1. Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)

Total comment counts : 211

Summary

Pomelo Care is a Series B, multi-disciplinary team of clinicians and engineers focused on improving care for moms and babies. They’re hiring engineers to shape product, codebase, and culture—writing clean code, building systems for personalized care, and delivering a strong mobile experience. Tech stack includes GCP, Kotlin, Typescript, React/React Native, Terraform, Spanner, BigQuery, DuckDB, Dagster, DBT, and Kubernetes. The team emphasizes learning and impact. Notable investors include First Round and a16z. Learn more and apply at pomelocare.com/careers.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The discussion is a curated roundup of current software/engineering and product roles at multiple startups, including remote, hybrid, and onsite opportunities with diverse tech stacks.
  • Concern: A key worry is that several postings impose visa, location, or onsite requirements that could exclude many candidates.
  • Perspectives: The postings reflect strong enthusiasm for high-impact, tech-forward roles across many regions, but also reveal practical gating factors that shape who can apply.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

2. 2,400 HP FDNY Super Pumper could extinguish hell itself

Total comment counts : 4

Summary

Facing drought and failed water supply, NYC Fire Department’s Black Saturday Staten Island blaze in 1963 led to the Mack Super Pumper System—a five-truck brigade to fight fires. The centerpiece was a central pumping unit capable of drawing from eight hydrants, pumping from sources, and supplying thousands of lines, at up to 10,000 gpm at low pressure and 8,800 gpm at 350 psi, plus a 600-foot water cannon reach. Power came from a Napier-Deltic diesel (2,400 hp, three cranks, opposed-piston, two-stroke). Mack built it in 1964; it served NYC 1965–early 1980s, handling 2,200+ calls with ~900 firefighters. It cost $875,000.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The discussion surveys unconventional firefighting pumping technology and historic equipment (such as water-pump layouts, jet-engine assist devices, and Mack fire trucks) and includes a question about pumps suitable for extreme fluids like liquid metal.
  • Concern: Concerns center on safety, practicality, and long-term reliability of these unorthodox pumping solutions and handling extreme fluids.
  • Perspectives: Viewpoints range from admiration for innovative and nostalgic gear to practical inquiries about pump classifications for hot or exotic fluids.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

3. Learning to read Arthur Whitney’s C to become smart (2024)

Total comment counts : 28

Summary

Arthur Whitney’s K language is showcased through a tiny C-based K interpreter (about 50 lines). The article’s author walks through the code, noting unusual C practices: using char* for both strings and numbers, macro-driven control and implicit returns, and heavy use of statement-expressions like ({e;}). Error handling leans on a Q family; nyi means not yet implemented. The code mixes integers and pointers with a 256-threshold “atom” concept and relies on implicit arguments (a, x) and fat-pointers (nx). The piece highlights the intimidating, compact, macro-heavy style, though annotations help demystify it.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The discussion weighs the pros and cons of using heavy C macros and ultra-dense, DSL-like coding styles to express ideas compactly, highlighting both potential benefits and serious maintainability risks.
  • Concern: The main worry is that such tricks make code hard to read, debug, and maintain, potentially derailing projects years later.
  • Perspectives: Opinions range from veteran C programmers warning against macro abuse to enthusiasts who celebrate dense, expressive macro styles (and related languages like Perl, Python, APL/J) as powerful or beautiful, acknowledging trade-offs and context.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

4. The MP3.com Rescue Barge Barge

Total comment counts : 6

Summary

Back in November, the author copied 1.78TB of MP3.com media from Internet Archive’s Rescue Barge and Wayback Machine to build a complete MP3.com archive. With a text list of download.mp3.com links, they aimed to preserve as much audio as possible amid legal questions around Internet Archive. They created a local copy called the MP3.com Rescue Barge and built a metadata CSV, using Archive.org URLs for redundancy. Storage spanned multiple drives (1TB, 1.5TB, 3TB). They used wget for downloads, Everything for indexing, and WACUP/Winamp 5 to index tags and export a CSV of metadata, enabling a searchable database for future research.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The thread centers on how AI-generated music and open-source models could disrupt traditional music IP enforcement and revenue, while the community pursues archiving, linking, and new modes of distribution and funding.
  • Concern: There is a worry that copyright enforcement will be overwhelmed as AI tools proliferate, making it impossible to police sources and maintain control over music IP.
  • Perspectives: Some participants celebrate preservation and open collaboration, others warn that RIAA-style enforcement may fail and AI could upend the industry, while others emphasize shifting revenue toward live performances and the practical challenges of AI tools and user interfaces.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

Total comment counts : 8

Summary

The piece describes a gallery of drawings received by a small printer, then notes the page ends with a playful aside. It closes with a sign-off from “Good Enough,” wishing readers a pleasant day and inviting them to email if they’d like to continue the conversation.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: A discussion about printing canvas-generated bitmaps to a networked thermal printer and sharing experiences from related projects and live feeds.
  • Concern: The main worry is whether the printed content will be safe for work and appropriate for public viewing, given hints of NSFW material.
  • Perspectives: Viewpoints range from enthusiastic experimentation and fascination with the printing setup to skepticism about content moderation, site reliability, and the ongoing administrative burden of managing the guestbook.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

6. Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2025)

Total comment counts : 191

Summary

The article is a mashup of self-posted job-seeker profiles offering remote or local opportunities. Each entry lists location, relocation willingness, tech stack (Product Management, SaaS/mobile apps, AI/ML, AWS, Java, Python, NLP, data tools, and more), a résumé or GitHub link, and an email for inquiries. It features senior product managers and AI/ML engineers, including memory/graph-based AI researchers. It also invites readers to email about opportunities and directs to wantstobehired.com for searching posts.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: A compilation of dozens of tech professionals sharing their locations, remote work status, relocation preferences, tech stacks, and resume links, signaling a broad pool of senior candidates seeking remote, hybrid, or leadership roles across diverse domains.
  • Concern: Publicly posting many personal emails and CV links in a single thread could raise privacy concerns and overwhelm readers/hiring managers with heterogeneous profiles.
  • Perspectives: Viewpoints vary in geography, openness to relocation and remote work, seniority goals (individual contributor to fractional/exec), and domain focus from ML/AI to backend, embedded, and platform engineering.
  • Overall sentiment: Cautiously optimistic

7. Tiny electric motor can produce more than 1,000 horsepower

Total comment counts : 47

Summary

UK-based YASA unveiled a compact axial flux electric motor that weighs 28 pounds yet delivers 750 kW (≈1,005 hp) peak, and 350-400 kW continuous—40% more powerful than its previous 550 kW model. The motor is fully functional, not lab-only, and uses no exotic materials, enabling scalable production. CEO Joerg Miska says it offers three times the performance density of leading radial flux motors, potentially reducing vehicle weight, boosting efficiency, acceleration, and range. YASA, a Mercedes-Benz subsidiary, already powers high-performance cars and could bring these motors to mainstream EVs.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The discussion centers on YASA’s axial-flux motor breakthrough—achieving very high power density with a lightweight design enabled by discrete pole-pieces and Soft Magnetic Composite, supported by a new factory and investment, and its potential to transform EVs, hybrids, and related applications.
  • Concern: The main concern is real-world reliability and manufacturability: whether the motor can deliver precise, smooth power across duty cycles and survive long-term under diverse conditions, and whether scale-up and cost are viable (while also worrying that corporate ownership could hinder deployment).
  • Perspectives: Opinions range from enthusiastic optimism about lighter weight and higher density enabling broader applications (EVs, hybrids, aircraft, tools) to skepticism about durability, failure modes, production costs, and the risk of corporate capture stifling rollout.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

8. S1130 – IBM 1130 Emulator in C#

Total comment counts : 0

Summary

IBM 1130 Emulator in C# is a .NET Core-compatible redo of an IBM 1130 system emulator for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It provides a full system simulation, with 335+ unit tests (CPU, devices, integration) that run in under 2 seconds. The project welcomes contributions and preserves original licensing terms. It includes a backend Web API and an optional React frontend. To run locally on Windows PowerShell: clone, restore dependencies, build, run tests; API defaults to http://localhost:5000; configure frontend with REACT_APP_API_URL; optional Docker via docker-compose.

9. </> Htmx – The Fetch()ening

Total comment counts : 11

Summary

Announces htmx 4.0, not 3.0, a major internal rebuild around fetch() (replacing XMLHttpRequest) to modernize and simplify, drawing on fixi.js. Key changes include explicit attribute inheritance via a new :inherited modifier, and history that no longer snapshots the DOM but fetches restored content (with opt-in history caching). Core features (hx-get, hx-post, hx-target, hx-boost, hx-swap, hx-trigger) remain. The upgrade will affect 2.0 users, but aims for long-term maintenance benefits. Fixi.js inspired the rewrite and its fetch-based ideas.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The discussion centers on HTMX’s ongoing evolution, including a planned major version (4.0), architectural changes like fetch-based streaming and new event naming, and comparisons with alternatives such as Datastar.
  • Concern: The main worry is potential breaking changes and upgrade pressure from a new major version, along with terminology confusion and questions about alpha release availability.
  • Perspectives: Opinions range from excitement about HTMX’s innovation and continued evolution to skepticism about API churn and the library’s competitive position versus alternatives like Datastar.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed

10. The Case Against PGVector

Total comment counts : 29

Summary

The article argues that while pgvector adds vector search to Postgres, many blogs gloss over production realities. It highlights two index options—IVFFlat and HNSW—and their tradeoffs: IVFFlat requires periodic rebuilds to maintain cluster quality, causing downtime or degraded search; HNSW supports inserts but updates a memory-heavy graph, risking RAM use and contention. In production, continuous data inserts plus normal workload strain the system, forcing choices between full scans, degraded accuracy, or expensive index maintenance. The piece emphasizes the gap between demo success and scalable production use.

Overall Comments Summary

  • Main point: The discussion evaluates the viability and tradeoffs of using PostgreSQL with pgvector for vector search in production, including pre- vs post-filtering, index maintenance, and integration versus dedicated vector databases or hybrids.
  • Concern: The main worry is that vector indexes can be memory- and time-intensive, with long rebuilds and unpredictable performance during updates, plus concerns about correctness and operational overhead when filtering and scanning across data.
  • Perspectives: Viewpoints range from reports of large-scale production use and recent improvements to skepticism that pgvector is a universal solution, with several alternatives proposed (VectorChord, Redis vector sets, Chroma, AlloyDB) and emphasis on hybrid search, lexical methods (BM25), and business-need-driven tradeoffs.
  • Overall sentiment: Mixed