All Topics

The cluster focuses on debates about electric vehicle charging connectors like CCS, NACS (Tesla), J1772, and CHAdeMO, including Tesla's adapters for CCS compatibility and differences between US and European standards.

Discussions focus on the absence, poor quality, or withholding of video footage from dashcams, CCTV, bodycams, and cell phones for a specific incident, with users demanding proof and expressing skepticism about official accounts without clear video.

Discussions center on Lisp's traditional cons cell-based lists versus array or vector implementations in dialects like Clojure, including debates on car/cdr vs first/rest functions, syntax like dotted pairs, and related abstractions.

Comments center on Elon Musk's political views, his alignment with Donald Trump, and criticisms of his influence on politics and companies.

Discussions center on FDIC deposit insurance for banks, including its $250k limit per depositor per institution, coverage during failures like SVB, and comparisons to uninsured crypto exchanges.

The cluster focuses on discussions of innovative alarm clocks, apps, and devices like vibrating watches, sleep cycle trackers, and sunrise lights as gentler alternatives to traditional phone alarms for better waking experiences.

Comments primarily recommend PICO-8 and TIC-80 as fantasy consoles for constrained retro-style game development, often in response to queries about simple programming environments for games.

Comments defend modern Fortran's advantages for numerical and scientific computing, emphasizing its performance, array handling, and use in HPC over languages like C++, Python, and Julia.

Comments reflect surprise, sarcasm, or resignation that 10 years or a decade have passed since a technology release, event, or prediction, often noting how time flies, little has changed, or timelines remain perpetually distant.

Users discuss and debate the disk space usage, download sizes, and installed footprints of operating systems, applications, and tools, often highlighting bloat, comparisons to minimal alternatives, and concerns over excessive sizes.

The cluster discusses the controversy over kernel-level anti-cheat software in online games, debating its invasiveness, necessity for cheating prevention, Linux compatibility issues, and privacy risks.

This cluster focuses on debates about replacing traditional car mirrors with cameras, including benefits like better visibility, drawbacks such as failure modes, regulatory requirements for backup cameras, and comparisons to existing vehicle camera systems.

Commenters challenge statements by repeatedly asking for proof, evidence, or sources to back them up. Discussions revolve around skepticism and the need for verification in debates.

The cluster focuses on open-source alternatives to Shazam for music identification using audio fingerprinting techniques, with discussions of tools like AcoustID, MusicBrainz, Beets, and explanations of how such systems work via perceptual hashing and spectrogram analysis.

The cluster discusses how regulations often lag behind technological advancements, are difficult to interpret and comply with, and hinder innovation, with debates on improving regulatory clarity, adaptability, and enforcement.

Comments focus on why a service or feature is unavailable in countries like the US and Europe due to strict privacy laws and regulations, while feasible in places with lax enforcement like Russia or China.

Discussions center on software companies altering terms of service, subscription policies, upgrade requirements, or third-party access, often accused of breaching user trust, lacking transparency, and reneging on prior promises or assurances.

Discussions center on recommendations for books, online resources, and courses to learn basic electronics, particularly for beginners or programmers transitioning to hardware. Frequently mentioned titles include 'The Art of Electronics' by Horowitz and Hill, 'Practical Electronics for Inventors', and 'Make: Electronics'.

The cluster discusses alternatives to traditional TVs for watching movies and TV shows, such as using large computer monitors, projectors, or connecting PCs/laptops directly to displays instead of buying dedicated TV devices.

Commenters repeatedly reference their mothers with phrases like 'Let me tell you about my mother' and anecdotes about moms' tech savvy or behavior, often humorously dismissing simplistic assumptions about non-technical users.

Comments focus on calculations of electric vehicle battery capacities, daily energy needs, charging times, power requirements, and whether typical home or public infrastructure suffices, often referencing Tesla models.

Discussions center on the dominance of English keywords in programming languages, challenges for non-English speakers, and debates over whether English is essential for global collaboration, documentation, and career opportunities in software development.

The cluster focuses on scenarios of armed threats and robberies, debating whether to comply with demands under gunpoint, use lethal self-defense, or report crimes, while highlighting risks of retaliation, murder, or escalation.

The cluster discusses Java's origins in the 1990s, its design choices influenced by C++ and contemporaries like Smalltalk, slow adoption of features, and historical context compared to newer languages like Go.

The cluster centers on discussions about minifying JavaScript code, including its purpose, performance benefits, drawbacks like readability loss, alternatives such as gzip, and tools like Closure Compiler.

Comments criticize US telcos for pocketing government subsidies without deploying fiber broadband infrastructure, lobbying against competitors like Google Fiber, and maintaining regional monopolies, often referencing historical events like the 1996 Telecom Act and AT&T breakup.

Comments express doubt about whether digital data is truly deleted after seizures by authorities or companies, focusing on forensic recoverability, hidden copies by agencies like the FBI or NSA, and the challenges of secure erasure.

Discussions center on the frequency, psychological impact, media influence, and societal debates surrounding school shootings in the United States, often comparing them to other risks or events.

Discussions center on defining RPGs, distinguishing them from adventure games, roguelikes, roguelites, tabletop RPGs, and CRPGs, with references to classics like Baldur's Gate, Nethack, and Dungeon Master.

Discussions focus on asm.js performance and optimization in JavaScript engines like V8 and Firefox, including comparisons to JIT compilation, browser differences, and its relation to WebAssembly.

Comments primarily compare the discussed project to Conway's Game of Life, share links to Wikipedia and simulators like Golly, and explore related cellular automata patterns, implementations, and emergent behaviors.

The cluster discusses SpaceX's high launch frequency for Starlink satellites and other payloads using Falcon 9 and Starship, including debates on required launch numbers, capacity per rocket, reliability, environmental impact, and comparisons to other providers.

The cluster centers on skepticism toward apocalyptic predictions, particularly environmental and climate collapse scenarios, with commenters citing historical failed doomsdays like peak oil, population bomb, Y2K, and Mayan calendar as evidence against current alarms.

This cluster features comments where users request TL;DR summaries, ELI5 explanations, or concise versions of lengthy articles or posts to quickly grasp the main points.

Cluster focuses on strong criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), portraying it as untrustworthy, authoritarian, and distinct from the Chinese people, with accusations of pro-CCP shills and propaganda in comments.

Cluster focuses on debates about the relevance of GPA in tech job applications, especially at companies like Google, grad school admissions, and personal stories of low GPAs not hindering career success.

Discussions center on the 2020-2022 global semiconductor chip shortage, its causes like COVID supply chain disruptions and high demand, and impacts on products such as GPUs, consoles, FPGAs, and electronics.

Users share personal stories of being bullied in school, discuss strategies like fighting back or ignoring bullies, and debate the effectiveness of adult and institutional interventions.

Commenters frequently compare social behaviors, dynamics, or immaturity in professional or adult contexts to typical high school experiences, questioning if participants are still in high school or noting persistent high school-like drama.

The cluster discusses the distinction between precision and accuracy in scientific measurements, with commenters criticizing overly precise claims that ignore large error margins, significant figures, and methodological limitations.

This cluster centers on debates about hamburger menus in UI/UX design, including criticisms of their discoverability, desktop usability, and preference for alternatives like menu bars or explicit labels.

Users frequently recommend and compare existing decentralized anonymous networks like Freenet, I2P, Tor, GNUnet, and IPFS as alternatives or similar projects to the discussed idea, focusing on anonymity, censorship resistance, and P2P features.

Discussions focus on the long history of neural networks from the 1950s onward, their periods of popularity and decline during AI winters, and the reasons for their recent practical success due to hardware, data availability, and incremental advances like backpropagation and CNNs.

Comments primarily share links to essays, blogs, and talks by Bruce Schneier, Cory Doctorow, and others on themes like surveillance capitalism, loss of computer ownership, propaganda, and the transparent society.

This cluster debates Europe's military expenditures relative to Russia and the US, its reliance on NATO for protection, and calls for increased defense budgets amid perceived underinvestment and threats like Ukraine.

Users discuss Apple's iCloud Keychain and built-in password manager on iOS and macOS, including integration with third-party apps like 1Password, cross-platform limitations, security concerns, and autofill features.

The cluster centers on debates distinguishing data races from broader race conditions, emphasizing that Rust's safe code prevents data races but not all concurrency bugs or race conditions.

Comments discuss the exorbitant costs of building subways and tunnels in the US, often billions per mile, with comparisons to cheaper international projects and skepticism toward alternatives like The Boring Company's smaller tunnels.

Comments discuss how institutional investors, wealthy individuals, hedge funds, and foreign buyers are purchasing residential properties as investments—often leaving them vacant or renting them out—driving up prices and reducing supply for regular homebuyers.

Users debate the use of traditional pagination versus infinite scrolling or single long pages in web interfaces, often preferring pagination for easier navigation, searchability, and scalability, while complaining about poor implementations or excessive page counts.

Comments discuss the green color used for new user usernames on Hacker News, including its visibility, perception (e.g., as blue or cyan), eye strain, and UX implications compared to other colors.

Comments debate the historical reasons for Western countries like the US and Europe industrializing ahead of China, India, and others, and how East Asian nations like South Korea and Japan achieved rapid economic catch-up through policies, technology transfer, and exports.

The cluster centers on discussions of gentrification in neighborhoods and cities, debating its effects like rising rents, demographic shifts, neighborhood revitalization, and displacement of residents.

The cluster centers on the lack of firmware security updates for IoT and embedded devices, with debates on manufacturer responsibilities, vulnerabilities from unpatched devices, and risks of internet connectivity.

The cluster focuses on discussions about using text embedding models (e.g., OpenAI, VoyageAI, sentence-transformers) for semantic search, vector databases, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with LLMs.

The cluster debates the accuracy and trustworthiness of crime statistics, emphasizing that most crimes are underreported while murder rates are considered the only reliable metric due to low reporting optionality.

The cluster centers on debates about the definition of life, questioning traditional biological criteria and considering edge cases like viruses, prions, machines, and superorganisms as potentially alive.

Discussions center on the purpose, limitations, and misconceptions of CORS in relation to the Same-Origin Policy, browser security, and preventing cross-origin attacks like XSS or CSRF.

The cluster discusses why a company's products failed, primarily attributing it to poor product management, leadership, and design rather than engineering deficiencies.

Users express surprise and sarcasm upon realizing a Hacker News post, project, or organization is promoting Christianity, evangelism, or religious themes like accepting Jesus, which they find unexpected on the platform.

This cluster discusses the differences, myths, and best practices for using /dev/random versus /dev/urandom as entropy sources in Unix-like systems, with many comments recommending /dev/urandom and linking to articles debunking outdated concerns about its security.

The cluster discusses prompt injection vulnerabilities in LLMs, including definitions, real-world examples like leaking system prompts, defenses, and debates on whether it's solvable.

The cluster centers on discussions of soldering techniques for electronics, emphasizing preferences for leaded solder due to its ease of use, better joints, and lower melting point compared to challenging lead-free alternatives, along with tips on tools, flux, irons, and safety.

Comments focus on MIDI protocol integration, compatibility with devices and files, output capabilities, and references to MIDI 2.0 in the context of the featured project.

Discussions center on trade-offs between ZIP and TAR formats, including compression efficiency, random access, damage tolerance, and decoupling archiving from specific compression algorithms like gzip, xz, and zstd.

Discussions center on hardware-accelerated video decoding in web browsers, especially H.264 and VP9 support, with frequent debates about its performance and enablement on Linux versus Windows/macOS, and across GPUs like Intel and NVIDIA.

Comments debate the reasons for escalating construction costs, including bureaucracy, permits, labor, land, regulations, and comparisons to historical or international expenses.

Comments discuss and compare low interest rates from big banks versus higher yields from online banks like Ally, Marcus, and Discover, along with alternatives like CDs, money markets, and treasuries.

The cluster discusses cases of professors resigning, being fired, or facing investigations at universities due to controversial tweets, statements, or research on topics like race, obesity, and politics, raising debates about free speech, ideological bias, and cancel culture in academia.

Discussions promote JPEG XL as a superior image format to AVIF and WebP, highlighting its features like lossless JPEG recompression and HDR support, while debating browser adoption and controversies.

Discussions focus on the perceptibility and impact of input and display latencies measured in milliseconds, frequently compared to frame times at refresh rates like 60Hz (16.7ms) and higher, especially in gaming and real-time applications.

The cluster discusses how wealthier states like California and New York pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending, subsidizing poorer or red states like Alabama. Debates center on federal wealth redistribution, donor vs recipient status, and implications for state economies and politics.

Discussions center on height discrimination, advantages/disadvantages of being tall or short, average heights, and societal implications like in CEOs or daily interactions.

Users debate the merits of matte versus glossy displays, overwhelmingly preferring matte screens for reducing glare, reflections, and eye strain, especially on laptops and in bright environments.

Discussions center on passive strategies for keeping houses cool without air conditioning, such as thermal mass, insulation, nighttime ventilation, shading, and reflective surfaces, especially in hot climates like deserts or the southwestern US.

Comments debate the prevalence of superstition, magical thinking, and supernatural beliefs, often dismissing them in favor of rational, scientific explanations for unexplained phenomena.

The cluster centers on heated arguments about whether a specific organization or company is anti-LGBT, with debates over its stances on gay rights, transgender issues, opposition to anti-LGBTQ laws, and related discrimination claims.

This cluster centers on debates about properly crediting contributions, whether individuals deserve recognition for their work, and criticisms of taking credit for others' efforts.

Cluster discusses debates over what constitutes 'normal' people or behaviors, challenging categorizations, definitions, and perceptions of normality in society.

The cluster focuses on social norms and debates around hosting dinner parties, group dining expectations like sharing food, handling allergies or picky eaters, and the validity of dinner party analogies for other concepts.

Discussions focus on sharing I2C, SPI, UART, and PWM peripherals across multiple microcontrollers and even Intel chips, including challenges with voltage levels, optoisolators, level converters, pinouts, and protocol comparisons like I2C vs SPI.

The cluster centers on the widely accepted security principle that physical access to a device or computer renders it compromised, often phrased as 'game over' or 'all bets are off,' with discussions debating its implications for software security.

Commenters analyze the ultra-close finish of Noah Lyles' Olympic men's 100m victory, debating race strategies like pacing and early sprints, photo-finish details, and extending metaphors to Strava segments, cycling, startups, and other competitions.

The cluster focuses on discussions debating whether law enforcement sting operations, providing tools for crimes, or selling to criminals constitute entrapment, conspiracy, or criminal facilitation, often referencing mens rea and specific cases like drug deals or exploits.

The cluster focuses on tools and techniques for building, booting, and deploying custom OS images to VPS and cloud providers with limited distro options, emphasizing PXE, netboot.xyz, immutable OSes like bootc and Universal Blue.

Discussions focus on large tech companies holding massive cash reserves (e.g., Apple's $200B), debating if it's idle cash or short-term investments, what they do with it, and whether it should be returned to shareholders.

The cluster focuses on discussions about seamless integration with existing C libraries from other programming languages like Rust, Go, and Haskell, emphasizing the benefits of C bindings, FFI, and avoiding writing C code directly.

Discussions center on the performance benefits of manual loop unrolling versus compiler-optimized loops, including debates on overhead reduction, branch predictions, and examples across languages like C and JavaScript.

Comments repeatedly highlight the United States' highest incarceration rate in the world compared to other countries, often citing Wikipedia statistics and debating its implications for justice, freedom, and crime control.

Cluster discusses parallels between modern rationalist/technological ideas like the Singularity, conscious universe, and AGI pursuits and traditional religion or spirituality, debating if they've become faith-based beliefs or cults.

Discussions center on risks and methods of permanently deleting files, including rm -rf dangers, trash vs. direct removal, shredding, and OS-specific behaviors like MacOS limitations.

Comments debate the true definition and boundaries of microservices architecture, often questioning if described systems are genuinely microservices or just SOA/services, with sarcasm about excessive decomposition into tiny services.

Comments focus on recommending or debating Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) as solutions or alternatives to native apps for cross-platform development, desktop support, and specific features.

The cluster debates what qualifies as a luxury item versus a necessity, focusing on expensive products like high-end goods and experiences that not everyone can afford, contrasted with essentials like housing, healthcare, and education.

The cluster discusses the impermanence of dominant tech companies like Google, Apple, and Meta, predicting they will fade, be acquired, or replaced by innovators, similar to past giants like Yahoo, BlackBerry, and DEC. Commenters highlight cycles of rise and fall in tech due to bloat, competition, and innovation.

Discussions center on Brave browser's opt-in Rewards program using BAT cryptocurrency for ad revenue sharing, with debates over whether it blocks ads, replaces them with its own, or provides a privacy-respecting alternative to traditional advertising.

The cluster discusses whether the skills required to succeed in politics, such as persuasion and electioneering, correlate with competence in governance or leadership, often expressing skepticism about career politicians' abilities and incentives.

Discussions focus on the usability, security risks, adoption challenges, and alternatives to QR codes, with many users criticizing them as gimmicks or attack vectors while others defend their intuitiveness.

Discussions center on debates about the Python community's attitudes, dissatisfaction, development practices, and historical issues like the Python 2/3 transition, with references to leadership such as Guido van Rossum and comparisons to other language communities.

Comments discuss the nature and definitions of love, frequently citing that indifference rather than hate is its opposite, and debate unconditional versus conditional love in personal and metaphorical contexts.