All Topics

This cluster discusses the nature, enforcement, and legitimacy of private property rights, debating whether they are inherent, socially constructed, or dependent on government authority.

Discussions debate the strengths and limitations of JSON as a data format for exchange, configuration, and serialization, often defending it against alternatives like YAML, TOML, or new human-friendly proposals.

Comments criticizing a statement or post as rude, dismissive, in poor taste, or unacceptable.

The cluster discusses Go's popularity, questioning whether its success stems from inherent qualities or primarily from Google's sponsorship and promotion. Debates compare it to languages like Java and highlight skepticism about its adoption without Google backing.

Programmers discuss preferences for multiple monitors versus single large or ultrawide screens to enhance productivity in coding, debugging, documentation, and multitasking, sharing personal setups and pros/cons.

The cluster centers on debates about whether users or companies own personal data, including discussions on data control, portability, rights, and the implications of data silos.

Comments discuss RISC-V's instruction set architecture, comparing its RISC design to CISC like x86 and ARM variants in terms of code density, instruction complexity, extensions, and performance.

Cluster debates the pros and cons of segregating gifted or high-ability students into special tracks or programs in schools, including benefits for advanced learners, impacts on average students, identification challenges, and personal anecdotes.

The cluster focuses on debates comparing lifecycle emissions and carbon footprints of electric vehicles (EVs) versus internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, including whether EVs reduce pollution even when charged from coal-heavy grids.

Discussions center on the merits, adoption, performance, and viability of Dart as an alternative to JavaScript and TypeScript, including Google's support and its primary use in Flutter.

The cluster focuses on debates about secure password hashing practices, primarily comparing bcrypt, scrypt, PBKDF2, and Argon2 against fast hashes like SHA-256 or SHA-1, emphasizing slow, memory-hard functions to resist brute-force attacks.

This cluster focuses on discussions about why Python has become so popular, highlighting its vast ecosystem, ease of use, integration with C libraries, and dominance in data science, ML, and other fields despite not being the fastest language.

Comments debate the usability, user-friendliness, and respect for users across operating systems like Linux, Windows, and macOS, frequently urging dissatisfied users to switch to Linux or another OS that better suits their needs.

Comments discuss modern compiled languages like Rust, Zig, Go, Odin, and Hare as safer, more developer-friendly alternatives to C for systems programming and performance-critical tasks.

This cluster centers on discussions comparing CUDA's dominance in GPU programming to alternatives like OpenCL, SYCL, Vulkan compute, and efforts for cross-platform GPU compute solutions that enable running standard C/C++ code on GPUs.

The cluster focuses on debates about the validity, impact, and abolition of software patents, including arguments that they hinder innovation, are used by trolls, overlap with copyright, and differ from other patents, with references to regional differences like Europe.

Discussions criticize the reliance on custom installers for Windows software, contrasting them with simpler drag-and-drop or package manager methods on macOS and Linux, and advocating for better built-in package management.

Commenters frequently share personal anecdotes about growing up in, living near, or having connections to the specific location or similar areas mentioned in the post, often expressing surprise, nostalgia, or local insights.

This cluster centers on debates comparing the security of Android and iOS, with discussions on vulnerabilities, malware prevalence, Google's efforts, custom ROMs like GrapheneOS, and whether stock Pixels or iPhones are safer.

Developers debate the effectiveness of AI coding tools like Copilot, Claude, and ChatGPT, sharing experiences on whether they deliver significant productivity gains, especially for experienced programmers, or fall short in complex or domain-specific tasks.

Users compare the featured product to popular analytics platforms like Mixpanel, PostHog, Amplitude, Heap, and others, discussing features, pros, cons, and alternatives.

The cluster focuses on user complaints about Bluetooth connectivity problems, particularly with audio devices like headphones, across platforms such as Windows, iOS, Android, and cars, often comparing Apple's implementation favorably to others.

The cluster centers on players' frustrations with grinding, repetitive progression, and time sinks in games like MMOs, ARPGs, and roguelikes, contrasting it with preferences for skill-based challenges or non-grindy alternatives. Discussions include personal burnout stories, nostalgia for past gaming habits, and calls for options to skip tedious elements.

This cluster centers on existential discussions about the purpose and meaning of life, debating whether it is inherent, subjective, meaningless, or self-created, with suggestions like helping others or pursuing personal fulfillment.

Comments in this cluster primarily criticize bureaucracy as a source of inefficiency, bottlenecks, and red tape, especially in government contexts, often referencing the Iron Law of Bureaucracy and debates on good vs. bad bureaucracy.

This cluster focuses on the legal, tax, and employment challenges of hiring or working remotely across international borders, especially for US companies dealing with foreign workers as contractors versus employees. Discussions highlight barriers like compliance requirements, company policies limiting hires to specific countries, and services that facilitate global employment.

Users compare a new technology or tool to Adobe Flash, debating its similarities, Flash's ongoing relevance, alternatives like Haxe and Adobe Animate, and desires for Flash revival or HTML5 exports.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the need for, challenges with, and workarounds for supporting multiple user accounts in apps and services, including separating personal and work accounts, ToS violations, and account switchers.

Discussions center on the high prices in the current used car market, where even older or junk cars sell for nearly as much as new ones due to shortages, and debates on whether to buy new or used vehicles.

This cluster focuses on how government zoning laws, local regulations, and NIMBYism restrict housing supply in high-demand areas like the Bay Area and US cities, leading to skyrocketing prices rather than free-market failures. Commenters advocate for deregulation to enable more building and lower costs.

The cluster debates the time, cost, health benefits, and convenience of cooking meals at home versus relying on fast food, delivery, prepared meals, or meal replacements like Soylent.

Discussions center on undocumented, illegal, and quirky opcodes in vintage processors like the 6502 and x86/8086, including their encoding, history, microcode, and artifacts from early designs.

Cluster focuses on debates about Tesla's honesty in PR statements, safety claims, and responses to media criticism, with users accusing Tesla of lying or misleading while others defend against perceived media bias.

Comments highlight how certain advice, opportunities, or outcomes are only feasible or beneficial for wealthy individuals, often critiquing wealth inequality and class divides.

This cluster centers on discussions about the habits, privileges, spending patterns, privacy concerns, and interactions of wealthy or rich individuals, often contrasting them with ordinary people.

Comments focus on how a project's UI resembles classic Windows interfaces from the 90s and early 2000s like Windows 95, 98, and XP, sparking nostalgia and comparisons to old themes.

This cluster centers on debates about whether the US Federal Reserve is a private entity owned by banks, independent from the government, or a quasi-public institution, including discussions of its monetary policy operations like lending, bond purchases, and money supply control.

Comments criticize IoT devices for poor security, unnecessary internet connectivity, and privacy risks, often advising against connecting them online or making everyday devices 'smart'. Discussions highlight how IoT exposes users to vulnerabilities and data exfiltration.

Discussions revolve around domain registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap suspending, seizing, or failing to renew domains without justification, including user experiences, historical incidents, and concerns over censorship or abuse complaints.

Users recommend Common Lisp implementations like SBCL, development tools such as Emacs+SLIME, and resources like Quicklisp for getting started and practical use.

Discussions center on the proper ways to learn and teach history, criticizing AI tools like ChatGPT, oversimplifications, and popular media while advocating for primary sources, historiography, and scholarly approaches.

The cluster discusses YouTube's ad revenue sharing with content creators, including impacts from Premium subscriptions, ad blockers, demonetization, and criticisms of Google's profit cuts.

The cluster centers on debates about Nvidia's proprietary GPU drivers for Linux, contrasting them with open-source drivers from AMD and Intel, and discussing Nvidia's recent partial open-sourcing efforts.

Discussions center on the high cost of housing and living in expensive cities, debating whether people can afford to live there independently or should move to cheaper areas, live with roommates, or accept high rent burdens relative to income.

The cluster focuses on security concerns about hardware keyloggers, physical tampering like evil maid attacks, backdoors in devices, and supply chain compromises that allow keystroke logging or data exfiltration.

Comments debate the limitations and failures of free markets in solving societal problems, often sarcastically questioning claims that markets can handle everything.

The cluster centers on a clever, fun hack that sparks debate about what constitutes true 'hacking' and its relevance to Hacker News, with many celebrating the hacker spirit of curiosity and playful ingenuity over purely practical or professional pursuits.

The cluster focuses on discussions about internet bandwidth sufficiency for video streaming services like Netflix and Zoom, including concerns over upload speeds, data caps, throttling, and real-world usage limits.

Cluster focuses on debates and advice for freelancers and contractors on switching from hourly billing to project-based, day-rate, weekly, or value-based pricing, highlighting misaligned incentives of hourly rates and strategies to convince clients.

Cluster centers on the 'normalization of deviance' in safety-critical engineering, where repeated minor safety violations become accepted until causing disasters like Challenger and Deepwater Horizon, emphasizing systemic failures over isolated human error.

Developers share self-built apps for habit tracking, todo lists, journaling, health logging, and personal self-tracking, often created to 'scratch their own itch' and seeking feedback or early users from the HN community.

This cluster consists of comments cautioning against taking or giving medical advice on Hacker News or the internet, strongly recommending consultation with qualified doctors instead.

Discussions center on the practice of automatically restarting crashed server processes and daemons, debating whether it masks bugs or ensures reliability, including tools like process managers and philosophies like 'let it crash'.

Comments in this cluster overwhelmingly recommend and discuss Emacs Org Mode as a versatile tool for note-taking, task management, todos, agendas, and productivity, often urging users to learn Emacs to use it effectively.

Discussions focus on why tech platforms restrict or ban porn content due to legal risks like non-consensual and underage material, payment processor refusals, high chargebacks, and advertiser concerns, with frequent mentions of Pornhub and MindGeek.

Spanish speakers discuss how an app's English language model mishandles Spanish pronunciation, the app name sounding strange or inappropriate in Spanish, and requests for multilingual support including specific Spanish variants like Castilian or Mexican.

Discussions center on the interpretation of the US Second Amendment, including debates over the 'well-regulated militia' clause, individual rights to bear arms, and its relevance to modern contexts like security and government power.

Discussions center on challenges with building software from source code, including missing instructions, build errors, failed compilations, and preferences for pre-built binaries or GitHub repos.

Users strongly object to a product or service requiring sign-in with a Google account, citing privacy concerns, lack of alternatives, and reluctance to enter the Google ecosystem.

Comments focus on the history, development delays, and distinction of Perl 6 as a separate language from Perl 5 rather than its successor, including its rebranding to Raku and ongoing debates about adoption and relevance.

Comments primarily recommend or debate LibreOffice as a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office and OpenOffice, discussing its quality, maintenance, compatibility, and superiority.

Users share creative cooking hacks to enhance the flavor and palatability of bland or watery vegetables like cucumbers and cabbage, including stir-frying, fermenting, soups, broths, and adding spices or herbs.

The cluster focuses on debates about noise pollution in residential and urban environments, including complaints about neighbors, construction, vehicles, and music, versus arguments that such noise is inevitable in community living.

This cluster centers on discussions referencing Google Glass, including its potential uses, privacy concerns, reasons for failure, and comparisons to current technologies.

The cluster discusses the massive spending on political campaigns, the influence of money on elections through ads and contributions, and debates on whether it sways voters or proposals for campaign finance reform.

Discussions center on custom Android ROMs like GrapheneOS and LineageOS that enable usage without Google Play Services, with microG frequently recommended as a free reimplementation for app compatibility.

Users recommend various online platforms, courses, and websites like Codecademy, Udemy, FreeCodeCamp, and teachyourselfcs.com for beginners learning programming and computer science.

Comments debate city measures to deter homelessness like hostile architecture and public transit restrictions, alongside discussions on shelter shortages, criminalization, and the need for housing and services.

Users share experiences, preferences, and reasons for sticking with, switching from, or comparing Spotify to alternatives like Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and others, focusing on UI, discovery, recommendations, and platform support.

Discussions focus on trade-offs in data structures like arrays and vectors, including memory efficiency, cache locality, insertion speed, iteration, random access, and allocation strategies.

Discussions center on hybrid mobile app development frameworks like PhoneGap, Cordova, Ionic, Titanium, and alternatives such as React Native, comparing their capabilities for cross-platform apps using web technologies like HTML, JS, and CSS.

The cluster centers on criticism of large companies for exploiting and mistreating employees by prioritizing profits over worker well-being, with debates on labor rights, capitalism, and calls for resistance or better treatment.

Cluster focuses on debates over the 'both sides' argument in polarized discussions, criticizing false dichotomies, equivalencies, and calls to pick sides in political or divisive issues.

Users share experiences of applying to a program, beta, or opportunity, frequently reporting no responses, rejections, or status issues, while discussing reapplication strategies.

This cluster debates user entitlement to free online content, contrasting ad-supported models with direct payments or subscriptions, and discusses creator compensation and ad-blocking.

The cluster focuses on debates about whether to ban a specific item or technology, questioning the rationale, enforcement challenges, effectiveness, and alternatives to outright prohibition.

Discussions critique a new proprietary binary serialization format, questioning its need and recommending established alternatives like Protobuf, MessagePack, BSON, CBOR, ASN.1, and Cap'n Proto.

Comments debate the purpose, design, and necessity of APIs in web development, questioning why APIs are needed beyond serving frontends, what constitutes a proper API, and whether they should be separate from UI or backend architecture.

Cluster focuses on recommendations to run personal recursive DNS resolvers like Unbound or systemd-resolved instead of relying on ISP or default resolvers, discussing setup ease, privacy benefits via DoT/DoH, and compatibility issues.

Comments criticize VR and AR headsets for being uncomfortable, heavy, hot, and unsuitable for extended use like productivity, often comparing them unfavorably to glasses or traditional screens.

The cluster debates the true cost and affordability of iPhones, contrasting subsidized carrier contracts and monthly payments with full upfront unlocked prices and cheaper phone alternatives.

Commenters discuss thermoelectric (Peltier) cooling devices, highlighting the heat generated on the hot side, their ironic usefulness for heating, efficiency limitations, and comparisons to heat pumps.

This cluster centers on comments questioning, estimating, and debating the number of users for a product or service, often citing specific figures like millions or tens of millions.

Comments debate whether high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) qualifies as 'sugar' in food products, distinguish between cane/beet sugar and HFCS, and discuss sugar content, sweeteners, and health implications.

Discussions focus on copy-paste functionality, clipboard history features, and tools like xclip, pbcopy/pbpaste, and clipboard managers across Windows, Mac, Linux, and terminals.

The cluster centers on debates about science being inherently political or corrupted by politics, with frequent quotes like 'science plus politics equals politics' and criticisms of political influence on scientific conclusions.

Discussions compare Stripe to competitors like PayPal, Braintree, Adyen, and others, focusing on fees, reliability, developer experience, and account risks.

The cluster focuses on debates about adjusting salaries and incomes for cost of living differences across countries and regions, emphasizing purchasing power parity and comparable quality of life.

The cluster centers on innovations in agricultural technology, including autonomous tractors, robotic farming tools, electric equipment startups, and challenges like right-to-repair issues with proprietary tractor software.

Comments discuss air quality issues, smog, and pollution levels in cities like NYC, Delhi, and China, often comparing urban areas and highlighting health impacts.

Discussions center on inquiring which specific languages (often non-English) a tool or AI model is struggling with or performing well on, emphasizing the diversity of languages and pushing back against English-centric assumptions.

The cluster discusses Amazon's intentional low or zero overall profits through heavy reinvestment in growth and CapEx, with AWS as the primary profit source while retail operates at slim or negative margins.

Users request that moderators append the original publication year to Hacker News post titles for older articles to indicate they are not new and avoid repost confusion.

The cluster focuses on complaints about falling quality in both cheap and established brand products like tools, appliances, and clippers, with debates on fake reviews, corner-cutting by brands, and challenges finding durable items.

Discussions center on the GNOME desktop environment, including user recommendations, criticisms, comparisons to alternatives like Unity and KDE, and tips for usage or switching.

The cluster discusses the dominance of SUVs and trucks in the US automotive market, attributing it to factors like CAFE regulations, higher profit margins, consumer demand for larger vehicles, safety perceptions, status symbols, and aggressive marketing over traditional sedans.

Comments debate Israeli military actions in Gaza, focusing on high civilian death tolls, indiscriminate bombing, proportionality, and comparisons to Hamas tactics or other conflicts.

Discussions critique Markdown's popularity, simplicity over correctness, lack of standardization, inconsistent implementations across products, and propose alternatives like CommonMark.

This cluster centers on debates from James Damore's Google memo about biological differences in men's and women's preferences, abilities, and interests explaining gender gaps in tech and leadership roles.

Cluster focuses on anecdotes and stories of successful tech entrepreneurs who started companies with minimal resources, dropped out of school, or bootstrapped without VC funding, leading to major exits or billions in value.