All Topics

Discussions center on Valve's evolution from game developers to a Steam-focused platform company, including criticisms of resting on laurels, defenses of their achievements, and speculation on their involvement in new projects or ecosystems.

Users debate the effectiveness of incognito or private browsing modes as a solution to website issues like paywalls, tracking, or blocks, reporting mixed results on whether it resolves the problem.

The cluster focuses on mobile carriers' practices of subsidizing phone prices through monthly contracts and fees, leading to no cost savings for users who bring their own devices or don't use carrier-provided phones.

Comments debate whether Google pioneered innovations internally via 20% time and side projects (e.g., Gmail, Go) or primarily through acquisitions, contrasting it with startups and criticizing repetitive HN posts about Google.

Debates on Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) in open source projects, their legal implications for copyright assignment, requirements by companies like Atlassian and Audacity, and alternatives like forking or avoiding such projects.

The cluster focuses on debates about conservation of momentum and energy in variable mass systems, particularly whether a spacecraft can accelerate by converting mass to photons without violating conservation laws.

Comments feature famous tech leaders, entrepreneurs, and public figures paired with satirical or meme-inspired nicknames, often referencing sci-fi, culture, or jokes.

Discussions center on systems thinking, complex systems theory, and challenges in understanding or managing highly complex systems that exceed human cognitive limits, with frequent references to Systemantics, complex adaptive systems, and system dynamics.

Discussions center on how web links from apps open in browsers or trigger deep links on iOS and Android, with complaints about iOS forcing Safari or in-app views instead of user-preferred browsers and desires for better default browser support.

The cluster centers on debates about whether deflation in currencies like Bitcoin or gold is economically harmful—due to encouraging hoarding, reduced spending, and potential spirals—or beneficial for increasing purchasing power and incentivizing saving.

Comments debate whether Google unfairly scrapes and displays publishers' content in search results like snippets and AI overviews, profiting from ads while reducing traffic and revenue for original creators, with some defending it as essential indexing.

The cluster centers on criticisms of microservices architecture being adopted prematurely or excessively, often by managers without real need, versus appropriate use cases like large teams, with discussions on alternatives like monoliths.

The cluster consists of comments criticizing John McAfee as a con artist, fraudster, drug-addled criminal involved in scams, tax evasion, crypto shilling, and serious allegations like murder and rape.

The cluster centers on debates about the definition of a 'startup' versus a small business or regular company, questioning if all new ventures qualify or if criteria like high-growth potential, VC funding, or limited history are required.

Discussions compare the construction quality, aesthetics, and durability of older houses versus modern ones, debating survivorship bias, building standards, and why new homes often appear cheaper despite regulations.

Discussions center on UEFI firmware's role in booting, its compatibility with various systems and distributions, comparisons to legacy BIOS or alternatives like U-Boot, and calls for better UEFI support.

Commenters argue over whether technologies with potential malicious uses, such as AI tools, should be restricted or abandoned, often citing analogies to everyday items like knives, cars, and hammers that can also be misused.

This cluster focuses on criticisms of the UK government's internet surveillance practices, laws like the Online Safety Act and Investigatory Powers Act, and ongoing privacy erosions through mass snooping and backdoor mandates.

The cluster centers on discussions advocating for employees to be shareholders or own the company outright, questioning traditional separations between workers and owners, and promoting employee-owned companies or equity stakes.

Discussions revolve around recommendations, comparisons, and experiences with various log aggregation and management tools such as Splunk, ELK stack, Scalyr, Graylog, and others, focusing on cost, usability, scalability, and alternatives.

The cluster debates the inherent value of stocks, particularly non-dividend paying ones, questioning if it's tied to company profits, assets, dividends, or buyouts, or merely speculative based on what others will pay.

The cluster centers on discussions about genetic mutations, their mechanisms, propagation through populations, natural versus engineered origins, and implications for organisms.

Comments debate distinctions between American Evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity and broader global or denominational Christianity, correcting overgeneralizations about 'Christians' as primarily referring to US-specific sects.

This cluster focuses on criticisms of the Democratic Party's electoral strategies, failures to win elections, suppression of populism, and comparisons to Republican successes.

The cluster revolves around debates on whether specific car designs, modifications, or vehicles comply with street legality regulations, safety standards, and licensing requirements, particularly in the US and other countries.

The cluster focuses on discussions about performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), steroids, and doping in sports, including their prevalence, justifications, risks, and comparisons to fields like e-sports and high-performance work.

The cluster centers on debates over whether specific actions in ongoing or recent military conflicts constitute war crimes, with frequent references to US involvement, invasions, and international law exemptions.

The cluster debates whether banning extremists from mainstream social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit prevents radicalization and recruitment or drives it further by pushing users into fringe echo chambers.

Discussions center on whether fraudsters and scammers get to keep large sums of stolen or ill-gotten money like $60M or $100M, focusing on asset seizure, civil and criminal forfeiture laws, prison time versus retaining profits, and related legal consequences.

Comments focus on the historical use of audio cassette tapes for computer data storage, backups, and music recording like mix tapes, with nostalgia, comebacks, and comparisons to other retro media.

Discussions compare traditional hardware description languages like Verilog and VHDL to modern alternatives such as Chisel, nmigen, and Clash, focusing on their design flaws, usability, and suitability for FPGA/ASIC development.

The cluster focuses on discussions about harmful chemicals like benzene, methanol, PFAS (forever chems), and others in consumer products such as cleaners, sprays, and bug repellents, debating their toxicity, safety, biodegradation, and exposure risks.

Comments focus on how suppressing natural forest fires leads to fuel buildup and more intense wildfires, advocating for controlled burns and periodic fires as essential for healthy forest ecosystems.

Comments in this cluster praise a short, ingenious, and effective code snippet for its brevity, cleverness, and fun to read, often comparing it to code golf or hacky tricks. Users express admiration for such exploratory, pointless hackery and request more code-reading posts.

Users discuss dissatisfaction with standard webcam quality and recommend alternatives like mirrorless cameras, DSLRs, point-and-shoots, or high-end webcams with capture cards for superior video in calls and streams.

Comments debate the accuracy and metrics of various programming language popularity indices like TIOBE, RedMonk, PYPL, GitHut, and JetBrains, questioning rankings for languages such as Python, JavaScript, C, and Ruby.

Discussions debate whether skin color equates to race, its relevance to privilege or bias, and if mentioning it is racist, often in AI facial recognition or diversity contexts.

Discussions center on using PostgreSQL's row-level security (RLS) and RBAC for fine-grained database access control, including comparisons with API-level auth and tools like Supabase, PostgREST, and Hasura.

Discussions focus on problems with traffic signs including poor placement, distraction from billboards, vandalism, missing or altered signs, and alternatives like digital maps or electronic displays, often highlighting safety risks for drivers and autonomous vehicles.

Comments focus on estimating, debating, and expressing surprise at enormous data volumes in terabytes, petabytes, and exabytes for various projects, archives, and datasets, often calculating storage hardware needs.

Comments debate the best hydration strategies, questioning if plain water suffices or if electrolytes, salts, and sugars are necessary to avoid dehydration or imbalances like water intoxication, emphasizing thirst as a guide.

Comments joke about and debate interpretations of numbers in binary, hexadecimal, octal, decimal, and BCD, often referencing a specific code display or thumbwheel settings on old hardware.

Commenters question and correct the attributions of quotes, frequently citing sources like Quote Investigator to debunk dubious claims about famous sayings on the internet.

Discussions comparing the Atom text editor to Visual Studio Code and other alternatives like Sublime Text, focusing on performance issues, speed, bugs, and reasons to prefer one over the other.

The cluster focuses on advice for starting profitable businesses with little to no external funding, emphasizing small-scale, bootstrapped ventures over VC-backed ones, and debating whether low-capital ideas qualify as real businesses.

Cluster focuses on advocating SSH key-based authentication over passwords for secure server access, discussing best practices like key management, passphrases, hardware tokens, SSH CAs, and alternatives to mitigate risks.

Users share personal anecdotes about computer and laptop hardware failures, including causes like static electricity, bad capacitors, dust buildup, and fixes such as replacing fuses, cleaning, or percussive maintenance.

Discussions focus on the addition, cost, waste, trust, security, and design of packaging for online shipped products, especially Amazon boxes and alternatives to reduce excess or improve tamper-evidence.

The cluster revolves around arguments on proving or disproving God's existence, the burden of proof on positive claims, and analogies like Russell's Teapot and Pascal's Wager.

Discussions center on the value of taking photos to capture everyday moments and memories versus the drawbacks of interrupting experiences or accumulating unused digital archives, including changes from smartphone photography and benefits for family legacies.

Commenters repeatedly emphasize or dispute the number of deaths in a specific incident to counter claims that it was benign or minor.

Users frequently inquire about, complain regarding, and discuss the specific file size limitations (e.g., 5MB, 50GB, 100MB) of a service or tool, often referencing storage backends like S3.

This cluster centers on comments where users repeatedly ask for recommendations, suggestions, tips, or advice in response to the parent post or other discussions. The requests are highly repetitive and span various contexts but focus on soliciting specific guidance or alternatives.

This cluster centers on comparisons between Angular and React JavaScript frameworks, debating their features, popularity, opinionated nature, maintainability, performance, and developer preferences across versions like Angular 1.x and 2+.

The cluster focuses on debates about Airbnb's role in facilitating illegal short-term rentals, skirting hotel and zoning regulations, and whether the company should be held legally accountable for enabling hosts to break local laws.

The cluster focuses on debates about the UK's deteriorating economy, citing issues like high inflation, cost of living crisis, low growth, Brexit impacts, austerity policies, and comparisons to other nations.

Users discuss personal experiences attempting to migrate from WhatsApp to privacy-focused alternatives like Signal or Telegram, emphasizing challenges due to network effects and difficulty convincing friends and family to switch.

Users complain about articles lacking visible publication dates, causing confusion on Hacker News when old content is reposted, and suggest adding dates to HN titles for clarity.

Discussions focus on funding road maintenance via gas taxes, vehicle fees, and alternatives like mileage or weight-based taxes, particularly addressing how electric vehicles avoid contributing to traditional gas taxes.

The cluster centers on debates about server logs containing PII, GDPR/CCPA compliance risks, skepticism toward no-logging claims, and challenges in verifying or trusting log policies.

Cluster debates the validity of claims about record high global temperatures, with skeptics citing longer historical records, geological data, and sources like NASA/NOAA to argue against cherry-picking recent baselines.

Discussions focus on the efficiency of hot water heating systems like heat pumps versus traditional tanks, methods of heating water (resistive or heat pump), and utilizing byproduct or waste heat from appliances, showers, or other sources for domestic hot water or space heating.

Users recommend and compare suppliers like DigiKey, Mouser, Octopart, Farnell, and others for buying electronic components, discussing pricing, reliability, shipping, and search capabilities.

Cluster centers on advice for financially strained individuals, especially developers, to prioritize securing any stable job for income and benefits before pursuing self-directed projects, startups, or further education.

The cluster centers on debates about sidewalk exclusivity for pedestrians versus sharing with bikes, scooters, or other vehicles, focusing on safety, congestion, and urban space allocation.

The cluster debates whether targeted, personalized ads based on user tracking are more effective and necessary than contextual or generic ads, with arguments on their performance for advertisers, relevance to users, and overall value.

The cluster debates the maintenance costs, reliability, and mechanical complexity of electric vehicles (EVs) compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, with most comments arguing that EVs have fewer moving parts and lower long-term maintenance needs.

This cluster features numerous comments where users repeatedly ask for links, sources, pointers, or citations to research studies, papers, or findings mentioned in the discussion. Samples show similar requests or references to specific research across various topics.

Users debate features, limitations, and alternatives for built-in file managers like Windows Explorer, Nautilus, Dolphin, and others across operating systems, often questioning why certain capabilities like tabs, previews, or path handling are missing.

Discussions center on the trustworthiness and security of major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, including concerns about compromises, government access, and whether to rely on them for sensitive data versus on-premises alternatives.

This cluster discusses unlimited PTO (paid time off) or vacation policies, debating their implementation, benefits for companies (like avoiding payouts), and drawbacks for employees (such as taking less time off due to social pressures and lack of guarantees).

The cluster centers on discussions about Apple's patent filings, their enforcement, defensive strategies, validity, prior art claims, and criticisms of Apple as a patent aggressor or troll.

The cluster focuses on discussions of ice formation, supercooling, the Mpemba effect, volume expansion of ice, sublimation, and other unusual properties or behaviors of water and ice in various conditions.

Discussions focus on the visual appeal, beauty, and sci-fi-like design of an unconventional machine or vehicle, with users praising its cool aesthetics, requesting images or more details, and debating its pleasing or odd appearance.

Comments primarily recommend and compare online brokers like Interactive Brokers, Alpaca, and Robinhood, focusing on their APIs, low fees, commissions, and suitability for programmatic trading.

The cluster discusses people canceling planned trips, refusing to visit the US for work or tourism, and advising others to avoid it due to political tensions, extradition fears, border hassles, and feelings of being unwelcome or unsafe.

Discussions revolve around the feasibility, skills, and commonality of individuals performing their own car maintenance and repairs, often using cars as an analogy for computer or device repairability and tinkering.

Discussions compare Python's asyncio with gevent and alternatives like Twisted, debating performance, ecosystem support, concurrency scalability, and library compatibility.

This cluster discusses the ethics, risks, and prevalence of lying or exaggerating experience on resumes and during job interviews, with debates on whether it's acceptable, detectable, or a fireable offense.

Debate on whether academics and scientists should publish their often messy code alongside research papers to improve reproducibility, despite concerns over code quality, competitive advantages, and maintenance.

Users express excitement about discovering useful programming libraries, thank sharers, ask for alternatives, and discuss their applications in projects.

Commenters debate the appropriate use of terms like authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and autocracy to describe governments, regimes, or political actions, often distinguishing nuances or applying them to various contexts.

Comments debate Bitcoin's advantages and disadvantages compared to cash, focusing on privacy, censorship resistance, regulation, portability, and suitability for illicit transactions or evading authorities.

The cluster discusses China's massive domestic market sustaining local tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba with limited global expansion, contrasted against Western companies' exclusion via the Great Firewall and protectionist policies, with debates on reciprocity and open competition.

Discussions center on distinguishing programming interfaces from concrete implementations, their benefits, tradeoffs, and usage in languages like Java, Go, Julia, and Python.

Discussions center on technical reasons for multiple Raptor engines failing to ignite during a Starship Super Heavy booster launch, such as igniter fluid depletion, propellant issues, hypersonic reentry effects, and comparisons to Falcon 9 and other rocket engines.

The cluster discusses the prevalence of obesity in the US, its health risks including mortality and comorbidities, and debates over BMI accuracy and comparisons to issues like COVID severity.

The cluster centers on discussions about how many Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, lack emergency savings (e.g., unable to cover a $400 expense), and face risks from job loss, medical bills, or other shocks, debating personal responsibility versus systemic issues.

Users debate the superiority of Chrome's developer tools compared to Firefox's built-in dev tools and Firebug, highlighting features, performance, and preferences for web development.

The cluster focuses on early IBM PC graphics standards, particularly CGA display modes, color limitations, resolution hacks like 1024-color modes, and comparisons to EGA, VGA, Hercules cards, and text modes.

The cluster focuses on discussions debating the adage 'plans are useless, but planning is essential,' questioning assumptions about whether specific situations or entities have coherent plans and emphasizing the value of planning processes over rigid plans.

Users recommend and discuss online tools like regex101.com, regexr.com, and rubular for testing, debugging, building, and understanding regular expressions.

The cluster centers on how remote work enables people to escape expensive urban housing markets like SF, moving to cheaper areas for better affordability and quality of life, potentially easing city pressures.

Comments focus on comparing Linux filesystems like ext4, XFS, ZFS, ReiserFS, and others, discussing their reliability, performance issues, data corruption problems, and preferences for modern alternatives.

Comments discuss the high cost of flights especially in the US compared to cheaper budget airline fares in Europe and Asia, including pricing strategies, comparisons to trains, and regional differences.

Cluster focuses on debates about assuming normal or Gaussian distributions for data, often citing the central limit theorem while discussing alternatives like fat tails or lognormal distributions.

The cluster centers on debates about how AI-generated art affects artists' livelihoods, including concerns over economic harm, payment with exposure, corporate greed, and artists' control over their work.

The cluster focuses on using smartphones' 'Do Not Disturb' mode and similar features like silencing unknown callers to prevent unwanted notifications, vibrations, and calls, especially at night or during focus periods, with suggestions for custom ringtones and settings as alternatives.

The cluster discusses the historical shift of programming from a female-dominated 'women's work' field to a male-dominated profession, debates on reasons for current gender imbalances like interest differences, culture, and sexism, and the push for more women in tech.

Discussions center on surgeons' credentials, arrogance, success rates, and professionalism, frequently using surgery as an analogy to critique similar ideas in software engineering like uncredentialed work or optimization.