All Topics

Comments focus on Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, covering its features, privacy concerns, performance criticisms, usage scenarios, integrations, and alternatives in home automation contexts.

Comments debate the role, effectiveness, and necessity of FDA and government regulations in ensuring food safety, preventing adulteration, and comparing to free market alternatives.

Cluster debates whether workloads and applications are primarily CPU-bound or IO-bound, discussing CPU utilization, idling while waiting for IO, context switching overheads, and efficiency in process scheduling.

The cluster focuses on discussions about whether an official investigation into a specific incident is ongoing, has been conducted properly, or is even necessary, with users showing skepticism, calls for action, and requests for evidence or results.

Discussions revolve around construction building codes, regulations, architects, engineers, and their enforcement, frequently used as analogies for standards or certifications needed in software engineering.

The cluster focuses on discussions about WebGPU's current browser support, stability, readiness for use, comparisons to WebGL and Vulkan, and its future potential in web graphics and compute.

Users discuss and compare Cygwin, WSL, MSYS2, and similar tools for running Unix-like shells, bash, and CLI utilities on Windows for development.

The cluster focuses on debates about Islam's inherent violence, intolerance towards apostates and non-believers, its historical conquests, and comparisons to Christianity, with discussions on scriptures like the Quran and practices like sharia.

This cluster contains moderator announcements relocating comments from duplicate or later threads to primary Hacker News discussion items, often with links to the target threads.

The cluster discusses personal hygiene routines, focusing on shower frequency, the necessity of using soap or shampoo, and alternatives like water-only showers or reduced bathing. Commenters share experiences, debate health implications, and react to advice promoting less intensive showering.

The cluster centers on arguments against banning or weakening encryption, frequently adapting the gun control slogan 'if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns' to claim that only criminals would use strong encryption.

Comments debate the experience of reading physical books versus digital content on phones and computers, discussing factors like eye strain, focus, distractions from social media, and overall effectiveness for deep reading.

Comments debate the causes of the US physician shortage, focusing on artificial limits on residency spots set by the AMA, Congress, and Medicare funding to maintain high doctor salaries. Many argue increasing residency slots would resolve the supply bottleneck.

The cluster discusses the paleontological fact that birds are living dinosaurs, often correcting misconceptions about dinosaur extinction and referencing chickens, velociraptors, and fossils in humorous or corrective ways.

This cluster consists of comments recommending Matrix.org, its clients like Riot/Element, and Synapse server as a federated, self-hostable chat alternative, often discussing hosting, bridges, and implementations.

The cluster discusses the importance of maintaining domestic production capabilities in key industries like semiconductors, shipbuilding, and steel for national security reasons, particularly to avoid reliance on foreign adversaries during conflicts or sanctions.

Comments heavily criticize Wall Street practices, bankers, and firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, often comparing them to tech industry behaviors or defending against HN users' attacks on finance.

The cluster discusses the preference for open protocols and standards to enable interoperability and prevent vendor lock-in, criticizing proprietary ecosystems and closed services by tech giants.

Comments debate the superiority of taller aspect ratios like 16:10, 3:2, or 4:3 over 16:9 for laptops and monitors, emphasizing more vertical real estate for coding and productivity to reduce scrolling.

Comments focus on comparing the speed, benchmarks, and optimizations of JavaScript engines across browsers like V8 (Chrome), SpiderMonkey (Firefox), and JSC (Safari), frequently referencing sites like arewefastyet.com.

Users express frustration with unwanted sites in Google search results and recommend browser extensions like uBlacklist and Google Hit Hider to blacklist domains and filter them out.

Comments primarily express enthusiasm, gratitude for sharing, and positive experiences with a specific online course, including recommendations, enrollments, and inquiries about its quality.

The cluster focuses on using Facebook's friend lists, groups, or buckets to selectively share posts with specific audiences like family or close friends while limiting visibility to acquaintances, with debates on existing privacy controls and desired enhancements.

Discussions center on the legacy of 1990s database tools like FoxPro, dBase, Clipper, and MS Access for easy business app development, data entry, and reporting, with nostalgia for their simplicity and laments over lacking modern web-based successors.

Comments debate the characteristics, success factors, and replicability of Scandinavian/Nordic countries' high-tax welfare states, capitalism, and social policies, often comparing them to the US and attributing outcomes to demographics, resources, and culture.

Discussions center on whether tech companies like OpenAI must comply with government subpoenas, court orders, or National Security Letters for user data, often under gag orders preventing disclosure of such requests.

The cluster centers on debates about whether Android counts as 'desktop Linux,' its suitability for desktop use compared to traditional GNU/Linux distributions, and the blurring lines between mobile and desktop OSes like Ubuntu phones or Android laptops.

Discussions focus on the reliability, longevity, and planned obsolescence of modern household appliances like washers, dryers, dishwashers, and fridges, with frequent recommendations for durable brands such as Miele, Bosch, and Speed Queen.

The cluster focuses on discussions about government subsidies, tax incentives, and penalties for electric vehicles (EVs) versus traditional cars, including criticisms of subsidizing the wealthy, comparisons to loans, and impacts on affordability and adoption.

The cluster revolves around debates and complaints about the proper use of quotation marks in Hacker News comments, including distinctions between curly quotes, straight quotes, backticks, and scare quotes. Commenters criticize incorrect quoting styles and discuss typography best practices.

Discussions center on the GNU project's identity, relevance, criticisms, and controversies, frequently referencing its 'GNU's Not Unix' acronym, core tools, and statements from maintainers like those from Guix.

Discussions center on clarifying that Git stores complete file snapshots and whole objects rather than diffs or deltas, addressing common misconceptions and mentioning optimizations like packfiles along with alternatives such as Fossil and Pijul.

The cluster focuses on comparisons of the new technology's performance, memory usage, and features against PyTorch, with users requesting benchmarks, support, and integrations for PyTorch.

The cluster discusses security risks and implications of write access to filesystems in Unix-like systems, including chmod commands, ownership, ACLs, nosuid mounts, and comparisons to traditional permission models.

The cluster centers on debates about closures in programming, particularly the adage 'closures are a poor man’s objects; objects are poor man’s closures,' exploring their definitions, equivalences, differences from lambdas, and implementations across languages like JavaScript, Ruby, and Rust.

The cluster discusses the resurgence and merits of symbolic AI (GOFAI) versus modern deep learning, debates on combining them into neurosymbolic approaches, and criticisms from figures like Gary Marcus and Chomsky.

Comments discuss various startup accelerators and incubators like Y Combinator and Techstars, including comparisons, recommendations for founders, and debates on their value and ideal structures.

Discussions focus on challenges with underground or earth-bermed homes, including leaks, floods, mold, pests, poor waterproofing, and high maintenance, often debating if issues stem from bad construction or inherent design flaws.

Comments primarily consist of links to various Paul Graham essays on paulgraham.com, with users relating the thread's topic to his writings on hacking, startups, and communication.

Comments debate whether programming qualifies as an art form, craft, science, or none of these, drawing analogies to painting, swordsmithing, writing, and other creative pursuits.

This cluster discusses SpaceX's financial viability, debating whether it is a profitable private company bootstrapped by innovation or heavily reliant on NASA contracts, government subsidies, and private funding rounds.

Discussions center on whether specific scientific papers or research have undergone peer review, with debates on its necessity, reliability, and role in validating science shared on platforms like arXiv and HN.

Discussions center on the importance of guitar materials like wood and craftsmanship versus player technique and tone, along with equipment snobbery, market decline, and comparisons to other instruments.

Comments focus on the ongoing nursing shortages, burnout from COVID and poor working conditions, low pay, and challenges in healthcare staffing, including debates on travel nurses, training, and comparisons to doctors.

The cluster focuses on users requesting benchmarks, performance comparisons, and validations of a database's speed claims against alternatives like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, and others.

This cluster focuses on debates about the effectiveness of cancer screening, including benefits of early detection, risks of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, personal anecdotes, and variations by cancer type like prostate and pancreatic.

Discussions center on metals like cobalt, nickel, copper, iron, zinc, and heavy metals used in batteries, including their extraction, mining alternatives, recycling challenges, and potential contaminants like lead or cadmium.

Cluster debates the affordability and costs of US healthcare insurance, copays, and out-of-pocket expenses compared to public systems in Europe, Canada, and other countries, including total taxpayer burdens and personal anecdotes.

The cluster centers on discussions about the importance of namespaces in package managers and registries like npm and PyPI to prevent naming conflicts and collisions between packages.

The cluster centers on David Graeber's 'Bullshit Jobs' concept, debating the existence and prevalence of meaningless, unproductive jobs in modern economies and their societal implications.

Discussions center on user preferences, annoyances, and workarounds for browser and website behaviors that open links in new tabs or windows versus the current tab, including desires for more user control and UX improvements.

This cluster consists of discussions and corrections about singular versus plural forms in English grammar, including debates on words like 'data', company names in British English, and irregular plurals such as 'octopus' or 'corpora'.

Discussions focus on the pros and cons of nuclear propulsion for massive cargo and naval ships, efficiency of large versus smaller vessels, alternatives like sails, and challenges such as cost, build time, and existing fleets.

Cluster focuses on debates about the MCAS system's role in 737 MAX crashes, pilot procedures for runaway trim, training deficiencies, and Boeing's design and communication failures.

Discussions center on Backbone.js as a lightweight MVC JavaScript framework, including pros/cons, comparisons to AngularJS, Knockout.js, and React, and experiences structuring frontend applications.

Comments focus on whether AI interactions, responses, or behaviors pass or resemble the Turing test, often with humor, references to its definition, and debates on its validity.

Discussions center on Unix/Linux signals like SIGKILL, SIGTERM, SIGINT, and SIGQUIT, including best practices for process termination, handling interruptions during syscalls, and alternatives like signalfd or PR_SET_PDEATHSIG.

Discussions center on using snapshot features in filesystems like ZFS, Btrfs, and LVM for backups, rollbacks, system updates, and recovery without downtime.

Discussions center on the high costs, technical difficulties, and alternatives to digging deep holes, tunnels, or shafts for burying or injecting waste underground.

The cluster focuses on the expectation that costs of new technologies decrease over time due to innovation, economies of scale, widespread adoption, and commoditization, with examples like solar panels and batteries.

Discussions focus on high-performance networking techniques that bypass the kernel stack, such as DPDK, AF_XDP, XDP, and Netmap, comparing their speed advantages, use cases, and trade-offs against traditional kernel networking.

Users discuss personal experiences with cannabis, focusing on its varied impacts on anxiety, cognition, memory, creativity, productivity, and mental health, with reports of both benefits like reduced racing thoughts and drawbacks like paranoia or brain fog.

The cluster focuses on comparisons of Apple's A-series processors in iPhones, highlighting their superior CPU and GPU performance relative to Android flagships, older PCs, and even some laptops, along with discussions on efficiency, battery life, and benchmarks.

The cluster focuses on ADS-B technology for real-time airplane position tracking, discussions of services like ADS-B Exchange, FlightRadar24, and FlightAware, including comparisons, censorship via programs like LADD, and setting up personal receivers.

The cluster debates the distinction between conscious and subconscious mental processes, questioning the reliability of self-reported reasoning, the automatic nature of thoughts, and influences like split-brain experiments.

The cluster centers on the disinvitation of Douglas Crockford from LambdaConf due to other speakers' discomfort with his views, fueling debates on conference inclusivity, free speech, deplatforming, and codes of conduct.

The cluster discusses whether countries, particularly small ones, need military strength or alliances to maintain sovereignty and deter invasions, versus relying solely on diplomacy.

Cluster focuses on a Linux kernel security flaw enabling potential rootkits, arbitrary code execution, and privilege escalation, with debates on exploit feasibility, mitigations like kernel patches, and comparisons to Windows protections.

Discussions revolve around the meaning of the 'defund the police' slogan, distinguishing it from abolition or reform, and arguments for reallocating police funds to social services like mental health and housing.

This cluster centers on discussions about vendor lock-in risks with cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and others, debating its severity, real-world impacts, and strategies for avoidance or mitigation.

This cluster centers on discussions about how to market and promote products, especially indie, niche, or tech startups, with users seeking tips on reaching target audiences, advertising channels, and growth tactics.

Discussions critique the dense jargon and complexity of scientific and academic papers, debating whether they should prioritize expert audiences or improve accessibility for broader readers through simpler language and layman explanations.

Comments focus on correcting and debating confusions between power units like watts/kilowatts (instantaneous power) and energy units like watt-hours/kilowatt-hours (energy over time) in articles about consumption and utilities.

Discussions revolve around equating monetary transactions to bartering with extra steps, advocating direct trades of goods, services, or time without currency, and highlighting mutual benefits in all forms of exchange.

The cluster discusses the performance differences between WebAssembly (WASM) and JavaScript in browsers, including benchmarks, speedups for compute-heavy tasks, limitations with DOM manipulation, and comparisons to native code.

Cluster focuses on discussions of various breathing techniques, exercises for stress relief and health benefits, including specific methods like 4-7-8, Wim Hof, box breathing, and references to apps, studies, and personal experiences.

Comments debate treating internet/telecom infrastructure, especially the 'last mile', as a natural monopoly or public utility owned by government like roads or sewers, enabling competition among private ISPs on top.

Discussions center on how a form technique or UI change interferes with browser autofill features, including Chrome's automatic filling, password managers like LastPass, and workarounds like autocomplete='off'. Concerns include usability loss, phishing risks, and browser behaviors ignoring disable flags.

The cluster centers on debates about limited space in apartments, homes, and offices making certain setups, robots, or devices impractical, contrasted with benefits of larger areas.

Users share experiences and comparisons of battery life on Linux laptops, particularly ThinkPads like X1 Carbon and T series, versus Windows and macOS equivalents.

Cluster focuses on poor WiFi driver support on Linux laptops, particularly Broadcom chipsets, with advice to check for Intel/Atheros compatibility, replace cards, or use USB adapters.

Discussions revolve around using Mono versus .NET Core for cross-platform C# development, including comparisons of compatibility, performance on Linux/OSX, and future plans post-Microsoft's Xamarin acquisition.

Cluster focuses on debates about whether Voyager probes have fully escaped the solar system, including discussions of the heliosphere, Oort cloud, potential orbits, and comparisons to interstellar objects like Oumuamua.

Discussions center on opinions, experiences, comparisons, and suitability of the Meteor.js web framework, including its strengths, limitations, scaling issues, and alternatives like Node.js and React.

The cluster focuses on frustrations with GDB's user interface and usability compared to Visual Studio's debugger, along with recommendations for GDB frontends like gdbgui, gdb-dashboard, and integrations with Emacs or VSCode.

This cluster centers on Hacker News users recommending therapy for mental health issues, debating its effectiveness, sharing personal experiences, and critiquing common advice to seek therapists.

Comments discuss perceptions of white males as privileged or unfairly discriminated against, debating advantages, biases, and the validity of race/gender-based criticisms in tech and society.

Comments debate the strategic roles, reliability, interception difficulties, advantages, and limitations of ICBMs compared to alternatives like Starship, cruise missiles, and other delivery systems.

The cluster debates the effectiveness of foreign aid, philanthropy (e.g., Bill Gates' efforts on malaria), and interventions in developing countries, criticizing waste, corruption, and dependency while advocating cost-effective solutions like clean water, direct cash, and structural reforms over first-world luxuries.

Commenters repeatedly suggest that a specific user's posts exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia, psychosis, or paranoid delusions, often referencing personal experiences, Terry Davis, and advising professional help.

Comments focus on debating average revenue per user (ARPU), subscription pricing strategies, and the financial sustainability of apps and services based on user counts, costs, and conversion rates.

Parents debate the quality, educational value, and overstimulation risks of modern children's TV shows and YouTube content like Cocomelon, Bluey, Peppa Pig, and Daniel Tiger, often recommending shows enjoyable for adults too.

The cluster discusses techniques for reducing Docker image sizes, such as using layered caching, lightweight base images like Alpine or Distroless, and multi-stage builds, while debating trade-offs in maintenance, performance, and practicality.

The cluster centers on debates about whether opposing same-sex marriage equates to homophobia or discrimination against gay people, frequently referencing Proposition 8, Brendan Eich, and religious or rational arguments for opposition.

The cluster centers on debates about whether computer scientists and programmers need substantial biology knowledge to work effectively in bioinformatics or apply computing to biological problems, often invoking the 'Can a biologist fix a radio?' analogy to highlight interdisciplinary challenges.

Discussions compare Apple TV to alternatives like Roku, Chromecast, and smart TVs, focusing on UI quality, ads, performance, pricing, and ecosystem integration.

Discussions center on the gender pay or wage gap, debating whether it's a myth due to unadjusted statistics (e.g., 77 cents on the dollar) or real due to factors like discrimination, promotions, hours worked, and career choices.

Commenters praise the innovative idea of a new social or sharing app but frequently question its personal usefulness, repeat usage, account requirements, app installation, and dependence on network effects for adoption.

The cluster centers on discussions about GPU shaders, compute shaders, their performance advantages, implementation challenges, and tools like ShaderToy for graphics programming.

Cluster focuses on debates about cramped airplane seats, passenger entitlement to recline, space invasion by large or tall people, and suggestions to buy extra or premium seats for more comfort.