All Topics

Users debate the strengths and weaknesses of MacPorts versus Homebrew as macOS package managers, often preferring MacPorts for stability and segregation while criticizing Homebrew's issues, with mentions of alternatives like Nix.

Comments primarily share hyperlinks to Linux news sites like LWN, kernel repositories, OS development resources like OSDev, and projects such as Asahi Linux and Redox OS.

The cluster focuses on discussions questioning whether a product, service, or technology handling health data complies with HIPAA regulations, including debates on covered entities, protected health information, and common misconceptions.

Discussions center on why large companies underinvest in long-term, blue-sky research due to shareholder pressures and short-term profit demands, contrasting it with product-focused R&D and citing examples like Xerox PARC and Google.

The cluster discusses San Francisco's housing market, focusing on high rents, rent control policies, low vacancy rates, and their effects on tenants and development amid a housing crisis.

Discussions center on jq, a command-line JSON processing tool likened to awk/sed for JSON, including recommendations, syntax critiques, usage tips, and alternatives like gron, miller, jello, and jiq.

Discussions focus on whether specific works, characters, or media have entered the public domain, copyright expiration rules particularly in the US, and challenges in dedicating works to the public domain.

Discussions focus on improving audio quality by recommending dedicated external or USB microphones like Yeti, Shure SM58, and Samson Q2U over built-in or headset mics for videos, calls, and recordings.

The cluster centers on debates about judging a specific book's content by its cover or spine, literally applying the idiom 'don't judge a book by its cover' to a Hacker News post featuring a tech book with an unusual design.

Developers discuss preferences for using tabs in single windows versus multiple windows, virtual desktops, workspaces, or tiling window managers to organize terminals, editors, browsers, and tasks across projects.

Commenters express surprise at only recently learning about an obscure person, site, or event via HN or other recent mentions, often asking how others first discovered it.

The cluster discusses how non-technical users habitually click through security warnings, popups, and alerts without reading them, leading to debates on warning fatigue, ineffectiveness of such prompts, and risks of false security senses.

The cluster discusses the slowdown or drying up of venture capital funding for startups, attributed to rising interest rates, economic shifts, potential bubbles, and their impacts on the startup ecosystem including hiring and investment strategies.

Users critique the practicality of a novel cup or glass design for beverages, joking about issues like plastic lids, inner coatings, spoons, and suitability for contents while suggesting alternatives like tumblers, jars, or ceramic mugs.

The cluster discusses how online advertisers track users across sites for personalized ad targeting, debates the necessity of tracking for ads, and explores privacy-preserving alternatives like Privacy Sandbox and ad click attribution.

The cluster focuses on debates about funding Universal Basic Income (UBI) through tax reforms, welfare program replacements, and progressive taxation that claws back payments from higher earners, often arguing it's cost-neutral or inexpensive.

Discussions revolve around defending the legitimate use cases of a programming feature or tool against claims that it is useless or primarily misused.

The cluster centers on debates over why black Americans face disproportionately high arrest, conviction, and incarceration rates compared to whites, pitting arguments about higher black crime rates against claims of systemic racism, biased policing, and unequal enforcement.

Debates on the accuracy of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight forecasts and polls for the 2016 US presidential election, including distinctions between popular vote and electoral college outcomes, polling errors, and model reliability.

The cluster centers on the advantages of compiling and deploying applications as single static binaries without dependencies or runtimes, often praising Go's approach and comparing it to other languages like Node.js or Java.

The cluster centers on personal anecdotes and discussions about emotional, physical, and neglectful abuse from parents in childhood, its lasting psychological impacts like CPTSD, and how individuals often minimize or internalize such experiences.

Users compare the featured database (likely Postgres-based) to established time series databases like TimescaleDB, InfluxDB, Prometheus, and others, focusing on performance, benefits, and use cases.

Discussions center on the history, architecture, origins (e.g., VMS, OS/2 influences), and technical superiority of the Windows NT kernel compared to Windows 9x series and other OSes.

Discussions revolve around a specific tile-based or board game similar to tic-tac-toe, debating if it's solved, sharing winning strategies and AI approaches, with frequent WarGames quotes claiming 'the only winning move is not to play.' Comparisons to 2048 and other solved games are common.

Discussions focus on emergent storytelling, procedural generation, and player-driven narratives in sandbox and open-world games like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, and Factorio, contrasting them with linear narratives and exploring game design challenges for chaos and replayability.

The cluster focuses on discussions of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, the limitations of axiomatic systems like ZFC set theory, and concepts such as consistency, completeness, and unprovable truths in mathematics.

Discussions center on a company's exposure of sensitive personal data (PII), highlighting privacy violations, legal liabilities, compliance failures, negligence, and potential repercussions.

Discussions focus on challenges and techniques for freeing up disk space on filesystems after deletions, especially when disks are nearly full, including issues like needing temporary space to reclaim space, TRIM, zeroing free space, and compression effects.

Discussions center on SQLite's handling of concurrent reads and writes across multiple processes or threads, with repeated emphasis on enabling WAL mode to mitigate locking issues and improve performance.

Commenters suggest CNC milling, lathes, EDM, casting, and other precision manufacturing techniques as alternatives to manual or chemical methods for creating detailed metal objects like keys or cases.

The cluster debates the effects of easy access to hardcore pornography on children and teenagers, including its potential to normalize extreme behaviors, distort sex education, and comparisons to past generations' limited exposure.

Discussions center on the differences in overflow behavior between signed and unsigned integers in C/C++, where signed overflow is undefined behavior allowing aggressive compiler optimizations, while unsigned overflow wraps around in a well-defined manner.

The cluster focuses on debates about disclosing one's employer or affiliation when commenting on Hacker News, particularly risks of identification via comment history, professionalism, and HN guidelines for transparency on company-related topics.

The cluster debates the correct usage of HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE, focusing on idempotence, safety requirements, and avoiding side effects or state changes with GET requests.

Users recommend and discuss various lightweight, simple, tiling, and non-tiling window managers like StumpWM, Ratpoison, FVWM, WindowMaker, and others, often in response to a post about minimal or alternative WMs.

Discussions center on the feasibility and critiques of libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, and other utopian societal experiments like seasteading, often comparing them to failed historical communes and socialist ideals.

Parents discuss challenges with infants and toddlers not sleeping through the night, sharing advice on sleep training, co-sleeping, cry-it-out methods, and coping with sleep deprivation.

Users reminisce about the slow speeds, high costs, and challenges of early dial-up modems like 9600bps, 2400bps, and 56kbps in the 1990s and earlier, often contrasting them with modern internet.

The cluster debates the need for ID requirements to vote, particularly in the US where obtaining ID can be challenging without a national system, contrasting with other countries, and addressing voter fraud, suppression, and accessibility concerns.

Comments recommend free or low-cost platforms like GitHub Pages, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, AWS S3, and others for easily hosting and deploying static websites.

The cluster discusses software licensing models, particularly JetBrains' approach of granting a perpetual license for the version current during a one-year subscription plus updates, with comparisons to other perpetual and subscription models and concerns about access after payments end.

Comments compare the current tech industry layoffs and hiring slowdown to past boom-bust cycles like the dot-com bubble and 2008 recession, sharing veteran experiences and predictions of recovery.

This cluster features repetitive character strings (e.g., M's, $'s, 9's), cryptographic hashes, Bitcoin addresses, sed-style corrections, and other low-effort nonsense, likely representing spam, bots, or trolling attempts.

Comments debate Thomas Edison's reputation for taking credit for inventions by employees or others like Tesla, often comparing him to modern figures like Musk who are accused of similar attribution.

Cluster focuses on debates about the pros, cons, efficiency, costs, and practicality of installing solar panels on building roofs versus ground-mounted or other alternatives.

Users discuss risks to pacemakers, fitness trackers, and wearables from potential heart rate manipulation or signals, sharing personal stories of heart conditions, arrhythmias, heart attacks, and device-detected anomalies.

Discussions center on recommending XMPP clients like Conversations, Gajim, and Dino, servers, encryption options like OTR and OMEMO, and its advantages as a federated, open alternative to other chat protocols.

Users repeatedly share links to YouTube videos that explain or cover the main topic of the Hacker News thread in detail.

Users repeatedly report connection refused errors, port issues, and inability to load the linked website, with OP acknowledging server problems possibly due to HN traffic.

This cluster focuses on recommendations and comparisons of space simulation and exploration games, prominently featuring Kerbal Space Program (KSP), Space Engine, Elite Dangerous, Space Engineers, and similar titles.

The cluster discusses compensation disparities between government tech/IT jobs and private sector roles, emphasizing lower government pay, challenges attracting top talent, and trade-offs like job stability and benefits.

Users request and discuss adding or enhancing features like shareable permalinks to specific headings, inline hyperlinks, and better link sharing in articles, posts, or note-taking tools.

Comments using hyperbolic 'God' metaphors to praise, mock, or rant about a poster or post, including divine compliments, sarcasm, and delusional religious claims.

Commenters debate whether a specific video is authentic real-world footage or computer-generated (CGI), often mistaking its high realism for digital effects and comparing it to movie visuals.

This cluster centers on debates about the intended purpose of upvote and downvote buttons on Hacker News—agreement vs. contribution to discussion—and proposals for improvements like agree/disagree buttons, un-voting, or UI changes.

This cluster centers on discussions about the performance and challenges of autonomous vehicles in snow, ice, and winter conditions, including issues like tire choice, traction, visibility, drive types, and comparisons to human drivers.

The cluster centers on discussions about the risks of disrupting, destroying, or negatively impacting ecosystems through human activities, interventions, or introductions of new elements, highlighting ecological consequences and balance.

This cluster debates public vs. private ownership of railways, including privatization successes and failures in countries like Japan, UK, US, and Europe, with discussions on subsidies, profitability, track ownership, and real estate models.

The cluster discusses the primary motivations for starting businesses or startups, debating whether it's driven by money, passion, creating value, solving problems, or changing the world.

Commenters defend sharing personal interests, discoveries, and experiences on Hacker News, emphasizing how it fosters connections, excitement, and community among people with diverse passions.

Discussions center on accusations of antisemitism in Hacker News comments, debating whether statements about Jews, Israel, or individuals constitute anti-Jewish hatred or are legitimate criticism.

The cluster discusses the economics of pharmaceutical patents, why generic drugs often fail to enter markets promptly after patent expiry despite low manufacturing costs, and the incentives for R&D versus generic production.

Discussions focus on personal finance tools integrating with banks via APIs like Plaid, Yodlee, and Open Banking, including desires for native bank APIs, alternatives to Mint, and avoiding credential sharing.

Discussions center on the benefits, techniques, and limitations of cold showers for health, cold adaptation, and physiological effects, often comparing them to real cold exposure and referencing the Wim Hof method.

The cluster centers on long wait times for employment-based US green cards, especially decades-long backlogs for applicants from India and China due to per-country caps, versus shorter timelines for others.

Debate on how actively managed hedge funds and investment managers consistently underperform passive index funds like the S&P 500, supported by studies, statistics, and Warren Buffett's bet.

This cluster centers on discussions about integrating Rust into the Linux kernel, including debates on rewriting parts or the entire kernel in Rust, the current status of Rust for drivers and subsystems, and arguments for and against its adoption over C.

Commenters share stories of using CPUs from 5-15 years ago without needing upgrades, noting plateaued performance gains in new generations and preferring targeted upgrades like SSDs or GPUs instead.

The cluster discusses how publicly traded companies, executives, and investors prioritize short-term profits and quarterly results over long-term growth and sustainability, often citing the principal-agent problem and shareholder pressures.

Developers discuss reduced reliance on Stack Overflow for programming questions, favoring ChatGPT for its conversational follow-ups, alongside official docs, GitHub issues, and source code.

Users share and recommend books, oral histories, videos, interviews, and articles about early computing pioneers, events like the Mother of All Demos, Xerox PARC, and resources from the Computer History Museum.

Discussions focus on the grammatical correctness and implications of using singular 'they' versus first-person 'I' or 'we', including debates over impersonal 'you', royal 'we', and pronoun shifts in writing or statements.

Discussions focus on recent inertial confinement fusion achievements like NIF, comparisons to magnetic confinement projects such as ITER and tokamaks, skepticism about scalability for power production, and advancements in superconductors and alternative designs.

The cluster debates the value of learning and practicing mental arithmetic and basic math skills despite ubiquitous calculators, often referencing outdated teacher arguments like 'you won't always have a calculator' and drawing analogies to AI tools replacing other skills.

Comments primarily recommend or compare GitHub Pages (and GitLab Pages) as a free, easy-to-use solution for static website hosting, often suggesting it as a superior or equivalent alternative to the discussed service.

The cluster focuses on complaints about unexpected high bills from cloud providers like AWS due to lack of hard spending limits, with users wishing for budget caps that automatically shut down services to prevent cost overruns in hobby or experimental projects.

The cluster centers on debates about microkernel architectures versus monolithic kernels like Linux, questioning their viability with modern hardware, performance trade-offs, and examples like QNX, L4, and Minix.

The cluster centers on debates about whether current technologies like machine learning should be labeled as 'AI', criticizing it as hype or marketing while others defend its broad historical usage.

Cluster discusses Apple's practice of intentionally slowing down older iPhones with degraded batteries to prevent shutdowns, including controversies over planned obsolescence, lawsuits like Batterygate, poor communication, and user experiences with performance drops after OS updates.

Discussions center on the cost and value of bicycles, debating whether they are expensive (comparable to cars) or cheap, with arguments for cheap utility bikes versus premium models like VanMoof, and factors like theft, insurance, and longevity.

Discussions center on the massive endowments of universities like Harvard and Stanford, criticizing their reluctance to use these funds for free tuition, research, or operations instead of relying on federal funding and questioning endowment management and tax benefits.

Cluster focuses on discussions of police misconduct, corruption, brutality, and accountability issues across various US police departments, with users sharing news articles, links, and debating evidence.

The cluster debates the advantages of using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for international money transfers compared to traditional services such as Western Union, Wise, and bank wires, focusing on fees, speed, ease, and reliability.

Discussions debate the intuitiveness, utility, and implementations of higher-order array methods like map, filter, and reduce across languages such as JavaScript, Rust, Go, and Haskell, often comparing them to alternatives or questioning their necessity.

Commenters debate preferences for low-density suburban or rural living with space, yards, and privacy versus high-density urban apartments, defending personal choices against pushes for more density.

Discussions center on whether Google acquired the featured company, often labeling it an acquihire for talent, and debate Google's track record of shutting down or neglecting acquired products and startups.

Users recommend low-cost paid email services like Fastmail, Protonmail, Purelymail, and Rackspace as cheaper alternatives to expensive options such as Google Workspace or GSuite, often for custom domains and family use.

The cluster centers on the Quake III fast inverse square root algorithm and related performance hacks for computing square roots, reciprocals, and trigonometric functions using techniques like CORDIC, Chebyshev approximations, Newton-Raphson, and lookup tables.

The cluster discusses eliminating the US penny and other small coins like nickels and dimes, citing production costs, handling inconveniences, and examples from countries like Australia, New Zealand, and the EU that have abolished them with rounding to nearest 5 cents.

Users share IMDb links to films that relate to the discussion topic, often suggesting or referencing movies with phrases like 'you should watch' or 'comes to mind'.

Discussions focus on the high costs of medical care in the US compared to other countries, with users advocating medical tourism to places like the UK, India, and Germany for cheaper treatments and sharing personal stories of exorbitant US bills.

Discussions center on companies like IBM and Autodesk laying off thousands of employees, claiming AI boosts productivity enough to replace workers, with debate over whether this is genuine or just an excuse for cost-cutting by CEOs and managers.

Discussions compare satellite imaging (spy, commercial, high-res) to aircraft photography, debating resolutions, availability, real-time access, and reasons for using planes over satellites.

Users recommend and discuss books on the early history of computing, key innovators, and pivotal developments like Xerox PARC, ENIAC, ARPANET, and minicomputers.

Commenters discuss perspectives on amassing and handling billions in wealth, debating whether to pursue it, spend it personally, donate for philanthropy, or use it for societal good, often critiquing frugality or hoarding among the ultra-rich.

The cluster centers on debates about whether dietary fats or carbohydrates/sugars are the main cause of obesity and health problems, with strong advocacy for low-carb, high-fat diets like keto over traditional low-fat recommendations.

Discussions center on hardware and physical sources of true randomness and entropy for RNGs, including Lavarand lava lamps, RDRAND, radiation, and their cryptographic security, trustworthiness, and integration with software entropy pools.

This cluster features comments joking about the article's topic being PhD material, inquiring about commenters' PhD backgrounds and theses, and debating PhD qualifications or programs in relation to the subject.

Users recommend organizations, websites, and initiatives that connect programmers and tech professionals with non-profits, charities, and social causes needing volunteer technical skills, including COVID-19 aid efforts.

Comments promote Monero as a superior privacy-focused cryptocurrency, emphasizing its untraceability compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum, often recommending it for private transactions.