All Topics

Users compare costs of mobile phone plans across US providers like T-Mobile and Google Fi versus cheaper international options, sharing deals from MVNOs and criticizing high US prices for data, talk, and text.

Comments debate the effectiveness of personal lifestyle changes (e.g., reducing flying, meat consumption, driving) in addressing climate change versus the need for systemic, political, or collective actions like voting and policy changes.

Cluster centers on debates accusing or denying ideological motivations in arguments, with commenters questioning definitions of ideology, demanding specifics, and linking to its Wikipedia entry.

The cluster centers on debates clarifying the orthogonality of static/dynamic typing versus strong/weak typing in programming languages, with many comments correcting common confusions and misconceptions.

The cluster focuses on Microsoft's siloed organizational structure, internal politics, competing teams, and inconsistencies in product quality across divisions, with anecdotes from current and former employees highlighting communication issues and cultural changes.

Discussions revolve around ImageMagick, its alternatives like libvips, GraphicsMagick, and Sharp for image manipulation tasks such as resizing, conversion, and optimization, comparing speed, features, and usability.

Comments discuss stars in galaxies, including visibility issues from brighter stars, low collision risks despite appearances, supernovae speculations, galactic cores, and anomalous phenomena like megastructures.

Comments debate the health hazards of non-ionizing radiation from cell phones, WiFi, and radio waves, distinguishing it from ionizing radiation and mostly dismissing significant risks beyond potential heating or burns.

Discussions center on comparing glibc and musl libc implementations, debating reasons to choose one over the other, compatibility issues, performance, and use cases like containers, servers, and static linking.

Comments debate whether Tesla's batteries, motors, chips, and components are proprietary innovations protected by patents or software locks, or if they are comparable to those used by other EV manufacturers like Panasonic-sourced cells and licensed tech.

The cluster revolves around discussions on how car insurance rates will evolve with autonomous vehicles, including higher premiums for human drivers, usage-based models via telemetry, and liability shifts.

Discussions focus on complaints about Spotify's shuffle algorithm playing the same songs repeatedly, poor playlist management, lack of album/genre views, and suggestions for features like multiple playback queues and better organization.

Comments overwhelmingly recommend and praise Laravel as a modern, productive, and developer-friendly PHP web framework, often comparing it favorably to other PHP frameworks like Symfony and alternatives like Rails.

Discussions center on the trade-offs between Long Term Support (LTS) Linux distributions for stability and infrequent upgrades versus rolling releases or frequent updates for newer software, with recommendations to stick to LTS like Ubuntu for reliability.

Cluster focuses on recommendations for SSH-based tools like sshuttle and reverse tunnels, along with alternatives such as Cloudflare Tunnels, ngrok, and Tailscale, to expose local services behind NAT/firewalls or bypass restrictions.

The cluster focuses on debates about whether water should be priced according to market forces to reduce waste in agriculture and lawns, or regulated/subsidized as a basic human right and utility.

Comments in this cluster express strong worries about the potential destruction or disruption of marine ecosystems, sea life, coral reefs, and ocean habitats from a proposed technology or intervention, often highlighting risks to the food chain and biodiversity.

The cluster focuses on frustrations with the US political system's structural flaws like the two-party system, lobbying, gerrymandering, first-past-the-post voting, and campaign finance, advocating for reforms such as ranked-choice voting, term limits, and banning lobbyists to enable better governance.

Cluster focuses on discussions of alternatives to Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, with frequent praise for Affinity Photo/Designer, Figma, Sketch, and Pixelmator as cheaper, more stable, and viable replacements.

Comments primarily acknowledging, validating, or questioning the legitimacy of concerns about an unspecified issue in the discussion.

Commenters suspect that images in a product demo or landing page are fake or AI-generated, citing unnatural features like perfect skin, weird ears, and lack of imperfections as evidence.

Users reminisce about classic Mac OS (System 7 to 9), its appealing UI aesthetics, simplicity, and colorful design from the 80s-90s era, while noting drawbacks like instability from lacking memory protection and preemptive multitasking, often comparing it to modern macOS.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the heavily skewed male-to-female gender ratios in Hacker News demographics, surveys, and participant responses, with comments debating low female percentages (e.g., 2-10%), population differences, and potential biases.

The cluster focuses on discussions about tax obligations for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions, including capital gains taxes, IRS treatment of crypto as property, taxable events like trades and conversions, and compliance strategies.

The cluster focuses on debates about single points of failure (SPOF) in systems, questioning if multiple SPOFs are better or worse than one, and emphasizing redundancy and failure modes to improve reliability.

Discussions center on Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), its limitations for multithreading and parallelism, efforts to remove it, performance impacts, and alternatives like multiprocessing.

Comments draw parallels between a flexible workspace or remote work service and WeWork's coworking model, discussing similarities in business approach, scalability, and viability.

The cluster focuses on sarcastic mockery of Marc Andreessen (pmarca) for a tweet aggressively promoting his portfolio companies, with comments highlighting its awkward marketing style and ironic brand implications.

The cluster centers on debates about the definition of intelligence, questioning whether it requires sentience, human-like qualities, or can emerge in AI systems like LLMs without consciousness.

Commenters discuss how a particular phenomenon, likely related to tech jobs or vibrancy, is prominent in London but not representative of the rest of the UK, with many emphasizing London's unique position.

Commenters debate whether a proposed technology, idea, or solution is currently feasible, practical, or possible with existing technology, often noting that the tech isn't there yet or remains theoretical.

The cluster discusses evidence of COVID-19 reinfection, the duration and effectiveness of natural immunity post-infection, antibody responses, and comparisons to other coronaviruses like SARS.

Discussions center on the Fourier transform, including its applications to an article, shared explanations, videos, resources, and users expressing interest in learning or understanding it better.

Discussions center on why older video games like Minecraft and Stardew Valley remain more popular than newer titles, debating if it's due to nostalgia, age bias, survivorship bias, or actual decline in modern game quality.

This cluster discusses whether modern living standards, including affordability of housing, healthcare, education, and access to goods/technology, are better or worse than those of previous generations (e.g., 1970s-1980s). Commenters debate material improvements and conveniences against stagnant wages, higher costs of necessities, and reduced economic security.

The cluster centers on debates about whether open-source licenses can prohibit commercial use, with commenters citing the Open Source Definition that requires allowing commercial usage and discussing alternatives like dual licensing.

Comments discuss reasons for low housing supply, including homeowners reluctant to sell due to low mortgage rates, sticky prices, market friction, and preference for renting over listing properties.

This cluster consists of comments expressing skepticism or criticism about the environmental sustainability, costs, and impacts of various technologies, products, and practices, such as waste, energy use, and resource consumption.

This cluster centers on discussions about side effects of various medications, including questions about experiences, concerns over severity and long-term impacts, and comparisons to intended benefits.

Discussions emphasize that terrorism kills far fewer people than common risks like car accidents, heart disease, or bees, arguing that public fear, media amplification, and policy overreactions are disproportionate to the actual threat.

Comments show empathy for the original poster's difficult life experiences, share similar personal struggles, and offer encouragement for recovery and growth.

Commenters reminisce about childhood experiences with electronics kits, soldering projects, and hardware tinkering like Radio Shack labs and Heathkits, crediting them for sparking lifelong interests in engineering and maker hobbies.

Users complain that hyperlinks on the page are not visually distinct, making them hard to identify and click without hovering or trial-and-error. The discussion focuses on the need for better link styling to improve usability and accessibility.

The cluster discusses challenges in attracting, recognizing, and retaining top talent in tech companies, including debates on talent scarcity, the myth of 'top talent,' and hiring difficulties for big firms.

Users compare pricing of cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, and others, debating costs per GB/month for various storage tiers and highlighting cheaper alternatives.

The cluster discusses countries possessing or pursuing nuclear weapons, proliferation concerns especially for nations like Iran, and historical examples such as South Africa dismantling its program.

Users share links to neuroscience papers and discuss topics like neuroplasticity, neurotransmitters, synaptic pruning, brain waves, and neurological effects.

Users repeatedly report that a tool, feature, code snippet, or solution does not work for them, often asking for explanations or confirming issues with others.

Discussions revolve around whether to use FFmpeg directly or alternatives like LLMs, frontends, or web apps for video/audio processing, with many commenters praising FFmpeg's capabilities and questioning the need for substitutes.

The cluster centers on Clayton Christensen's 'The Innovator's Dilemma,' with commenters repeatedly referencing the book to explain why established companies fail to disrupt themselves and get overtaken by innovative newcomers, citing examples like Kodak, Yahoo, and Netflix.

Cluster focuses on debates challenging the amyloid plaque hypothesis as the primary cause of Alzheimer's disease, citing new research, alternative theories like insulin resistance, infections, and inflammation, and related studies.

This cluster focuses on criticisms of Microsoft's extensive telemetry, data collection, forced updates, and privacy invasions in Windows 10, with users expressing frustration and often recommending alternatives like Linux.

Discussions focus on weather prediction accuracy, data sources like NOAA, government vs. private providers, forecast models, and emerging technologies including AI.

The cluster discusses security risks and trust issues in programming language package managers like NPM, PyPI, and RubyGems, which allow unvetted uploads, contrasting them with reviewed system repositories in Linux distros like Debian and Red Hat.

The cluster centers on debates about whether Bitcoin qualifies as a currency, money, or fiat, contrasting it with commodities like gold, stores of value, or traditional fiat systems.

Comments sharing links to classic essays and articles from Joel Spolsky's blog, along with similar content from Coding Horror, The Daily WTF, and other programming lore sites discussing software development practices, management, and coding anecdotes.

The cluster discusses trade-offs between higher US salaries and Europe's superior quality of life, including healthcare, work-life balance, vacation time, safety, and social services, especially for tech workers.

This cluster centers on debates about landlords using software like RealPage to coordinate and maximize rent prices, accused of enabling collusion and price fixing rather than pure market dynamics.

Cluster discusses advertisements in podcasts, listener preferences for ad-free listening versus the need for monetization to sustain creators, including skipping ads, paid streams, and challenges in podcast revenue models.

Discussions center on Semantic Versioning (SemVer) principles, particularly whether projects follow it correctly, the role of major version bumps for breaking changes, and criticisms or defenses of SemVer practices.

This cluster centers on debates about Bitcoin's slow transaction confirmation times, high fees, low throughput (around 7 TPS), and scalability limitations compared to traditional payment systems like credit cards, with mentions of solutions like Lightning Network.

The cluster debates whether it's possible to consistently outperform the stock market, contrasting claims of successful strategies and investors like Warren Buffett or Medallion Fund against arguments of randomness, luck, survivorship bias, and the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

The cluster discusses how mainstream media and science journalism sensationalize, misrepresent, or oversimplify scientific research through clickbait headlines and poor reporting, while defending the underlying science.

This cluster discusses Steam's Proton compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux, highlighting its effectiveness, user experiences, and resources like ProtonDB for checking game compatibility.

Discussions center on the popularity, adoption, and community support of developer tools, debating why technically superior or niche tools fail to gain widespread use compared to established alternatives due to network effects and ease of use.

Cluster centers on debates about the credibility of news from Chinese media versus Western sources, with skepticism toward state propaganda, calls for Chinese press links, and accusations of bias in Hacker News coverage of China.

Discussions center on the efficiency, cost, and environmental impact of natural gas compared to electricity, nuclear, and coal for heating, cooking, and power generation, often debating CO2 emissions and energy transitions.

Discussions focus on the differences between supercomputers and large HPC clusters, including interconnect speeds, architectures, energy efficiency, and suitability for parallel tasks like simulations versus embarrassingly parallel workloads.

The cluster focuses on code signing for software executables, debating its role in establishing trust, preventing OS warnings, challenges like costs and certificates, and effectiveness against malware on platforms like Windows and macOS.

This cluster captures comments that repeatedly challenge the relevance of other users' statements to the main thread or original post, often phrased as 'How is that relevant?' or similar.

Commenters criticize the militarized, aggressive, and untrustworthy nature of US police forces, contrasting them with helpful and trusted police in Europe and other countries.

Commenters debate why major tech companies remain in high-cost areas like the Bay Area and Seattle despite expensive real estate and salaries, exploring talent concentration, employee preferences, network effects, and challenges in relocating to cheaper cities. Discussions highlight chicken-and-egg problems with talent pools and potential benefits of distributed offices.

The cluster focuses on debates about the need for, existence of, and consequences of regulations addressing some technology or practice, with commenters calling for new rules, questioning feasibility, or noting current oversight.

Discussions center on why enterprises continue running decades-old legacy systems in critical operations like banking due to high replacement costs, migration risks, and proven stability versus the low cost of maintenance.

Comments enthusiastically praise specific individuals in the tech industry, highlighting their skills, character, and value as colleagues, engineers, or hires, often in contexts like recommendations or team additions.

Discussions center on recommending Proxmox as a free, open-source alternative to VMware ESXi for virtualization use cases like home labs and small servers, often comparing it favorably to options like Xen, KVM, and Hyper-V amid concerns over VMware licensing changes.

Comments focus on the challenges and irony of maintaining secrecy, questioning what information is truly secret, and joking about secrets being revealed through public discussion on Hacker News.

Discussions focus on Apple's marketing tactics, advertisements, and slogans, frequently highlighting irony or hypocrisy compared to their past rebellious image like the 1984 ad and 'Think Different'.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the number of servers required to handle massive user scales, such as millions of monthly or concurrent users, with debates on single-server capabilities versus multi-server setups and real-world examples like WhatsApp.

The cluster discusses debates on gender discrimination and preferential treatment in tech hiring, including low numbers of female applicants, blind hiring effects, diversity quotas, and their legality.

The cluster focuses on debates about social media's negative impact on mental health, including claims that it causes or worsens depression, anxiety, unrealistic expectations, and teen suicides, with some questioning causality.

Users share personal experiences with costs of solar panels, batteries, inverters, and installations across locations, discussing DIY vs professional setups, ROI timelines, subsidies, and comparisons to grid electricity prices.

The cluster centers on debates about whether artists can or should make a living from their creative work, contrasting the 'starving artist' reality with arguments for pursuing art as a hobby alongside day jobs. Discussions often reference historical struggles, societal valuation of art, and comparisons to other professions like programming.

Comments focus on correcting, debating, and converting distances reported in articles or titles, highlighting confusion between miles and kilometers or other unit errors.

Discussions center on the experiences, responsibilities, and advice for tech leads or team leads, including transitioning from hands-on coding to mentoring, delegating tasks, fostering team growth, and balancing technical and leadership roles.

This cluster discusses reasons for falling fertility rates and why people are choosing not to have children, including cultural shifts, women's education and empowerment, economic factors, contraception, and personal preferences over family life.

Users speculate and correct the identity of a woman referenced in the post or article, frequently naming prominent tech and business figures like Marissa Mayer, Elizabeth Holmes, Ellen Pao, and Gwynne Shotwell, amid discussions of pronoun confusion.

The cluster centers on skepticism about the value and genuineness of Twitter follower counts, with discussions questioning bots, spammers, inflated numbers, and follower-to-following ratios as indicators of quality.

The cluster debates the philosophical distinction between physical computers/hardware and abstract computation, questioning if machines truly reason, think, or do math, or merely perform mechanical operations like circuits or state transitions.

The cluster debates the energy usage and environmental impact of AI models and LLMs, comparing it to activities like Netflix streaming, cars, and human cognition, while questioning if it's excessive or negligible relative to benefits.

Discussions center on advancements in rendering technologies like neural rendering, ray tracing, path tracing, software vs GPU rendering, and their efficiency for real-time game and film applications.

Discussions revolve around the hypothetical Planet Nine in our solar system, including its potential orbital interactions with Jupiter and other planets, moons, and debates on planet definitions like orbit clearing and comparisons to Pluto.

Users frequently ask for direct links to scientific studies referenced in the article or comments, with some providing the requested URLs to papers from sources like BMJ, JAMA, and NEJM.

Discussions debate whether software developers or programmers qualify as 'real engineers' compared to traditional fields like electrical or mechanical engineering, often with sarcasm about the term's use in tech.

The cluster focuses on debates about the wastefulness of discarding products, especially tech items and hardware, with arguments promoting reduce/reuse/recycle principles versus justifications for throwing them away as trash or e-waste.

Discussions center on using `git add -p` and similar commands like `git commit -p` to interactively stage specific hunks or changes for precise commits, reviewing work, and improving workflows.

Discussions revolve around whether advanced technologies, impressive feats, or clever tricks qualify as 'magic' or are simply misunderstood mechanisms, often referencing Arthur C. Clarke's law that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The cluster centers on debates criticizing environmental activists and movements as politically motivated, virtue-signaling, hypocritical, or counterproductive, often blaming them for policies that harm rather than help the environment.

Comments focus on Google's primary dependence on advertising revenue, debating its implications for business decisions, ad ecosystems, and competition.

Discussions center on the term 'Chinese Whispers' (the game Telephone), its meaning, cultural implications, poor translations, Chinese puns, dialects, and pronunciations.