All Topics

Discussions center on recommending and comparing cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Bittrex, and Binance for buying/selling BTC, ETH, and other coins, including fees, usability, alternatives, and API integrations.

Commenters estimate and debate the CapEx, OpEx, hardware, personnel, and infrastructure expenses for various technology projects, services, audits, and rollouts.

The cluster discusses historical US alcohol prohibition as a cautionary example against banning other substances like drugs, highlighting its failures such as increased crime, poor quality illicit products, and eventual repeal.

Cluster discusses a study engineering human cells with tardigrade proteins for enhanced resilience and desiccation tolerance, alongside debates on cell lifespan, immortality like HeLa cells, reprogramming, and related biology papers.

Users report and discuss GitHub service disruptions, sharing links to status pages and updates on outages and resolutions.

This cluster debates the superiority of Bitcoin over Ethereum and other altcoins, focusing on aspects like proof-of-stake, scalability, security, store of value, and future viability in cryptocurrency.

Comments debate whether certain conditions like ADHD qualify as disabilities, the need for accessibility accommodations in products or services, and balancing that with experiences for non-disabled users.

Comments primarily recommend Wireshark for capturing and analyzing network traffic, often comparing it to alternatives like tcpdump, mitmproxy, Little Snitch, and other monitoring tools.

Debates center on whether GDPR disproportionately burdens small businesses and startups with high compliance costs compared to large tech companies, with arguments for exemptions, leniency in enforcement, and claims that ethical data practices make compliance straightforward.

This cluster focuses on debates and experiences around on-call duties in software engineering and DevOps roles, including expectations, compensation, frequency, psychological burden, and negotiation strategies during job interviews.

The cluster discusses the high expenses of legal fees and court costs in lawsuits, including debates on 'loser pays' rules, deterrents to litigation, and comparisons between US and other countries' systems.

The cluster focuses on criticisms of how food industry lobbies (sugar, meat, dairy, corn) and Big Food companies manipulate dietary guidelines, marketing, and research to promote addictive processed foods high in sugar, salt, and fat, contributing to obesity and poor public health.

The cluster debates the naturalness of humans consuming meat by comparing it to predation in the animal kingdom, arguing that humans are predators like other animals and that eating animals is part of nature.

Cluster focuses on debates about the protective efficacy of N95, surgical, cloth, and other masks against COVID-19 aerosols, emphasizing fit, filtration rates, valves, and comparisons to CDC guidelines.

Discussions focus on identity verification processes for air travel, including whether physical ID is required at security, boarding, or with services like Clear/Precheck, alongside facial recognition and Real ID policies.

Commenters reminisce about the CD era, debate the advantages of physical CDs over digital downloads and streaming, and question their ongoing relevance and decline.

The cluster centers on discussions comparing the performance, relevance, and commonality of integrated GPUs (iGPUs) from Intel and AMD to discrete GPUs, especially in laptops, desktops, and gaming contexts.

Cluster focuses on IVF experiences, donor eggs/sperm, surrogacy, and futuristic biotech like stem cell-derived gametes, artificial wombs, and designer babies that could bypass traditional reproduction.

Discussions center on comparing a featured service or project to Twilio for SMS and communication features, including critiques of Twilio's pricing, suggestions for alternatives, and questions about similarities or integrations.

Commenters repeatedly argue that participation in or use of a service, feature, or AI model is entirely voluntary, emphasizing choice and denying any coercion or force.

Discussions revolve around COBOL's history, ongoing relevance in business and legacy systems, modern implementations, calls to learn it, and humorous or nostalgic references.

Commenters speculate, question, and debate the specific amounts of money paid, promised, or received by individuals in a deal, scandal, or compensation context, citing figures from $10k to billions.

The cluster focuses on debates about government transparency, particularly the public's right to access information and data that governments hold on citizens, emphasizing accountability and reciprocity in information access.

Debate on whether online lectures, MOOCs, and self-study can effectively replace traditional university classroom experiences, with discussions on advantages like flexibility and drawbacks like lack of peer interaction.

This cluster centers on debates comparing the harm, addictiveness, societal impact, and legality of alcohol to illegal drugs like MDMA, cannabis, heroin, meth, and others, frequently referencing studies, statistics, and personal experiences.

The cluster focuses on discussions about Rust's Result type, ? operator, and error propagation mechanisms, often praising it as superior to exceptions in C++/Java or verbose checks in Go/C, with mentions of crates like anyhow and thiserror.

The cluster discusses the declining PC industry, characterized by razor-thin profit margins, intense competition, commoditization, and major manufacturers like HP shifting focus to more profitable areas like mobiles amid shrinking sales and Apple's dominance.

Comments express nostalgia for a specific longstanding website and reminisce about the early, amateur, and novel 'old internet' or Web 1.0 era, contrasting it with modern web experiences.

Commenters apply concepts of natural selection and evolution to interpret a scenario, often suggesting that unfit traits or behaviors are being weeded out in real-time, with analogies extending to technology and society.

Discussions revolve around a service or resource restricted to university students or affiliates, focusing on eligibility requirements, US-centric policies, alternatives for non-students, and university availability.

The cluster centers on debates about whether cryptocurrencies and blockchains are truly 'trustless,' or if they merely redistribute or require trust in systems, code, math, or networks instead of centralized authorities.

Discussions center on rumors, expectations, and advice to wait for upcoming Apple Mac models like Mac Mini Pro, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, and iMac featuring new M-series chips such as M1 Pro/Max, M2, M3, and M4 variants.

Users recommend and share experiences with computer history museums worldwide, highlighting exhibits like vintage computers, NeXT boxes, Cray supercomputers, and operational historical hardware.

Discussions center on the challenges of complex tooling and steep learning curves as barriers to entry for beginners and non-technical users, advocating for simpler, more accessible interfaces to promote wider adoption and productivity.

Users share experiences and compare smart thermostats like Nest and Ecobee, debating features such as offline functionality, remote sensors, reliability, and internet dependency.

Commenters propose peer-to-peer (P2P) networks like BitTorrent, IPFS, and Spotify's early model as decentralized solutions to replace centralized servers, aiming to cut costs, bandwidth, and single points of failure, while discussing challenges like NAT, firewalls, and initial connectivity needs.

Discussions explore why humans evolved superior intelligence compared to other animals, the rarity of such intelligence as an evolutionary strategy, and factors like culture, language, tools, and selective pressures.

Discussions focus on buying, selling, and squatting domain names for profit, including strategies, marketplaces like Sedo and eBay, personal sales stories, and suspicions of registrars like GoDaddy registering searched domains to resell at higher prices.

Users complain about, flag, and discuss duplicate story submissions on Hacker News, often questioning or critiquing the site's dupe detection system and submission policies.

Comments discuss receiving, sending, or responding to cease and desist letters, often advising on hiring lawyers for demand letters or counter-threats in IP or business disputes. Experiences shared include negotiating without full lawsuits and the effectiveness of legal nastygrams.

The cluster debates funding models for online journalism, contrasting ad revenue (leading to clickbait, intrusive ads, and quality decline) with subscriptions, paywalls, and alternatives like micropayments.

The cluster focuses on Firefox's highly customizable user interface, with users sharing tips on using userChrome.css, extensions like Tree Style Tabs and Sidebery, and workarounds for disliked UI changes such as the address bar and tab designs, often comparing it favorably to Chrome and praising its flexibility over other browsers.

Comments lament the declining quality of tech news sites like Ars Technica, Wired, The Verge, and Gizmodo, blaming shifts to clickbait, sensationalism, aggregation, political bias, and ownership changes.

Discussions focus on the accuracy, reliability, and features of heart rate monitoring in smartwatches and wearables like Apple Watch, Garmin, and chest straps, including comparisons to medical-grade devices and other health metrics like blood oxygen and ECG.

The cluster debates how human learning—through evolution, embodiment, sensory experience, and data efficiency—differs from AI/LLM training on massive curated datasets.

Comments discuss Groupon's strategy, its impact on small businesses and merchants, sustainability concerns, profitability debates, and mixed experiences with deals.

Discussions revolve around distinguishing between users and paying customers, often highlighting that users of a service or product are not the real customers and might instead be the product themselves.

Comments humorously speculate or endorse the article's subject, likely a tech figure or AI, as a candidate for US President, often referencing 2024 elections and POTUS contenders.

Discussions revolve around collisions or near-collisions between naval warships and commercial ships, debating radar and AIS detection, crew vigilance, maneuverability challenges, pirate defenses, and the potential for ship automation.

Comments primarily compare the costs of alternative servers, ARM instances, or hosting options to AWS EC2 instances, debating which provides better value for similar specs like CPU, RAM, and pricing models including spot and reserved instances.

Cluster debates everyday life, living standards, and government satisfaction in China compared to Western countries, contrasting urban affluence and middle-class growth with rural poverty, censorship, and freedom tradeoffs.

Comments debate the criminalization of drug possession, especially marijuana and small amounts, questioning imprisonment for non-violent offenses, sentencing disparities, and comparisons to trafficking or violent crimes.

This cluster focuses on the financial aspects of marriage, including sharing incomes between spouses, supporting a non-working partner, and the risks of divorce such as asset division and alimony.

The cluster revolves around debates on US-centrism in media and discussions, with non-Americans expressing fatigue over dominant US news coverage overshadowing global events, and defenses of US focus due to its global influence.

The cluster centers on discussions advocating for greater transparency from companies or organizations, often criticizing their claims of openness while highlighting opacity in practices or announcements.

Comments enthusiastically advocate for learning and using traditional Unix command-line tools like bash, grep, sed, awk, and find, highlighting their efficiency, universality, and superiority over GUIs or reinventing solutions in other languages.

Comments advocate for pursuing hobbies purely for enjoyment, personal fulfillment, and skill-building without needing to monetize, optimize for profit, or turn them into side gigs, critiquing hustle culture's pressure to extract value from everything.

The cluster focuses on suspicions and debates about major US tech companies (e.g., Google, Apple, Microsoft) collaborating with government agencies like the NSA and CIA for user data collection and surveillance, often drawing parallels to foreign spying practices.

This cluster focuses on discussions about NASA's Mars exploration efforts, including rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity, past landings, mission technologies, and anomalies or findings on Mars.

The cluster revolves around debates on wealth disparity, rising populism against elites and billionaires, lack of class consciousness, and how political divisions distract from economic inequalities favoring the rich.

The cluster focuses on concerns about Intel's Management Engine (ME) as a closed-source backdoor with security vulnerabilities that cannot be fully disabled, compromising hardware security. Discussions also reference AMD's equivalent Platform Security Processor (PSP) and related features like vPro and AMT.

Discussions focus on limitations of depth of field, focus control, and exposure settings on smartphone cameras compared to DSLRs and mirrorless, including fixed apertures, manual modes, and computational photography alternatives.

Discussions revolve around the F# programming language, including recommendations, production usage, integrations like Fable, and comparisons to languages like OCaml or TypeScript.

This cluster features users repeatedly suggesting or noting that others add their email address to their Hacker News profile to allow for direct contact. Comments include reminders about missing emails, instructions on using the 'about' section, and users sharing their own contact info.

Users associate the discussed content with demoscene demos, sharing links to videos, talks, Wikipedia, and HN threads while reminiscing about old-school demos on C64, Amiga, and other retro hardware.

This cluster focuses on suspicions of organized use of fake accounts, bots, shills, and sockpuppets to manipulate discussions, upvotes, and narratives on Hacker News and other online platforms.

Discussions focus on efficient algorithms and data structures for string matching and searching, including Boyer-Moore, Aho-Corasick, Levenshtein distance, tries, suffix trees, and related techniques suggested as alternatives or improvements.

This cluster features comments praising a particular idea, hack, trick, or solution as clever, genius, brilliant, or smart. Users repeatedly express admiration for the ingenuity demonstrated in the discussed content.

Discussions revolve around the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, debating its validity against Copenhagen interpretation, wavefunction collapse, and related quantum theories.

The cluster centers on polarized discussions about the 2016 US presidential election, defending Trump and his supporters against accusations of racism, misogyny, and extremism while criticizing Hillary Clinton's flaws, media bias, and anti-Trump rhetoric.

Discussions center on CS:GO, Valorant, Overwatch, and similar tactical shooters, comparing them to MOBAs like Dota/LoL and RTS like StarCraft in terms of popularity, esports viability, complexity, and longevity.

Comments debate whether cryptocurrency trading practices involve insider trading, market manipulation, or securities fraud prosecutable by the SEC, frequently referencing Matt Levine's 'everything is securities fraud' and comparisons to traditional finance regulations.

Users discuss, question, and explain the origins, meanings, and confusions around technical acronyms, abbreviations, prefixes, and naming conventions in areas like networking, hardware, electronics, and software.

The cluster discusses Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption in countries with hyperinflation and unstable currencies like Venezuela, Argentina, and Nigeria, highlighting its role as a hedge against currency devaluation, easier cross-border transfers, and alternative to black market USD. Debates compare its volatility and practicality to local currencies or dollarization.

This cluster focuses on methods to detect, block, and deter bots from websites, debating the effectiveness of tools like Cloudflare Bot Management, honeypots, captchas, and proof-of-work, while addressing challenges from sophisticated bots and potential countermeasures.

Discussions focus on the non-mandatory use of the Mac App Store for macOS apps, highlighting direct downloads, sideloading options, sandboxing limitations, and comparisons to iOS restrictions.

The cluster discusses frustrations with high ink cartridge prices, the 'razor and blades' business model of cheap printers and expensive consumables, and recommendations for alternatives like Epson EcoTank printers or laser printers.

Comments identify the discussed company as a US defense or government contractor, attributing its practices to military contracts with the DoD and industry norms.

Users recount data loss incidents with cloud services like Dropbox, Backblaze, and Carbonite, debating the distinction between syncing/versioning tools and true backups, and sharing strategies for reliable data recovery and redundancy.

Comments debate the impressiveness of various requests per second (RPS) figures for web services, converting metrics like daily or hourly requests and comparing them to typical benchmarks or expectations.

Comments debate the merits of different screw head designs like Phillips, Torx, Pozidriv, and hex, preferring Torx for reduced stripping and better torque, often using hammer/nail/screwdriver analogies to discuss using the right tool.

The cluster discusses problems with LED lighting, including excessive blue light emission at night, poor spectral profiles affecting color perception and eye comfort, low color rendering index (CRI), and impacts on circadian rhythms compared to incandescent or natural light.

Comments focus on the need for, implementation of, and alternatives to real-time collaborative editing features in web tools, with frequent recommendations of Etherpad and comparisons to Google Docs and Figma.

Discussions debate the significance of water consumption by data centers and similar facilities, arguing it's often recirculated rather than wasted and negligible compared to agriculture, residential lawns, and other major uses amid water scarcity concerns.

Discussions center on the feasibility, legality, and political use of U.S. presidential pardons for figures like Snowden, historical cases like Nixon, and recent examples involving Trump and Biden.

Comments debate the economics of internet service provision, arguing that bandwidth is cheap once infrastructure like fiber is laid, with most costs being fixed rather than variable per GB of usage.

The cluster centers on debates about whether rising corporate profits suppress worker wages, pitting employees against shareholders and executives in the distribution of economic gains.

Users share personal experiences and debate the time commitment, difficulty, and strategies (like skipping classes or minimizing gen-eds) for completing university degrees in STEM fields, especially CS and engineering.

Comments debating the credibility, trustworthiness, and integrity of authors, individuals, sources, and claims in Hacker News discussions.

The cluster centers on commenters repeatedly distinguishing revenue from profit, correcting misconceptions where impressive figures are mistaken for profitability rather than top-line revenue. Discussions emphasize that revenue does not indicate profits due to unknown expenses.

Comments discuss the existence, performance, app compatibility via emulation, and overall viability of Windows running on ARM processors, often comparing it to Apple Silicon and x86 backward compatibility challenges.

Commenters share examples of remote and isolated islands like Tristan da Cunha, North Sentinel Island, and Sealand, discussing their unique characteristics, isolation benefits, and challenges in relation to the original post's island.

Comments in this cluster primarily recommend Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and other Stoic works by Seneca and Epictetus, along with modern guides to Stoic philosophy for personal insight and life improvement.

This cluster features discussions recommending functional programming languages such as Haskell, OCaml, F#, Scala, Clojure, and others to programmers seeking alternatives to imperative languages for learning new paradigms.

Discussions center on user complaints about sudden, aggressive pricing increases by SaaS and hosting companies like Chargify and Hetzner, often without grandfathering existing customers, leading to accusations of bait-and-switch and broken trust.

Users express intense fear, horror, and creepiness toward a disturbing technological concept or demonstration featured in the original post. The discussions revolve around the nightmare-inducing and shiver-worthy implications of the idea.

The cluster discusses operator precedence, associativity, and parsing challenges in infix notation versus prefix or postfix alternatives like Lisp's Polish notation, debating their naturalness and necessity for omitting parentheses.

Debate on advantages of plain text formats over binary ones, highlighting human readability, universal tooling, Unix philosophy, and debugging ease despite binary's efficiency.

Discussions center on the feasibility, advantages, and challenges of electric trucks for heavy-duty tasks like towing trailers, long-haul transport, and hauling, often comparing them to diesel trucks and citing examples like F-150 Lightning and Rivian.

Comments discuss whether the internet remains decentralized as originally intended or has become centralized around services like Cloudflare, major email providers, and other silos despite its foundational design.