All Topics

Comments discuss the UK's exit from the EU (Brexit), its implications for EU integration, UK sovereignty, Scottish independence, and possibilities of rejoining or regional separations.

Comments frequently point out that commenters, founders, or participants in discussions are current or former Google employees, often citing profiles, past work history, or affiliations.

Users reference classic science fiction stories and dystopian literature, such as 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,' 'Butlerian Jihad,' and 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,' to critique tech industry overreach, AI risks, and impending societal revolutions.

Commenters compare steel to alternatives like aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber, debating advantages in strength, weight, durability, weldability, cost, and resistance to fatigue or rust for structural uses such as vehicles or frames.

This cluster centers on debates about generative AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney displacing jobs in creative fields such as art, music, and writing, with discussions on creativity, training data ethics, and comparisons to past technologies.

Users express surprise or disappointment that the article's actual content differs from what they expected based on the title, often specifying the alternative topic they anticipated.

Comments debating whether a technology, tool, or solution is acceptable simply because 'it works,' often defending pragmatic functionality against criticisms of elegance or best practices.

The cluster discusses how software becomes slower and more bloated faster than hardware improves, frequently citing Wirth's law and lamenting inefficient modern software despite powerful hardware.

This cluster debates whether programmers should learn additional programming languages for broader insights and flexibility or focus on mastering a few, domains, frameworks, or core principles instead. Opinions range from embracing polyglot programming to prioritizing depth over breadth.

The cluster centers on discussions about tire wear and rubber degradation on vehicles like cars, including factors like deformation, durability, comparisons to road or brake wear, and potential environmental impacts from shed particles.

Discussions heavily criticize Germany's foreign policy, particularly its energy dependence on Russia, perceived reluctance to confront Russia, EU dominance, and lack of sovereignty due to US and historical influences.

Users question and debate whether the device requires an internet or WiFi connection to function, its usability offline, and concerns about always-online dependencies.

The cluster debates how platforms should pay or compensate content creators, including criticisms of ad-based models, calls for direct payments, and concerns over incentives for creation amid free access.

The cluster focuses on the filibuster rule in the US Senate, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, leading to discussions about legislative gridlock, exceptions like budget reconciliation, and blocking by senators like Manchin, Sinema, and McConnell.

Debate on the value of GitHub profiles for software engineering job candidates, including whether recruiters and hiring managers review them, their signal quality, and experiences of applicants.

Discussions center on tech companies blocking or geoblocking EU users to avoid complying with strict EU privacy regulations like GDPR, debating costs, fines, market impacts, and user consequences.

This cluster debates whether profit and financial gain trump personal or business ethics and morals, with discussions on how money often overrides moral obligations in capitalism and individual choices.

Discussions recommend and compare tiling window managers for Windows, macOS, and Linux, highlighting tools like i3, xmonad, Amethyst, Spectacle, Rectangle, and their benefits for window organization.

Discussions center on how venture capitalists diversify investments across many startups, expecting most to fail but a few to generate massive returns via power law dynamics, contrasted with founders' singular focus and including critiques of VC judgment and herd behavior.

The cluster centers on comparisons between F# and C# from .NET developers, debating F#'s functional programming advantages, ecosystem limitations, tooling, and Microsoft's support versus C#'s popularity and maturity.

The cluster focuses on discussions about international economic sanctions against Russia, their impacts on business transactions, trade, and the Russian economy, including debates on effectiveness, circumvention, and potential backfiring.

The cluster centers on Sabine Hossenfelder's skeptical critique of Eric Weinstein's physics theory (Geometric Unity), with debates on its validity, the author's credentials, and HN commenters' overconfidence in physics discussions.

Discussions focus on archive.org's archival practices, including content removal policies, vulnerability to lawsuits and takedowns, and comparisons to services like archive.is.

Discussions debate what constitutes 'real research,' distinguishing exploratory academic work from productized implementations, and defend research's inherent uncertainty where not all efforts yield immediate practical results.

This cluster consists of comments sharing links to NASA, ESA, and other space agency resources, including images, videos, visualizations, and articles about astronomical phenomena, missions, and telescopes.

Discussions debate the typical lifespan of software, contrasting long-lived examples like Unix tools and backend systems with short-lived projects, concepts like software rot, and expectations of obsolescence or rewrites.

This cluster features comments recommending meditation practices, apps like Headspace and Calm, and techniques such as breath focus or vipassana to improve focus, attention, and mental clarity.

Cluster focuses on debates about living frugally, high savings rates, avoiding consumerism, and whether to spend more on experiences or things to improve life quality.

Commenters argue over whether a described social scenario, behavior, or privilege applies exclusively to men or to both genders, challenging gender stereotypes and assumptions.

The cluster discusses strategies for backing up two-factor authentication (2FA) codes and recovering account access after losing a phone or device, recommending tools like Authy, recovery codes, password managers, and hardware keys to avoid lockouts.

Comments noting that key executives, founders, or leaders have already quit, stepped down, or been ousted from various tech companies, frequently linking to prior announcements and discussions.

Users criticize a website's homepage for lacking clear explanations, examples, and onboarding, suggesting improvements to make it more informative and appealing without requiring clicks or scrolls.

The cluster centers on heated discussions about abortion rights, pro-life vs. pro-choice positions, related legislation like Alabama's laws, and debates over its appropriateness on Hacker News.

The cluster focuses on advice for aggressively saving money, building large emergency funds, living frugally on a portion of income, avoiding debt, and investing for long-term financial security and early retirement.

Commenters frequently compare the discussed situation, entity, or institution to mafia tactics, protection rackets, cartels, and organized crime operations.

Developers discuss long software build times, their causes in large projects, and mitigation strategies like incremental builds, caching, and better tooling.

Discussions center on debating the flaws and validity of a specific research paper's methodology, with users challenging each other to provide substantive criticisms or evidence of having read the paper.

Users discuss personal experiences with intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast or multiple meals, and eating in restricted windows, highlighting benefits for focus, energy, productivity, and weight control.

The cluster centers on criticisms of Safari's lack of support for modern web APIs and standards, Apple's reluctance to adopt new features, and the resulting challenges for web developers targeting iOS and macOS.

Discussions center on recommendations and comparisons of fast, performant terminal emulators like Alacritty, Kitty, and WezTerm as alternatives to iTerm2, focusing on speed, latency, features, and user experiences.

Users enthusiastically recommend Pinboard.in as a superior bookmarking service, frequently comparing it to Delicious and highlighting its simplicity, API, archiving, and longevity.

The cluster debates the tension between personal profit or self-interest and contributions to societal good, questioning whether individuals should prioritize social responsibility over individual gain even when not economically rewarded.

Comments debate the merits of base 10 (decimal) versus alternatives like base 12 (dozenal), base 8, or others, citing reasons such as human finger counting, divisibility properties, mental arithmetic ease, and historical systems.

This cluster debates harsh working conditions in warehouses, factories, and sweatshops, often labeling them as modern slavery or exploitation while some defend them as better than alternatives in developing economies.

The cluster centers on debates about whether communism has ever been truly implemented, its repeated historical failures in countries like the USSR, China, and Cuba, and rebuttals claiming past attempts were not 'real communism'.

Web developers discuss challenges with supporting various Internet Explorer versions, frustrations with older ones like IE8-9, and hopes for dropping legacy support in favor of newer browsers.

The cluster centers on discussions about fearing death versus accepting mortality, debating whether to come to terms with inevitable death or pursue longevity and immortality.

Comments debate the relevance, hypocrisy, and superiority of Western culture and values in contrast to non-Western perspectives, often questioning Western-centric framings of global issues.

Cluster focuses on discussions about indexes in relational databases, particularly clustered and covering indexes in PostgreSQL vs MySQL/SQL Server, table scans, columnar vs row storage, and performance implications.

Comments discuss integrating devices with microcontrollers like Raspberry Pi, ESP8266, ESP32, and Arduino for smart home projects involving sensors, actuators, buttons, and automation.

Cluster focuses on ideas and suggestions for personalizing Hacker News feeds through user following, recommendation systems, tagging, topics, and machine learning to match interests and filter content.

Discussions center on the motivations of crypto supporters, debating whether they are driven by genuine technological belief or primarily by greed, speculation, FOMO, and financial self-interest to hype and profit from investments.

The cluster revolves around debates on whether the value, innovation, or success of a product or company lies in its hardware or software components, often questioning if hardware companies truly differentiate through hardware.

Discussions center on the importance of data and metadata as key assets, debating their collection, analysis, understanding, and practical use for generating insights and competitive advantages in business.

Users repeatedly request tutorial recommendations, ask which tutorials helped others, inquire about plans to write tutorials, and discuss tutorial quality for technical topics.

The cluster debates individual responsibility to limit activities and avoid spreading COVID-19 to protect vulnerable others versus prioritizing personal freedom and accepting personal risk.

This cluster centers on debates about what drives technological innovation, including the roles of capitalism, competition, patents, markets, and government policies in incentivizing or hindering it, often referencing US tech dominance and global contexts.

Comments focus on the funding rounds, amounts raised, and sky-high valuations of startups discussed in Hacker News threads, often questioning or highlighting the massive investments.

The cluster focuses on the dangers of storing cryptocurrencies on centralized exchanges, including loss of control, seizures, fractional reserves, and lack of true ownership, while advocating for self-custody and decentralized exchanges.

This cluster centers on widespread criticism of justice systems worldwide, highlighting their flaws, biases, and distinction from true justice versus mere legal processes.

Cluster focuses on freelancers and contractors sharing experiences with clients refusing to pay for completed work, along with advice on using contracts, demanding deposits, milestone payments, and dropping bad clients.

The cluster centers on debates about Debian's conservative packaging practices, maintainer decisions, volunteer-driven development, bug handling, and comparisons to Ubuntu, with defenses against criticisms of slowness or deliberate choices.

The cluster centers on users repeatedly asking for clarification on specific limits or limitations mentioned, debating their existence, rationale, and implications in the thread's context.

The cluster centers on discussions recommending and defending the Oculus/Meta Quest series VR headsets as superior standalone alternatives to PC-tethered options like HTC Vive and Valve Index, praising their quality, affordability, and user experience.

Users share anecdotes about not getting colds or flu since the COVID-19 pandemic, speculating that past mild illnesses were likely undetected COVID cases or attributing it to immunity from infection or vaccines.

Comments discuss how large software systems become overly complex through incremental changes, second system syndrome, and evolutionary pressures, making them hard to maintain, scale, or simplify without introducing new problems.

Users debate Google's evolution from exact keyword matching to semantic understanding and recommendations, frustrating power users with niche queries while aiding casual users with natural language input.

The cluster discusses best practices and risks of mixing work and personal devices or accounts, with strong advocacy for strict separation to protect privacy, security, and avoid employer access to personal data.

Comments express surprise, seek explanations, or justify why various processes, events, or developments took unexpectedly long periods, often years. Discussions highlight that 'quickly' can mean years and question delays in legal, business, or technical contexts.

The cluster centers on debates over date formats, with strong advocacy for the unambiguous ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) standard over regional variants like MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY that cause international confusion.

Comments discuss low voter turnout in US elections, reasons like disenfranchisement, apathy, and the two-party system, along with political strategies to boost participation or benefit from abstention.

Commenters repeatedly draw parallels between the main article's described societal or political issues (likely in the US or world) and similar ongoing situations in Brazil, often invoking 'Brazilianization' as a cautionary example.

Discussions focus on healthier substitutes for sugary sodas, including flavored sparkling water, fruit juices, syrups mixed with carbonated water, and recommendations like SodaStream or specific brands.

This cluster debates economic comparisons between the US and Europe, focusing on whether the poorest Americans are richer than most Europeans despite higher inequality, safety nets, and wealth distribution differences.

Discussions revolve around objections to references to 'white' people or whiteness in a potentially negative context, questioning if it's racist, relevant, or indicative of anti-white bias on HN.

The cluster focuses on debates about what constitutes an array versus lists or other structures, array syntax like slicing and indexing, and features or lacks thereof in languages such as PHP, JavaScript, and others.

This cluster features commenters repeatedly challenging unsubstantiated claims by demanding links to actual research, studies, sources, or evidence to support assertions. Skepticism dominates, with calls for citations amid debates lacking empirical backing.

Discussions revolve around criticism of the Java programming language, including bashing its design and ecosystem, questions about its suitability, and defenses highlighting its maturity and thriving status.

Discussions revolve around recommendations, comparisons, and features of various icon libraries like Font Awesome, Iconify, IcoMoon, and Noun Project, including preferences for SVG formats, licensing, and open-source alternatives.

Comments debate the pitfalls of premature optimization, over-engineering, and excessive upfront design in software development, advocating for simple implementations, quick prototyping, and iterative refinement based on real needs.

The cluster centers on skepticism, criticism, and debates about the FBI's trustworthiness, actions, legality, and role in law enforcement or investigations.

Vegetarians, vegans, and meat-eaters debate the taste, appeal, and necessity of meat alternatives like Beyond and Impossible burgers, with some preferring them for mimicking meat and others favoring distinct vegetable-based options.

Comments praise impressive CSS demonstrations and websites, highlight modern CSS capabilities, and recommend learning resources, frameworks like Tailwind, and tools like CodePen.

Users share personal experiences with anxiety disorders and discuss practical advice for managing it, including therapy, exercise, mindfulness meditation, and lifestyle changes.

Comments discuss how propaganda effectively shapes public opinion and beliefs, often attributing persistent misconceptions to media manipulation and referencing works like 'Manufacturing Consent'. The cluster highlights propaganda's success in democracies, governments, and news outlets.

This cluster focuses on debates about whether GitHub Copilot violates software licenses like GPL by training on public repositories, regurgitating code snippets, and issues of fair use and copyright infringement.

The cluster centers on TSMC's critical role in global semiconductor production and its location in Taiwan as a deterrent against Chinese invasion, alongside US incentives for domestic fabs and broader geopolitical implications.

Discussions center on whether compilers should or can optimize away code such as checks, stores, or functions, often debating issues like undefined behavior, side effects, and language semantics.

Cluster centers on debates about the use, necessity, and misuse of specialized jargon and terminology in technology and programming, distinguishing legitimate technical terms from buzzwords and marketing abuse.

The cluster focuses on the history, implementations, and nostalgia for BASIC programming language variants like Microsoft BASIC, QBASIC, C64 BASIC, and modern recreations, including books, interpreters, and comparisons across old computers.

Discussions focus on recommendations for compact mirrorless cameras, high-quality prime lenses like 40mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1.8, and comparisons between brands such as Sony, Canon, Fuji, and Olympus, emphasizing convenience, image quality, and affordability over smartphones or DSLRs.

Commenters discuss preferences for big city life versus smaller towns or rural areas, debating pros like culture and opportunities against cons like stress, density, and social issues, often sharing personal experiences.

The cluster focuses on debates about political intolerance, cancel culture, and extremism attributed to the left in tech communities like HN and Silicon Valley, often contrasted with right-wing behavior and accusations of hypocrisy.

The cluster focuses on discussions about conducting blameless post-mortems, root cause analysis, and SRE practices for handling production outages and incidents to improve reliability without blaming individuals.

Users discuss privacy risks of a tool handling sensitive data, expressing distrust due to lack of privacy policies, closed-source nature, potential data sharing with third parties, and calls for self-hosting or open-source alternatives.

The cluster centers on users criticizing TechCrunch for poor journalism, sensationalism, and low standards, often dismissing its articles as desperate for clicks or unworthy of linking on Hacker News.

The cluster revolves around debates on what constitutes an operating system, questioning if software lacking a kernel, bare-metal support, or hardware abstraction qualifies as an OS versus being a user program or library.

The cluster centers on the tension between software developers focused on technical tasks and code, and business/product managers prioritizing user needs and business goals, debating isolation from customers, mindset clashes, and who bears responsibility for misalignment.

Discussions revolve around building taller structures like skyscrapers and high-rises, including references to Burj Khalifa, feasibility of vertical housing, and challenges in construction or visualization of extreme heights.