Hacker News
1Keep Android Open
- Google announced that starting 2026, all Android app developers must register centrally with Google, paying fees, providing government ID, and uploading signing keys. This policy threatens open-source projects like F-Droid and sideloading capabilities. Opposition efforts include signing an open letter to Google and filing antitrust complaints with regulators worldwide.
Need for hardware and OS alternatives
Users discuss seeking alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly, including GrapheneOS, LineageOS, PostmarketOS, and Linux phones like PinePhone. Many cite challenges with app compatibility, banking apps, and hardware limitations that make switching difficult.Regulatory intervention needed
Commenters call for government action to prevent tech monopolies from controlling device software installation. Discussion includes suggestions to contact competition authorities in Australia, UK, EU, and US to address anticompetitive practices.Developer impact and licensing philosophy
Developers share experiences of being "rugpulled" by platform changes after building on supposedly open systems. Discussion covers whether GPL vs permissive licensing could have prevented corporate capture of open source projects.
2Affinity Studio now free
Enshittification and business model concerns
Users express frustration that Affinity's transition from paid software to freemium marks the beginning of enshittification. Many fear that features will gradually be paywalled, AI will become mandatory, and the product will decline in quality as Canva prioritizes subscription revenue over user experience.End of perpetual licensing era
Discussion centers on how Affinity V2 will receive no further updates, effectively ending the "buy once, own forever" model that distinguished it from Adobe. Users debate whether perpetual licenses remain viable and lament the loss of software ownership in favor of subscription models.Mixed reactions to free availability
Some users appreciate getting professional design tools for free, while others are skeptical about the sustainability and true cost. Debate focuses on whether the freemium model benefits users or primarily serves as a funnel to drive Canva subscriptions and AI feature adoption.
3AWS to bare metal two years later: Answering your questions about leaving AWS
- OneUptime saved over $1.2M annually by moving from AWS to bare metal servers, achieving 99.993% uptime across 730+ days. They addressed concerns about single points of failure by adding a second data center, reduced latency by 19%, and reinvested savings into AI infrastructure while maintaining compliance certifications.
Cloud vendor lock-in and skill commoditization
AWS creates dependency through certifications and specialized services, cultivating teams whose careers depend on AWS-specific knowledge. This leads to organizational lock-in where engineers push AWS solutions regardless of cost-effectiveness, while fundamental systems skills decline.Cost analysis and workload suitability
Cloud makes sense for elastic/bursty workloads, but bare metal wins for steady 24/7 baseload operations. Many companies with consistent usage patterns pay significantly more on AWS than they would with dedicated servers, especially at scale.Technical complexity and operational trade-offs
Self-hosting requires deep systems expertise that's becoming rarer, while cloud abstracts complexity but introduces vendor dependencies. Both approaches have risks - hardware failures vs service outages, operational overhead vs billing surprises.
4Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' to sidestep legal orders
- Google and Amazon agreed to a secret "winking mechanism" as part of a $1.2bn Israeli cloud computing deal, requiring them to send coded payments to Israel when forced to share Israeli data with foreign law enforcement. The arrangement uses country dialing codes to signal which nation received the data, allowing Israel to circumvent legal disclosure restrictions. Legal experts warn this could violate US obligations to keep subpoenas secret.
Secret payment mechanism
Discussion centers on a coded payment system where Google/Amazon pay Israel amounts corresponding to foreign countries' dialing codes when forced to share data under gag orders. Critics debate whether this constitutes a legal workaround or clear violation of disclosure laws.Legal implications and criminality
Commenters argue this arrangement constitutes criminal conspiracy, as companies would be violating US gag orders and non-disclosure requirements. Many express disbelief that legal teams would approve such obviously illegal terms.Israeli exceptionalism concerns
Discussion focuses on how the contract prevents Google/Amazon from enforcing their terms of service against Israel, with commenters criticizing what they see as preferential treatment allowing illegal activities without consequences.
5Kafka is Fast – I'll use Postgres
- The tech industry is divided between those who chase buzzwords and adopt popular technologies without considering appropriateness, versus pragmatists who prioritize common sense and simplicity. Recent trends favor the pragmatic camp, including the "Small Data" movement recognizing that most data isn't truly big, and the Postgres Renaissance where developers use Postgres for multiple purposes instead of specialized systems. The author benchmarks Postgres as both a pub-sub messaging system and queue, finding it can handle significant workloads that would traditionally use Kafka, suggesting simpler solutions often suffice for most organizational needs.
Misuse of pareto principle
Discussion about whether the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) applies to comparing PostgreSQL vs Kafka. Critics argue it's being misused as a general argument rather than describing actual power-law distributions, with debate over what constitutes the "80%" solution.Performance comparisons and benchmarks
Users criticize the article's PostgreSQL performance numbers (5k msg/s on 96 vCPUs) as absurdly slow compared to Kafka, which can handle 250k+ messages/second on a laptop. Discussion centers on whether the benchmarks are fair or meaningful.Technology selection philosophy
Debate over "buzzword chasing" vs "common sense" approaches to technology choices. Users discuss the spectrum between adopting every new technology versus never adopting anything new, advocating for pragmatic tool selection based on actual needs.
6Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself?
- Mozilla's SpiderMonkey team developed a new interactive visualization tool for their JavaScript compiler's optimization process. The tool replaces static PDF outputs from Graphviz with dynamic graphs that maintain stable layouts and allow users to track how code blocks are processed through different compilation passes, making compiler debugging more intuitive.
Specialized algorithms vs generic tools
Discussion on how domain-specific algorithms can dramatically outperform generic solutions by leveraging particular properties of the problem space, with examples from graph analytics and the trade-offs between specialization and generality.GraphViz terminology and technical clarifications
Confusion around GraphViz components - dot as both a language and layout engine, with suggestions to contribute the new algorithm to GraphViz and discussions about implementation differences.Limitations of graph visualization tools
Debate about the practical utility of visualizing large graphs, with some arguing it's a "tarpit idea" that fails at scale, while others discuss trade-offs between readability and area optimization.
7Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers
- A stroke survivor shares practical workplace advice for managing post-stroke challenges including epilepsy and cognitive fatigue. Key strategies include prioritizing health over performance, using assistive technology, minimizing distractions, working single-threaded, leveraging legal protections, and scheduling demanding tasks during peak energy hours.
Stroke recovery and adaptation strategies
Multiple developers share experiences recovering from strokes, emphasizing work-from-home, stress management, adequate sleep, and setting boundaries. One switched to photography for 8 years before returning to development, another lost vision but adapted successfully.Toxic tech workplace culture and burnout
Discussion centers on how tech industry practices like Agile methodology create unsustainable stress. Comments criticize "sprint mentality," talentless managers who overwork employees, and the disconnect between boring work and life-or-death urgency.Rising stroke rates in younger people
Neurologist reports average stroke patient age dropped by nearly a decade in five years, with more cases under 30 than previous decades. Participants speculate about COVID-related factors and dietary/nutritional deficiencies as potential causes.
8Tell HN: Azure Outage
- Azure's pricing calculator and main portal are experiencing outages in the UK, with no acknowledgment yet on their official status page.
Comment consolidation
Multiple submissions about the same topic were posted, with comments being redirected to the earliest submission to consolidate discussion and avoid fragmentation across duplicate posts.
9Dithering – Part 1
- This interactive visual article explains how dithering creates the illusion of multiple shades using only black and white pixels. It covers the basics of ordered dithering, which uses threshold maps to determine whether pixels become black or white based on brightness comparisons. The technique preserves image appearance while reducing colors through strategic pixel density patterns.
Definition and terminology of dithering
Users debate whether the demonstrated technique constitutes true "dithering" versus "halftone," with discussion about noise requirements, error diffusion, and ordered dithering terminology.Tools and applications for palette dithering
Users seek recommendations for software that can perform high-quality palette dithering with custom color palettes, sharing various tools including didder, GIMP, ImageMagick, and Photoshop plugins.Presentation format and readability
Discussion about the interactive scroll-based presentation format, with some finding it harder to read than traditional blog posts while others appreciate the visual approach.
10Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles
- Crunchyroll has significantly downgraded its subtitle quality starting Fall 2025, abandoning sophisticated typesetting that properly positioned and styled on-screen text translations. The change appears driven by Sony's acquisition and merger with Funimation, forcing compliance with Netflix and Amazon's limited subtitle standards that don't support overlapping text or positioning - features essential for anime's heavy use of on-screen text.
Crunchyroll subtitle quality degradation
Users report that Crunchyroll is actively replacing high-quality typeset subtitles with inferior versions, both for new content and existing catalog. This appears driven by compatibility requirements for sublicensing to Netflix/Amazon, which have restrictive subtitle standards limiting creative formatting and positioning.Streaming platform technical limitations
Discussion of how Netflix's 2-line maximum rule and limited subtitle format support constrains quality. Some argue it's about device compatibility, others suggest it's cost-cutting. ASS format capabilities exist but aren't widely adopted by major platforms.Dubbed content accessibility issues
Users struggle to find anime with proper closed captions for dubbed versions, often getting mismatched subtitles from the original language track instead of captions matching the English dub audio. This creates barriers for deaf/hearing-impaired viewers who prefer dubbed content.