All Topics

Cluster focuses on banking apps refusing to run on modified Android devices like GrapheneOS, rooted phones, or custom ROMs due to SafetyNet/Play Integrity checks, with debates on bank policies, security trade-offs, and workarounds like dedicated devices.

The cluster discusses unethical practices, bias, and misinformation in British newspapers and tabloids, including headline alterations, fake news on Brexit and EU issues, and political hypocrisy.

The cluster centers on discussions about vendor lock-in, highlighting its risks, prevalence, and downsides in technology adoption, with debates on whether it's a significant issue and strategies like open source to mitigate it.

The cluster discusses annoyance with corporate jargon and euphemisms like 'resources', 'talent', 'individual contributor', and 'staffer' used instead of straightforward terms like 'employee' or 'worker', often highlighting dehumanizing aspects of such language.

Users share personal stories of meeting, working with, or interacting with a recently deceased prominent tech figure, often noting their positive qualities and expressing sadness.

The cluster centers on users questioning and criticizing the US Department of Justice (DOJ)'s lack of involvement, inaction, or perceived bias in investigating or prosecuting an alleged fraud or scandal.

Users debate and share tips on sleeping comfortably in a cramped or unusual bed setup, including optimal positions, pillows, mattress firmness, cooling systems, partner compatibility, and keeping work devices out of bed. Discussions also touch on sleep apnea and reserving beds for sleep only.

The cluster revolves around debates on average IQ differences between racial groups, their potential genetic causes versus environmental factors, and whether asserting such differences is racist or scientifically valid.

Discussions center on enterprises' reluctance to use cloud-based SaaS products due to risks of sending sensitive data off-premises, emphasizing preferences for on-premises, self-hosted, or local solutions for security, compliance, and legal reasons.

Discussions compare the US political spectrum to international standards, arguing that the Democratic Party and US 'left' are center-right or right-wing by European/Western metrics, with no true left-wing presence in US politics.

The cluster debates the US government's and companies' cybersecurity vulnerabilities against nation-state actors like Russia and China, questioning NSA capabilities, supply chain compromises, and the need for stronger national defenses.

The cluster focuses on discussions praising hardware quality, performance, and advancements while criticizing software for being buggy, bloated, or failing to utilize hardware effectively.

Discussions center on the visual design of laptops, particularly criticisms of non-Apple models imitating MacBook aesthetics and preferences for alternative styles like ThinkPads.

The cluster debates whether static type systems replace or reduce the need for unit tests, with commenters arguing they complement each other by catching different classes of bugs in typed vs dynamic languages.

Users seek clarification on specific 'groups' referenced, discuss implementing or using a 'Groups' feature for access, notifications, or organization in software, and mention upcoming releases or forks with groups.

Commenters heavily compare a new visual search or discovery feature (likely Google's) to Pinterest, questioning differences, its value, user base, and annoying presence in search results.

Users question, explain, and debate the details and effectiveness of a specific strategy referenced in the post, often requesting more information or suggesting alternatives. Discussions span business contexts like company memos and general strategic approaches.

The cluster focuses on discussions about the high prices of custom, mechanical, and ergonomic keyboards, debating their value, justifying purchases based on daily use, and comparing to cheaper alternatives.

The cluster centers on debates about proper comma placement, the Oxford comma, superfluous commas, and punctuation rules in English writing, with some discussions extending to trailing commas and syntax issues in programming languages like JSON, JS, and SQL.

Comments primarily question what 'X' refers to, mock its naming, and reference features like 'xeets' or related projects like xAI in the context of Twitter's rebranding and Musk's ventures.

Users debate the superiority of 24-hour clock format over 12-hour AM/PM in software, highlighting ambiguities like midnight/noon and requesting support for 24h time in a specific tool.

This cluster discusses the academic research grant system, including criticisms of proposal writing burdens, administrative overhead, funding biases toward superstars, and alternatives like block grants.

This cluster focuses on the security dangers of opening files from untrusted sources, such as embedded malware in documents, zips, images, and other formats, with debates comparing risks to direct executable downloads and calls for safer practices like sandboxing or avoiding proprietary software.

Cluster discusses laws in countries like Germany, France, Spain, and Australia forcing Google to pay news publishers for links, snippets, or traffic from Google News and search results, debating if publishers benefit from free exposure or deserve compensation.

This cluster debates whether unreadable or poor-quality code results from bad programmers or from programming languages that make bad code easier to write. Core discussions emphasize that skilled programmers can produce good code in any language, while some argue certain languages encourage sloppy practices.

Comments focus on whether the original poster invented, coined, or created the HN post's subject, with surprise that it didn't exist before, requests for creator confirmation, and playful accusations of 'making stuff up'.

This cluster discusses the mechanics and necessity of countersteering for turning bicycles and motorcycles at speed, debating whether leaning alone suffices or if steering the front wheel oppositely is required, with references to experiments, videos, and physics.

Discussions center on worker-owned cooperatives as alternatives to traditional corporations, including their viability, examples like Mondragon, legal challenges, and comparisons to shareholder-owned businesses.

The cluster discusses Brexit's effects on UK immigration, particularly the end of EU free movement leading to labor shortages, shifts to non-EU migrants, and debates on economic benefits of EU workers versus concerns over uncontrolled immigration.

The cluster focuses on how online platforms and sites like HN optimize for user engagement metrics, often at the expense of user experience, leading to ragebait, entrapment, and other negative outcomes. Discussions debate the implications of prioritizing engagement over utility or quality content.

This cluster centers on debates about labor abuses, child labor, suicides, and poor working conditions at Apple's suppliers like Foxconn in China and India, including criticisms of Apple's responsibility and defenses highlighting their supplier audits and reports.

Discussions focus on user feedback, suggestions, and critiques for the interface of a visual mind mapping or spatial canvas tool, including zoom, animations, information density, and comparisons to Notion, Miro, and Figma.

Users primarily complain about the unresponsiveness, lack of strafing, rotation issues, and non-standard movement schemes in a game's controls, often preferring traditional FPS setups like WASD strafing and mouse aiming.

Comments debate the prevalence and viability of monogamous versus non-monogamous relationships, including polyamory, open relationships, polygamy, and challenges to traditional monogamy norms in dating and marriage.

The cluster discusses corporations and large investors buying single-family homes to rent out, debating impacts on housing prices, affordability, individual homeownership, and whether to restrict such ownership.

Comments attribute a poster's achievement or positive outcome primarily to luck rather than skill, often referencing the phrase 'better to be lucky than good' and debating randomness versus preparation.

This cluster focuses on discussions about the Omicron COVID-19 variant's transmissibility, severity compared to Delta and other strains, vaccine effectiveness, immunity evasion, and potential impacts on the pandemic.

Comments debate Apple's privacy features that limit third-party tracking for advertising while questioning if it's genuine or motivated by boosting their own ad services like Apple Search Ads.

Comments debate the extent to which LLCs and corporations provide limited liability protection for personal assets in lawsuits, including discussions on piercing the corporate veil and exceptions like criminal acts.

Discussions center on whether a tech presentation or product demo featured a genuine live audience or a simulated/fake one, with critiques of the venue, reactions, and presenter experience.

This cluster centers on discussions about using diesel, natural gas, and gasoline generators as backup power solutions during grid outages, particularly for data centers, homes, and critical infrastructure. Users debate reliability, fuel logistics, and alternatives like batteries.

Comments focus on Salesforce's reputation among developers, its history of acquisitions like Slack and Heroku, and its relevance or counterexample to the parent thread's topic on SaaS, security, or scaling issues.

Discussions center on benchmarking a new matrix library against optimized BLAS implementations like OpenBLAS, MKL, and Eigen, debating if it outperforms them in speed on various hardware and questioning the value of alternatives to established linear algebra libraries.

Commenters share personal experiences and recommendations for preventing or alleviating Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) from prolonged computer use, focusing on ergonomic keyboards, alternative mice, layouts like Dvorak, breaks, posture, and exercise.

Discussions center on quirks of Unix/Linux terminal emulators, TTY settings (e.g., stty commands), control sequences like CR/LF and ESC, readline controls, and historical terminal protocols such as VT100.

Commenters frequently draw analogies between current geopolitical tensions, likely involving the US and Russia, and the historical Cold War, suggesting a new Cold War 2.0 or that old tensions persist.

This cluster centers on the difficulties of content moderation at scale on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, including high labor costs, psychological trauma for human moderators, scalability issues, and debates over AI versus human approaches.

This cluster centers on debates about ISPs and telecom companies as natural monopolies or duopolies in the US, discussing the need for government regulation, net neutrality (Title II), deregulation, barriers to entry, and competition.

Discussions focus on Tesla vehicles' electronic door handles requiring power to open, the lack of manual releases on rear doors, and safety concerns in emergencies or power failures, with suggestions for better mechanical overrides.

Users discuss availability of apps, features, or services on Apple TV, including requests for support, current limitations, and workarounds like iOS apps.

The cluster centers on discussions of gamification, its use in apps, websites, and services via elements like points, badges, leaderboards, and levels to boost engagement and motivation, including debates on its effectiveness and examples.

Discussions focus on tools and methods like chezmoi, GNU Stow, yadm, rcm, and git repos with symlinks for managing dotfiles across multiple machines and systems.

Discussions focus on continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices like Dexcom and Freestyle Libre for diabetes management, including personal experiences, automation with apps like xDrip, insulin pumps, and accessibility.

Users complain about broken or intentionally disabled text selection on a website, making it impossible to copy-paste content, with some defending it or noting fixes.

Comments center on defending and discussing the background, achievements, publications, and recent visibility of a prominent female writer and Hacker News contributor, often citing her impressive Wikipedia page, Twitter following, and media appearances.

Discussions center on recommending and comparing Python dependency management tools like Poetry, Pipenv, PDM, and pip-tools as superior alternatives to basic pip and requirements.txt for handling dependencies, lockfiles, and virtual environments.

This cluster debates the long-term survivability, accessibility, and maintenance of information in digital formats versus physical books and libraries, highlighting issues like bit rot, format obsolescence, fires, and copying ease.

The cluster discusses the use of references and referrals in job hiring, including shady recruiter tactics like recruiting the references themselves, best practices for selecting references, and the value of referrals in the hiring process.

The cluster discusses the pros and cons of homework in schools, including its impact on children's learning, motivation, and family life, with debates on whether it should be eliminated, done during school hours, or replaced by alternatives like unschooling.

The cluster discusses public availability of salary data through H1B disclosures, job posting mandates in places like Colorado and the EU, and tools like Glassdoor and Levels.fyi for anonymous sharing, alongside concerns about employer access to prior salaries.

Discussions revolve around the poor pay, long hours, crunch culture, and overall harsh realities of careers in the game development industry, often contrasted with passion for games and better opportunities in general software development.

The cluster discusses the limitations of code reviews and open source transparency in detecting subtle backdoors, referencing Obfuscated C and Underhanded C contests, supply chain attacks, and compromised toolchains.

Discussions debate whether long-term cardiac issues, strokes, blood clotting, and other sequelae are caused by COVID-19 infection itself, often citing articles on heart damage and inflammation.

This cluster centers on debates about whether first-world consumption of cheap products from developing countries exploits low-wage workers or provides economic benefits like poverty alleviation and improved living standards.

Users recommend and compare online calculators like Instacalc, Wolfram Alpha, Desmos, and Soulver for accurate computations, often contrasting them with LLMs for simple math tasks.

The cluster discusses using hydrogen, produced via electrolysis from excess renewable energy, as a storage medium for grid-scale energy, focusing on efficiency losses, cost comparisons to batteries and other methods, storage advantages, and leveraging existing infrastructure.

Comments discuss the pros and cons of Daylight Saving Time (DST), especially in high-latitude regions with extreme seasonal variations in daylight hours, debating trade-offs between morning and evening sunlight alignment with work/sleep schedules.

Commenters calculate and discuss what historical prices for products, investments, or services would equate to in today's dollars using inflation adjustments and calculators.

The cluster centers on debates over Russia's annexation of Crimea, contrasting self-determination and referendums with territorial integrity and sovereignty, often drawing parallels to historical cases like Texas or disputed territories.

Comments repeatedly quote and debate the Hacker News guidelines on what constitutes on-topic content, particularly 'anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity' versus off-topic subjects like politics, crime, or sports.

Comments in this cluster argue that there is no true labor shortage, but rather a wage or pay shortage, where employers cannot attract workers because they refuse to offer competitive salaries.

The cluster discusses why prescription drugs are far more expensive in the US compared to other countries, debating whether high US prices subsidize global R&D and innovation while other nations benefit from lower prices via negotiations, generics, or price controls.

The cluster discusses the growing popularity and support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, dissatisfaction with established parties like CDU, SPD, and Greens, and implications for upcoming German elections and politics.

Users complain about a specific website causing excessive CPU usage on laptops, especially Macs, leading to high idle load, fan spin-up, and performance throttling even with minimal interaction like mouse movement.

Comments discuss the challenges of preserving human knowledge and culture for future archaeologists and civilizations, contrasting the durability of physical media like books and tablets against fragile digital storage like hard drives and flash drives in scenarios of catastrophe or technological obsolescence.

The cluster discusses how historical US housing policies like redlining, white flight, and segregation created racially divided cities with poor inner-city black neighborhoods and wealthy white suburbs, attributing current urban poverty patterns to systemic racism.

The cluster discusses language barriers in tech hiring, startups, and international work, emphasizing the importance of English skills for communication, recruitment, and success, especially for non-native speakers.

The cluster debates the safety of SUVs, trucks, and larger vehicles, noting they protect occupants better in crashes with smaller cars but increase risks to pedestrians, cyclists, and other road users due to mass, height mismatches, poor visibility, and rollover tendencies.

The cluster focuses on discussions about acquisitions and ownership changes of game studios by major companies like Epic Games, EA, Activision, and others, including historical details and concerns about impacts on studio culture and independence.

Debate on the use and pitfalls of mocks in unit testing, advocating alternatives like integration tests, fakes, or avoiding mocks for tightly coupled code.

Comments discuss Microsoft's enormous profits from Windows and Office, its ability to absorb losses on ventures like Xbox, Surface, and acquisitions, and overall financial resources enabling bold investments.

Discussions center on the support, advantages, reliability, and alternatives to microSD/SD cards for storage in a hardware device, including confirmations of compatibility, complaints about failures, and suggestions for onboard SSD instead.

Discussions center on whether Apple collects and tracks user location data without explicit permission, comparisons to Google/Android practices, and the role of app permissions, WiFi scanning, and system features in iOS privacy.

The cluster debates the merits of being a specialist versus a generalist in software engineering and tech careers, particularly how each fits into startups (favoring generalists) versus large companies (favoring specialists), with mentions of T-shaped skills and full-stack roles.

This cluster revolves around the Flynn effect, the observed rise in average IQ scores over time, with debates on its causes, historical trends, and recent evidence of reversal or decline in some populations.

The cluster discusses Reddit's announcement to charge for API access, which threatens to shut down popular third-party apps like Apollo and moderation tools, sparking debates on Reddit's motivations, user protests, and potential alternatives.

Discussions center on whether humans can biologically or culturally adapt to modern environments and technology, given that evolution occurs slowly over millennia while societal changes happen rapidly.

This cluster focuses on discussions about the environmental destruction, human exploitation, economic decline, and other negative consequences of mining activities, often in developing countries, with comparisons to industries like oil and coal.

The cluster discusses code obfuscation techniques, their effectiveness as a security measure, and debates whether 'security by obfuscation' is viable or merely theater.

The cluster centers on discussions of dithering algorithms and their application in image processing to simulate more colors and reduce banding in limited palettes, including references to Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, and ordered dithering.

Cluster focuses on debates about intellectual property rights and copyright ownership of code written by employees or contractors, particularly under employment contracts, work-for-hire clauses, and negotiation strategies.

Users share personal experiences of feeling unsettled, creeped out, or triggered by trypophobia-inducing images or visuals from the article, such as clustered holes or irregular patterns. Discussions distinguish between fear, disgust, and instinctive aversion.

Discussions center on strategies for preparing for software engineering interviews, particularly grinding LeetCode problems, studying data structures and algorithms, and practicing mock interviews for Big Tech companies like Google.

The cluster focuses on philosophical discussions about epistemology, skepticism, empiricism, the nature of knowledge, and related concepts like justification, falsifiability, and epistemic frameworks.

Discussions center on how individuals in groups, especially online communities like Reddit and Hacker News, exhibit herd or mob mentality, losing individual judgment and rationality, often referencing the bystander effect and crowd dynamics.

This cluster centers on debates about the Waterfall software development methodology, its comparison to Agile, historical misconceptions like it being a strawman, and arguments for its relevance or flaws in practice.

Users share positive and negative experiences with the Matrix chat protocol and its clients like Element and Riot, praising its open-source, federated, and self-hostable nature while criticizing performance, usability, and missing features compared to Discord or IRC.

Discussions center on Google's purchase of YouTube after failing with their own Google Video service, emphasizing that YouTube was a popular external platform acquired rather than an in-house innovation, with reflections on its success and value.

This cluster features recommendations of books about epic expeditions, polar explorations, mountaineering, sailing voyages, wilderness survival, and other extreme adventures.

This cluster focuses on recommendations for enjoyable physical activities, sports, and hobbies like hiking, climbing, cycling, and team sports as alternatives to boring gym routines or running.