All Topics

Discussions focus on recommendations for home water filters like reverse osmosis, Brita, ZeroWater, and carbon systems to purify tap water, remove contaminants, improve taste, and address issues like heavy metals or chlorine.

The cluster focuses on discussions about sentiment analysis techniques, tools, APIs, and applications for analyzing text sentiment in contexts like user feedback, tweets, and corpora.

This cluster focuses on discussions about cheap or free SSL certificate providers, particularly StartSSL's pricing, free certs, revocation fees, and alternatives like Let's Encrypt, Comodo, and others.

Cluster focuses on recommendations for books, tutorials, and online resources to learn Python, especially for beginners, with 'Learn Python the Hard Way' being the most frequently suggested.

Users share links to digitized rare books, historical documents, and literary references from archives like Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and academic libraries, often discovered via random searches or bibliographic rabbit holes.

Comments heavily reference the historical US Civil War and ongoing conflicts to debate whether America has been at war, the nature of civil wars, and the risk of future internal divisions escalating into violence.

Comments discuss and correct misconceptions about visa requirements for EU citizens traveling within the EU/Schengen area, to the US, and comparisons to systems like ESTA/ETIAS, highlighting freedom of movement and no internal visa needs.

Discussions center on Microsoft's heavy investment, ownership stake, and growing control over OpenAI, with concerns about OpenAI's independence and whether it has become essentially a Microsoft subsidiary.

The cluster focuses on debates about the excessive complexity of the US tax code, its role in enabling loopholes, policy incentives, and lobbying by companies like Intuit to prevent simplification or government alternatives.

The cluster focuses on health concerns about PFAS, Teflon, and plastics leaching toxic chemicals into food from cookware, packaging, and utensils, especially when heated, with debates on safety and alternatives like glass or metal.

Comments argue that modern capitalism, driven by technology and wealth concentration, is evolving into neo-feudalism, with tech elites as new lords and the masses as serfs.

The cluster focuses on debates about Iran's aggressive regional influence through proxy groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis in conflicts involving Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, contrasted with actions by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

The cluster discusses the expansion of the universe, including concepts like space itself expanding, acceleration rates, faster-than-light recession of distant galaxies, redshift, and cosmological implications.

This cluster features comments recommending Pandoc as a versatile tool for converting documents between formats like Markdown to PDF, HTML, EPUB, and more, often in response to needs for multi-format output.

Comments debate the feasibility, material strength, and suitability of 3D printing for producing durable parts under high stress, pressure, or temperature, often comparing it to traditional methods like CNC, casting, and forging.

The cluster focuses on commenters' concerns that the RIAA and music labels will sue or shut down the discussed music service or project due to copyright infringement, licensing issues, and past precedents like UMG vs MP3.com.

Discussions focus on challenges and strategies for expiring, refreshing, and revoking stateless authentication tokens like JWTs, including trade-offs between security, server state, and short-lived tokens.

The cluster centers on puns playing on 'fungi' sounding like 'fun guy,' alongside discussions of fungi's biological roles, symbiosis, massive networks, potential uses in cleanup or food, and curiosities like radiation tolerance or climate impacts.

The cluster discusses trust, betrayal, and reputation in business relationships, debating whether to treat partners as friends, the risks of screwing over partners even for small amounts, and the long-term consequences like burning bridges or running out of partners.

The cluster debates the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining, particularly Bitcoin, questioning if it's wasteful or can usefully repurpose excess electricity like flared gas or for heating.

The cluster focuses on discussions about extraordinarily high stock market valuations, especially for tech companies, with many commenters arguing they signal a bubble akin to the dot-com era due to low interest rates and speculative fervor.

Comments debate whether a specific legal principle or practice applies primarily to common law jurisdictions (e.g., US, UK) versus civil law systems (e.g., Europe, Louisiana), highlighting differences in precedent, codification, and judicial roles.

Hacker News users frequently request, share, and discuss promo codes, coupon codes, and discounts for apps, services, and products featured in threads, especially Show HN launches.

The cluster discusses how rising university tuition and funding have disproportionately gone towards expanding administrative staff, bureaucracy, and non-essential expenses like fancy buildings, rather than faculty, education, or students.

Comments debate the myth that startup founders must be young, citing data and examples showing most successful founders are 30+ with valuable experience, challenging Silicon Valley stereotypes.

Comments criticize various tools, tasks, or methods as overly manual, tedious, and labor-intensive, often suggesting automation or AI as preferable alternatives.

Comments discuss lambda calculus fundamentals, its power and simplicity, concepts like Y-combinator and fixed-point combinators, learning resources, and related implementations.

Discussions center on a physics puzzle or GIF showing water not spilling from an inverted bottle or cup, with debates on mechanisms like atmospheric pressure, vacuum, surface tension, siphons, and air bubbles.

Discussions center on high CEO salaries and total compensation, often criticizing their scale relative to company performance, revenue, employee pay, and comparisons to other executives or industries.

Users discuss tools, browser extensions, and methods like yt-dlp, VLC, and invidio.us to download videos from sites such as YouTube or conferences for offline viewing, especially during travel.

Users reminisce about running Linux, Windows 3.x, Minix, and games on 1980s/1990s low-spec hardware like 386/486 processors with 4-16MB RAM and small hard drives.

The cluster focuses on reactions to a browser extension or app that requires access to browser history, with users questioning its necessity, complaining about it filling history entries, raising privacy concerns, and suggesting built-in browser history alternatives.

This cluster discusses the classic nature versus nurture debate, focusing on whether genetics or environment/upbringing primarily shapes human traits, personalities, behaviors, and outcomes, often concluding both play significant roles.

Discussions center on opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), including website blackouts by sites like Wikipedia and Reddit, boycotts against supporters like GoDaddy, and debates over whether Hacker News should participate in protests.

Cluster focuses on debates about DuckDuckGo's (DDG) privacy claims, criticisms of its backend reliance on Bing/Microsoft and potential tracking, and comparisons to alternatives like Startpage and Google.

Discussions center on the utility, limitations, and controversies of SAT scores for predicting college success and distinguishing applicants at elite universities like MIT and Harvard.

Discussions center on suggesting ClojureScript as an alternative to other Clojure projects, comparing its JavaScript compilation, JVM avoidance, ecosystem, and interop capabilities.

Debate over Richard Stallman's (RMS) legacy in free software, his abrasive personality, controversial opinions, and fitness to lead or represent the FSF despite his immense contributions.

The cluster discusses the potential of AI and LLMs to serve as personal tutors or replace human teachers, debating benefits like infinite patience and scalability against limitations in addressing student needs and true understanding.

Discussions compare the historical evolution, adaptability, and walkable density of European cities like Paris and Amsterdam to car-optimized American urban designs, debating planned renovations versus organic growth.

The cluster centers on discussions about Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), including its necessity, implementations, limitations, alternatives, and tools like RAGFlow and llama_index in the context of large language models.

The cluster discusses differences between authentic Mexican cuisine and American Tex-Mex variations, including tacos, hot sauces, regional US styles like Texas vs California, and availability of foods like peanut butter abroad.

The cluster centers on discussions about why companies keep proprietary information secret, primarily citing trade secrets, IP protection, NDAs, and competitive advantages rather than illicit activities.

Discussions center on best practices for database identifiers, debating sequential integers versus UUIDs, obfuscation techniques like Hashids, and using separate public IDs to avoid exposing internal primary keys in APIs or URLs for security and performance reasons.

Commenters repeatedly dismiss others' claims by pointing out that similar arguments were made years or decades ago and have since been proven wrong or outdated by events.

Comments in this cluster overwhelmingly ask about the business model of the featured product, startup, or project, expressing curiosity on how it generates revenue or sustains itself.

Debate on Julian Assange's refusal to face Swedish sexual assault allegations due to fears of extradition to the US, contrasting Sweden's and UK's extradition policies and questioning if the accusations were genuine or a pretext.

The cluster focuses on debates about whether US foreign policy, including the Iraq invasion, arming mujahideen, and support for Syrian rebels, directly contributed to the rise of ISIS and groups like al-Qaeda. Commenters argue over blame, contrasting US actions with roles of regional actors like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and local extremists.

The cluster centers on debates about using foreign key constraints in databases, weighing their role in maintaining referential integrity against drawbacks like performance impacts, schema migrations, and scalability issues in large apps.

The cluster focuses on complaints about a website's login and signup pages transmitting credentials over unencrypted HTTP instead of HTTPS, raising security concerns like plaintext password exposure. Discussions also touch on authentication handling for sites requiring logins and suggestions like OAuth.

The cluster centers on discussions about product-market fit (PMF) in startups, including its importance for success, challenges in achieving it, validation methods, and whether ventures have truly reached it before scaling.

The cluster discusses the feasibility, methods, and implications of jamming GPS signals, including spoofing, RF interference, and countermeasures, often in military, drone, and aviation contexts.

The cluster debates the effectiveness of government investments in technological innovation and startups versus private sector approaches, citing examples like NASA, TSMC, and CERN while discussing risks, long-term benefits, and policy incentives.

Discussions focus on real estate investment opportunities, property prices, agents, tools for buyers and sellers, and market analysis, often with a tech or disruption angle.

The cluster focuses on debates about the high costs of building houses, especially in the US, including breakdowns of materials, labor, land, permits, and comparisons to cheaper prefab or international options.

The cluster focuses on the historical and evolutionary observation that humans have roughly twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors, due to higher variance in male reproductive success where a small number of men father many children while most women reproduce.

Discussions focus on how family trees overlap due to pedigree collapse, resulting in shared distant ancestors, common relatedness like sixth cousins, and exponential ancestor counts exceeding historical populations, with references to DNA tests and historical lineages.

Discussions center on using large language models like ChatGPT to act as dungeon masters or game masters for text-based RPGs and D&D, with references to AI Dungeon, prompt engineering, and interactive NPCs.

Comments debate the value, limitations, and true nature of no-code and low-code tools, often arguing they are just somebody else's code with GUIs rather than a replacement for traditional programming.

The cluster centers on debates about feature creep in software products, weighing simplicity and core functionality against adding features for diverse user needs, where one person's bloat is another's essential tool.

Discussions center on ROCm compatibility for AMD GPUs in machine learning frameworks like PyTorch, including user experiences with specific models, supported hardware lists, and comparisons to NVIDIA CUDA.

Users discuss and recommend various online tools for analyzing website performance, security, technology stacks, uptime monitoring, and configurations like HetrixTools, BuiltWith, Mozilla Observatory, and Google Lighthouse.

Discussions center on the power consumption of an ultra-low-power processor and its potential for battery-powered IoT devices, sensors, wearables, and remote applications, with comparisons to solar cells, ESP8266, and coin cells.

Commenters debate whether a showcased video, film scene, or demo uses real footage and practical effects or relies on CGI, green screens, compositing, and other digital techniques, often pointing out inconsistencies suggesting artificiality.

The cluster discusses why Texas operates its own isolated power grid (ERCOT), political motivations like avoiding federal regulations, vulnerabilities leading to blackouts during extreme weather, and debates on renewables, deregulation, and grid reliability.

Users share personal stories of buying, mining, selling, or losing Bitcoin when it was cheap, often lamenting missed fortunes as its price has risen dramatically.

The cluster debates the impact of easily generated AI fake videos on trust in video evidence and media authenticity, often comparing it to Photoshop's effect on images and predicting widespread skepticism or disinformation risks.

The cluster discusses the peer review process in academic publishing, focusing on anonymity, blind reviews, flaws like bias and collusion, use of AI by reviewers, incentives, and challenges with preprints like arXiv.

Users debate the reliability and failure rates of USB-C, Lightning, and Micro-USB connectors based on personal experiences, focusing on whether cables or device ports break more often.

Comments debate whether human races have a biological or genetic basis, contrasting social constructs with genetic clusters, ancestry differences, and population genetics.

Comments discuss problems with dockless rental electric scooters in cities, including sidewalk clutter, dangerous pedestrian riding, littering, and calls for fines, regulations, or bans versus defenses highlighting infrastructure issues.

Commenters assert or question whether specific features, behaviors, or outcomes in software, products, or events are deliberately designed that way rather than accidental or mistaken.

Users express frustration over the absence of volume sliders or controls in a specific audio player or application, often requesting per-app adjustments and automatic gain control. Discussions extend to broader audio volume management challenges across devices, OSes, and software like browsers and media players.

The cluster centers on discussions about the Tesla Cybertruck, covering its design, appeal, build quality, production status, performance comparisons, and overall reception.

The cluster discusses AI image generators producing pornographic or NSFW content due to training data contamination, challenges in implementing safeguards, ethical risks like CSAM and deepfakes, and companies' policies on censorship.

Commenters frequently note, correct, or question the publication year of the linked article or content, emphasizing it dates back to the 2000s (e.g., 2002-2011) and is no longer current.

This cluster debates whether companies can or should stay out of politics, arguing that 'no politics' policies are themselves political acts and that corporations inherently engage in politics to protect profits or influence markets.

Discussions center on comparing IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, their memorability, alternative representations, abbreviations, and compatibility mechanisms like IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses.

The cluster centers on debates about whether users would pay subscription fees or per-search costs for ad-free or premium search engines like Google or Kagi, including discussions on operational costs and viability without ads.

Commenters debate whether government compulsion to unlock devices or provide passwords violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, focusing on self-incrimination and unreasonable searches.

Discussions center on CouchDB's viability versus alternatives like MongoDB and Couchbase, including recommendations, experiences with replication and offline use, and pairings with PouchDB.

Comments humorously speculate about time travel, time machines, and time travelers, often in response to something appearing prescient or anachronistic in the original post.

The cluster focuses on discussions of spacecraft velocities, including current probes like Voyager, future initiatives like Breakthrough Starshot aiming for 20% of light speed, relativistic effects from high accelerations, and travel times to nearby stars like Proxima Centauri.

Discussions debate the necessity of memorizing facts given easy online access, portraying the brain as a cache that prioritizes useful knowledge while forgetting the rest, with some arguing retention is vital for understanding and quick thinking.

Users discuss features, extensions, shortcuts, and workarounds for closing, restoring, discarding, and managing browser tabs in Firefox and Chrome, including preventing accidental window closures and improving multi-tab workflows.

This cluster centers on repeated warnings and sarcastic remarks about not believing everything read on the internet, emphasizing the unreliability of online information.

The cluster discusses flaws in the academic peer review system, including its ineffectiveness, bias, failure at scale, and incentives for quantity over quality, while proposing alternatives like public post-publication reviews, social platforms akin to Hacker News or Reddit, and open preprint publishing.

Users compare the costs of Uber, Lyft, and other rideshares to traditional taxis across cities like NYC, SF, and Seattle, sharing personal experiences on which is cheaper, surge pricing effects, and upfront quoting advantages.

The cluster centers on debates advocating for personal liberty and individual rights to make their own choices, opposing governments, societies, or experts from deciding what's best for people. Comments criticize paternalism and authoritarianism in favor of self-determination.

This cluster features comments making puns, jokes, and references to literal trees, forests, tree planting, tree law, and idioms like 'missing the forest for the trees,' likely in response to a technical discussion about tree data structures.

The cluster focuses on limitations and capabilities of HDMI, DisplayPort, and adapters for supporting 4K or higher resolutions at refresh rates like 60Hz, 120Hz, or 144Hz on external monitors, including hardware compatibility issues and version differences.

The cluster discusses how government subsidies artificially lower meat prices, arguing for their removal to reflect true production costs, environmental impacts, and ethical concerns, which would reduce consumption and promote alternatives.

Cluster focuses on personal experiences and debates about how barefoot or minimalist running shoes (e.g., Vibrams, Vivo Barefoot) reduce knee and joint injuries by promoting forefoot striking over heel striking in traditional cushioned shoes.

Discussions revolve around defining and debating what constitutes 'professionalism' in behavior, communication, and standards, particularly in tech and work environments.

The cluster debates crime levels in San Francisco, contrasting high property and petty crime rates with lower violent crime statistics, perceptions of safety, under-reporting, brazenness of crimes, and comparisons to other cities.

The cluster focuses on the dangers of identifying and eating wild mushrooms, including risks of poisoning from misidentification, warnings against using AI or apps for foraging, and distinctions between edible, poisonous, and psychedelic varieties.

Cluster focuses on debates about Unicode encodings like UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32, including their variable widths, byte efficiency for languages like CJK, surrogate pairs, and code points versus characters.

Discussions center on the authenticity, aesthetics, and purpose of modern pixel art in games, debating whether it's a deliberate artistic choice, nostalgic style, or budget-driven limitation compared to retro pixel art.

Commenters calculate and debate the computational time, hardware resources like CPUs/GPUs/clusters, and feasibility of brute-forcing large spaces such as hashing billions of phone numbers or cryptographic operations on personal vs massive compute.

Cluster centers on debates comparing NFS and SMB (Samba) as network file systems, discussing performance, reliability, cross-platform compatibility (Linux/Mac/Windows), encryption, and alternatives like WebDAV.