audiobook availability for specific books, and advocate listening to audiobooks as an alternative to reading.

The cluster revolves around debates on the definition of intelligence, particularly whether AI systems exhibit true or general intelligence compared to humans, with frequent calls to clarify vague or anthropocentric definitions.

The cluster discusses repeated promises that fully self-driving cars are just 2-5 years away, a claim persisting for over a decade, with widespread skepticism about timelines from companies like Tesla.

Comments focus on suspicions of massive financial frauds and scams, referencing cases like FTX/SBF, Mt. Gox, effective altruism organizations, Jane Street, and historical examples such as Madoff, Ponzi, and Enron.

Users discuss a product's beta status, request access or invitations, and inquire about release timelines and public availability.

Comments mock the reflexive suggestion of blockchain as a solution to unrelated problems, satirizing its overhype and overuse in tech discussions.

Users repeatedly compare the post's subject—likely an AI innovation or complex simulation—to Dwarf Fortress and other games like Cyberpunk 2077, Caves of Qud, and roguelikes, speculating on similarities or references.

Users debate preferences for laptops versus desktops as primary workstations, weighing portability and convenience against power, ergonomics, cost, and stationary setups, often in developer contexts.

Discussions center on power supply design, DC-DC converters, voltage regulators, diodes, capacitors, MOSFETs, and efficiency issues in electronics, including alternatives like boost converters and Schottky diodes.

Comments discuss Arduino microcontroller boards, their ecosystem, libraries, and community compared to cheaper alternatives like ESP32 or Black Pill for hobbyist prototyping and projects.

The cluster discusses the shift from traditional TV to streaming services like Netflix and YouTube on phones, laptops, and tablets, often highlighting irony in people claiming they don't watch TV while consuming hours of online video content.

The cluster centers on discussions about missile interception and defense technologies, including systems like Patriot, Iron Dome, CIWS, anti-radiation missiles, and their effectiveness against ballistic, cruise, hypersonic, and other missile types.

Users frequently report problems with videos failing to load, play, or display properly on websites, especially in browsers like Firefox and Chrome, with mentions of YouTube, Vimeo, and device-specific issues.

Users complain about intrusive popups on websites that interrupt reading, demand email subscriptions or cookie consents, and prompt them to close tabs immediately. The discussions highlight how these popups degrade user experience and deter engagement with content.

Users draw parallels between the article and various books, movies, TV shows, anime, games, and other media, highlighting thematic or conceptual similarities.

The cluster focuses on debates distinguishing between legal and illegal immigrants, with many comments correcting assumptions that criticism of immigration applies to legal immigrants and emphasizing opposition specifically to illegal immigration.

Comments discuss the financial burdens, risks, and impracticality of individuals or small entities litigating against deep-pocketed companies that can outspend opponents and bury them in legal fees.

Discussions focus on how attackers compromised company systems via stolen or weak employee credentials, such as admin/password or support accounts, debating methods like phishing, leaks, or insider access over software vulnerabilities.

The cluster centers on debates about whether WebAssembly (WASM) will replace JavaScript as the primary web language, its current limitations like lack of DOM access, and its role as a high-performance complement.

The cluster centers on debates about the necessity, benefits, and drawbacks of adopting HTTPS over HTTP for websites, including protections against ISP interference, ease of implementation with Let's Encrypt, and concerns over performance and complexity.

Users frequently compare the article's subject to episodes of Black Mirror or The Matrix, highlighting its dystopian sci-fi premise. Sample comments extend to other sci-fi references like Blade Runner and BioShock.

Discussions revolve around suspicions that the Tor network is compromised by state actors like the US government or NSA, given its origins at the Naval Research Lab and reports of deanonymization attacks. Debates include its effectiveness for anonymity, risks for nefarious use, and benefits of widespread adoption for cover traffic.

The cluster discusses the value and pricing of software, debating whether it's underpriced relative to its value, why customers resist paying, and factors like sales cycles, support, subscriptions, and commoditization.