All Topics

Debates center on restrictions for smoking cigarettes, vaping, and cannabis in public spaces like restaurants, indoors, and outdoors, balancing smokers' freedoms against non-smokers' rights to avoid second-hand smoke.

Discussions center on EEG headbands, brain implants like Neuralink, electrical stimulation, and other BCI technologies for controlling computers, including debates on feasibility, safety risks, and existing projects like BrainGate.

The cluster discusses whether citizens bear responsibility for their government's actions due to electing its representatives, frequently asserting that people get the government they deserve.

This cluster centers on debates comparing RISC-V to ARM and other ISAs like MIPS, highlighting RISC-V's open-source advantages, lack of vendor lock-in, ecosystem maturity, performance, and potential to challenge ARM's dominance.

Commenters speculate on the original poster's or subject's location in the US, frequently referencing the Midwest, Rocky Mountains, Western states, and other regions based on described characteristics or experiences.

Cluster centers on debates about whether psychology is a legitimate science, frequently criticizing its reproducibility issues, replication crisis, and pseudoscientific elements.

The cluster discusses the prevalence of data caps, throttling, and limits on mobile internet plans, debating whether unlimited data is common and highlighting issues for users on capped or metered connections.

This cluster debates the pros and cons of static versus dynamic linking in software compilation, particularly challenges with C/C++ libraries like glibc and GTK+, memory usage, dependencies, and feasibility for distribution.

The cluster discusses the optimal size for software development teams, favoring small teams (3-5 people or two-pizza teams) for higher productivity and lower communication overhead, while critiquing challenges and inefficiencies in larger teams.

The cluster debates the societal obligation to provide basic needs like housing, food, and healthcare to the vulnerable, weighing unconditional support against concerns over freeloading, abuse of welfare systems, and the need for conditions or strings attached.

The cluster discusses how the true difficulty of programming lies in understanding, conceptualizing, and solving problems, rather than the act of writing or typing code itself.

The cluster debates whether humans are part of nature or separate from it, questioning if human actions like environmental modification are 'natural' and critiquing the naturalistic fallacy in discussions of conservation and humanity's impact.

This cluster focuses on the complexities of sales tax collection for online sellers in the US, including varying state and local jurisdictions, nexus requirements, use taxes, and challenges for companies like Amazon.

This cluster consists of comments where users repeatedly call out other remarks, points, or articles as irrelevant, unrelated, or off-topic to the main discussion or article.

Discussions revolve around the pros and cons of using remote, cloud-based, or virtualized development environments versus local setups, focusing on achieving consistency, matching production, and avoiding local configuration issues.

Users share direct links, archives, higher-resolution versions, and original sources for photographs from the article using services like Archive.ph, Flickr, Wayback Machine, and others, as primary links are often broken or obscured.

The cluster debates the role of luck versus talent, hard work, and skill in achieving outsized startup or entrepreneurial success, frequently invoking survivorship bias and lottery analogies.

Commenters discuss strategies for initiating programming projects, debating upfront planning with outlines and diagrams versus diving into prototypes, iterative coding, and throwaway drafts to gain clarity.

Comments speculate that the article's subject is an operation or entity linked to intelligence agencies like CIA, NSA, Mossad, or foreign equivalents, debating their secretive activities, reliability, and involvement in various events.

Discussions focus on the risks of unknowingly infecting others with COVID-19, particularly during incubation or asymptomatic periods, and the ethical implications of personal actions that could spread the disease.

Comments overwhelmingly recommend or reference haveibeenpwned.com (HIBP) for checking if accounts or passwords were compromised in data breaches, often comparing it to the article's service or suggesting it as an established alternative.

Comments debate the meaning and purpose of 'work', questioning whether it should be intrinsically valuable and fulfilling, merely for compensation, or defined by reluctance versus enjoyment.

Discussions debate optimal locations for binaries, configurations, and user data in Unix/Linux systems, contrasting traditional FHS paths like /usr/bin and /etc with XDG standards like ~/.config and ~/.local.

Discussions focus on the reliability, range, security, and suitability of Bluetooth (including BLE) for applications like IoT, web access, and device communication, with frequent criticism of its robustness and suggestions for alternatives.

Comments speculate on primordial or small black holes potentially orbiting the sun, explaining astronomical anomalies like Planet Nine, their evaporation, stability, and existential risks like swallowing Earth.

Discussions center on the prevalence, detection, quality, and implications of counterfeit goods, debating whether they constitute fraud if buyers are aware, their functionality, and risks in tech/hardware contexts.

Comments discuss orcas (killer whales) ramming boats, possibly in revenge for whaling or due to learned behavior, with puns, jokes about whale intelligence, and references to humpback-orca interactions and cetacean smarts.

Cluster focuses on the economics of the movie industry, explaining why studios prioritize high-budget blockbusters, sequels, and superhero films to ensure profitability amid high production/marketing costs, piracy, streaming impacts, and the need for hits to offset flops, often analogized to VC funding.

The cluster discusses proposals and debates around eradicating mosquitoes, especially disease-carrying species like Aedes aegypti, balancing disease prevention benefits against potential ecological disruptions and food chain impacts.

Users frequently suggest using archive.org or the Internet Archive to preserve, access, or verify archived versions of websites, software, or other digital content discussed in the thread.

Comments discuss reasons for startup failures, post-mortems, personal stories of failed ventures, and the value of sharing failure experiences on Hacker News.

Discussions revolve around the lack of HDMI ports on devices, compatibility issues, and recommendations for alternatives like DisplayPort, USB-C adapters, and dongles.

The cluster discusses whether pre-installed Windows licenses impose a 'tax' that raises computer prices, with arguments that OEMs offset costs via cheap licenses and bloatware revenue, often making Windows machines cheaper than Linux or no-OS equivalents.

Discussions center on the challenges, best practices, and effectiveness of pull request (PR) reviews in software teams, including time costs, catching bugs from AI-generated code, responsibilities, and alternatives like self-merging.

Discussions revolve around generational differences in technology experiences, with older commenters nostalgic for the pioneering days of computers and internet, critiquing younger 'digital natives' for passive consumption rather than tinkering or deep understanding.

Users discuss outages, hardware failures, downtime experiences, and customer support with VPS and cloud hosting providers like Linode, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and Vultr, often sharing switches between them due to reliability issues.

The cluster focuses on the principle that 'two wrongs don't make a right,' debating whether bad actions by one party justify similar misconduct or punishment by others, often in contexts of retaliation, forgiveness, or moral equivalence.

Commenters debate the role of city councils, mayors, and local governments in blocking initiatives, emphasizing political will issues, NIMBYism, and strategies like elections or contacting representatives to effect change.

Comments strongly advocate for the essential health benefits of exercise, criticizing articles or views that seek alternatives or minimize its importance in combating sedentary lifestyles.

Users discuss and complain about the sluggish performance and lag in desktop operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux, particularly UI responsiveness, app launching, and file operations even on high-end hardware.

The cluster focuses on debates about the FDA's role in drug approvals, regulations, and effectiveness, including criticisms of delays in beneficial treatments, historical examples like thalidomide and Vioxx, and defenses of its safety protections.

Debate on the importance, necessity, and practical application of data structures and algorithms in programming work, including whether to memorize, implement, or rely on libraries.

Comments discuss how government-regulated taxi medallions created artificial monopolies, high costs, limited supply, and poor service in the taxi industry, and how Uber and Lyft disrupted this system through competition.

Cluster focuses on debates comparing Kotlin favorably to Java as a more modern, interoperable alternative, especially for Android development and new JVM projects, with endorsements for switching from Java.

The cluster discusses the security implications of hash collisions in cryptographic functions like SHA-1, SHA-256, and MD5, debating their vulnerability to attacks and suitability for uses like Git.

This cluster centers on discussions about US immigration authorities, particularly ICE, allegedly deporting American citizens, legal residents, and others without due process, including debates on legality, mistakes, and policy implications.

This cluster centers on debates about the health, ethics, and practices of dairy and beef cow farming, including treatment, breeding, feeding, milking, slaughter, and comparisons to natural or grass-fed alternatives.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the lack of native ARM (especially ARM64) support in various software projects, requests for ARM builds or ports, recompilation needs, and emulation challenges between ARM and x86_64 architectures.

The cluster debates reducing or eliminating meat consumption due to environmental impacts like global warming, with discussions on moderation, vegetarianism, veganism, better meat quality, and personal pleasures of eating meat.

Commenters repeatedly compare the discussed article or scenario to cyberpunk science fiction novels by William Gibson (e.g., Neuromancer) and Neal Stephenson (e.g., Snow Crash, The Diamond Age).

Commenters repeatedly highlight and debate the common confusion between 'the Internet' and 'the Web', emphasizing that the Internet is far broader than just the web and includes many other protocols and services.

This cluster centers on debates comparing virtual machines (VMs) and containers (like Docker), focusing on their differences in performance, isolation, efficiency, kernel sharing, security, and use cases such as sandboxing and deployment.

Debate on the effectiveness of video tutorials versus text or written resources for technical and programming education, with criticisms of videos for lacking searchability, speed control, and accessibility, contrasted by defenses for engagement and visual explanations.

Cluster focuses on discussions about the challenges, personal experiences, and time required to learn Haskell, including its steep learning curve, mindset shift from imperative languages, and debates on whether it's unusually difficult.

Comments discuss using browser user stylesheets, extensions like Stylish or UserChrome.css, and other tools to customize or disable website CSS styling.

Discussions revolve around the shift from expensive cable TV bundles to multiple streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, where users complain about similar total costs, paying for unwanted content, and the absence of true a la carte options.

Discussions focus on the democratic legitimacy of EU institutions, particularly the unelected European Commission versus the elected Parliament, and whether the EU has a democratic deficit.

The cluster discusses personal experiences of software engineers and others working at Amazon, focusing on variations in team cultures, management quality, work environment, high turnover, and comparisons to companies like Google.

Individuals posting job-seeking profiles, including location, remote preferences, relocation willingness, technologies like Kubernetes, AWS, Docker, Go, Python, and resume/CV links in a Hacker News hiring thread.

The cluster debates whether Large Language Models (LLMs) are hitting a plateau in improvements due to exhausted training data, scaling limits, and diminishing returns, or if exponential progress will continue through new breakthroughs and compute scaling.

Commenters repeatedly question or criticize the lack of a control group in the discussed study or experiment, debating its scientific validity and calling for proper controls like RCTs or double-blind trials.

Users discuss and compare a featured messaging app or feature to WhatsApp, questioning if WhatsApp already supports it, suggesting it as an alternative, or recommending options like Telegram or Signal.

The cluster discusses whether the First Sale Doctrine applies to digital goods like software, movies, and games, debating ownership versus licensing and the inability to resell digital purchases due to EULAs and TOS.

This cluster features enthusiastic comments praising a software tool or interface for its simplicity, intuitiveness, and ease of use.

Comments debate Elon Musk's acquisition and management of Twitter (X), questioning if he is intentionally or incompetently destroying the platform, contrasting it with his Tesla and SpaceX leadership.

Cluster focuses on the lifespan and durability of modern cars, with users sharing anecdotes about vehicles lasting 10-25+ years or 200k+ miles, debating maintenance costs, comparisons to past eras, and why people keep cars longer than expected.

Discussions center on how companies, particularly big tech firms like Meta, Google, and Intuit, spend millions lobbying politicians to shape legislation and policies, debating its effectiveness compared to other influences.

The cluster debates the merits of static typing for catching errors at compile time versus dynamic typing's runtime checks, focusing on safety, debugging, and bug prevention in programming languages.

Users question whether claims or an article presented as science qualify as legitimate science or constitute pseudoscience.

Users share nostalgic anecdotes about their first programming encounters in the 1960s-1980s, involving punched cards, paper tape, handwriting code, Fortran, BASIC, COBOL, and mainframes like PDP and Burroughs.

This cluster debates the value and effectiveness of Extended Validation (EV) SSL/TLS certificates compared to Domain Validation (DV) ones like Let's Encrypt, questioning their ability to provide real security and user trust amid issues with Certificate Authorities.

Users recommend and discuss various headless Content Management Systems (CMS) like DecapCMS, Sanity, Keystatic, and others as alternatives to building custom CMS solutions.

This cluster centers on discussions advising the use of credit card chargebacks to recover funds from companies that fail to deliver services, charge incorrectly, or ignore refund requests.

Comments sarcastically reference the 'move fast and break things' motto, critiquing rushed development that leads to failures, bugs, or breaking users' experiences.

Cluster focuses on Hackintosh setups for running macOS on non-Apple hardware, feasibility, compatibility issues, and alternatives like Linux on Mac hardware or vice versa.

Users repeatedly report that the product's website fails to load, lacks a web demo or clear navigation, requires JavaScript/cookies/Flash, and exhibits usability issues across browsers like Firefox and Chrome.

The cluster debates the use of short, single-letter variable names versus longer, descriptive ones in programming code, focusing on readability, maintainability, and contextual appropriateness like math-heavy vs. business logic.

Commenters repeatedly invoke supply and demand dynamics to argue about market imbalances, shortages, and pricing, questioning why supply cannot meet demand or insisting these forces always apply.

Debates on platforms like Twitter and Reddit charging for or restricting API access to third-party developers and apps, weighing company business rights against developer impacts and calls for open access.

Comments focus on the features, convenience, ecosystem integration, and exclusions of Apple Pay and Apple Card, comparing them to traditional credit/debit cards and discussing incentives for usage.

Comments discuss how German privacy and data protection laws prohibit or strictly regulate certain online practices, such as data collection or tracking, often contrasting with other countries.

Discussions focus on the importance of clothing choices, fashion preferences, and dress styles in signaling professionalism, personal expression, or conformity, often contrasting casual attire like hoodies with formal suits.

This cluster centers on comments advocating for a carbon tax as the optimal policy to reduce emissions, often presented as superior to subsidies, bans, or regulations, with discussions on its revenue-neutral design and effectiveness.

Cluster focuses on privacy concerns with modern cars collecting, tracking, and sharing driving data like location, telemetry, and habits with manufacturers, insurers, and governments, often without consent or opt-in, referencing GDPR, lawsuits, and EFF reports.

Users reminisce about their initial experiences with early Linux distributions such as Slackware, SUSE, Yggdrasil, Icepack, and others, sharing nostalgic stories of installations on old hardware and the learning challenges involved.

Discussions center on advertisements appearing on paid television services like cable despite subscription fees, with users recalling promises of ad-free experiences that were later broken and drawing parallels to streaming services.

Commenters repeatedly note that the tool or feature in the HN post is already built into Chrome Developer Tools, often describing it as better or equivalent, with comparisons to Firefox, Safari, and other browser dev tools.

This cluster focuses on the challenges of maintaining long-term careers in software development due to rapid technological changes, emphasizing the need for continuous learning to avoid obsolescence, especially for developers over 40.

Discussions revolve around the definition, existence, myths, and desirability of meritocracy, often referencing its satirical origins by Michael Young and critiques of its real-world implementations as elitocracy or corruption.

This cluster features responses from developers or project maintainers assuring users that requested features, improvements, or issues are actively being developed or are in progress, often with calls to stay tuned.

Comments expressing sadness, condolences, and admiration for notable individuals who have passed away, often highlighting their contributions to tech, open source, or the community.

Comments debate whether human cognition is uniquely advanced or akin to basal cognition in simpler organisms, referencing predictive processing, neuroscience theories like multiple drafts, and the brain's distributed, non-localized nature.

Users recommend and compare various PDF viewers, including browser-built-ins like Firefox's PDF.js and Chrome, lightweight dedicated apps like SumatraPDF and Foxit, while criticizing bloated options like Adobe Acrobat.

The cluster discusses skyrocketing housing prices in San Francisco and the Bay Area, attributing the crisis primarily to insufficient housing supply caused by NIMBYism and regulatory barriers rather than the tech industry's influx of high-paid workers, with calls to build more housing.

The cluster focuses on discussions about CEO transitions, replacements, and leadership changes at tech companies, with commenters attributing recent events to new or former CEOs and speculating on future hires.

This cluster features numerous comments from users requesting invites to access invite-only services, products, or betas discussed in Hacker News threads, with some offering spares.

Discussions focus on verifying whether code logic, conditions, or properties hold true across all cases, with arguments over counterexamples, edge cases, tests, heuristics, preconditions, and common errors like missing negations.

This cluster discusses the challenges, importance, and pedantry surrounding naming conventions for concepts, variables, projects, and entities, often referencing the classic programming adage that naming things is one of the hardest tasks.

This cluster features job advertisements from space, aerospace, drone, and autonomous vehicle companies such as SpaceX, Loft Orbital, Skydio, and Saildrone seeking software engineers, embedded developers, and related roles.

Comments discuss stack ranking, forced distributions, and quotas in corporate performance reviews, where managers must assign low ratings to some employees even if the entire team performs well, leading to dissatisfaction and unfair outcomes.