frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Most men lie about how tall they are

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/the-men-who-lie-about-their-height
19•bookofjoe•1h ago

Comments

bookofjoe•1h ago
https://archive.ph/QlOHy
QuercusMax•1h ago
I like to tell people that my doctor said I'm 6 feet with shoes on.

Not lying; it's true! I'm like 5'11.

dec0dedab0de•1h ago
I am 5'10.25", but I just say 5'10". It is hilarious whenever someone else claims to be 5'10" and I am multiple inches taller than they are.
sgt•1h ago
That's at least 5'11" man. Maybe even 6 feet.
drrob•1h ago
And 6' is basically 6'2"...
joleyj•1h ago
Is it lying if you believe it?
coolThingsFirst•1h ago
Giant of a man standing at 5'10, felt no need to ever lie about my height.
firdunupsa2•1h ago
Ok grandma, why did you post this on Hacker News
bookofjoe•1h ago
Who you callin' grandma?
Madmallard•1h ago
Why is this on the front page of Hacker News?

How does this have to do with anything related to Hacker News?

sgt•1h ago
6'6" here. No way I want to claim more.
Simiry•1h ago
I’m 6 foot and a quarter, if I say I’m 6 foot people don’t believe me and it becomes a conversation, if I say I’m 6’1 people believe it and say nothing else.

Path of least resistance

wvbdmp•1h ago
I always explicitly quote my government ID.
nostrademons•1h ago
Note that some of this is competitive benchmarking, and often encouraged by those men's partners, and tends to circulate around the way bullshit does because there are relatively few reality checks.

For the longest time I thought I was 5'9". Then my sister got a new boyfriend and was like "Yeah, he's 5'10". Well, I met boyfriend and I was at least an inch taller than him, so I guess that meant I was 5'11". On to my dating profile 5'11" went. Girls I met were like "You're really tall for an Asian dude" and my coworkers were like "We have an unusually tall team", so I got plenty of validation for my newfound height from external sources.

I finally went to the doctor's (yeah, it's pretty common for men to skip a few years in their 20s and early 30s), and sure enough: I was 5'8.75". My sister's husband is 5'8".

bushwart•1h ago
I'm 5'8.7667", sorry mate I have you beat.
nostrademons•1h ago
You must be taller than me, feel free to put 6' down.
neuroelectron•1h ago
The New Yorker is basically The Sun with rambling text instead of pictures of aliens.
MrGilbert•1h ago
I'm 174 cm in height. Do I wish to be taller? Sometimes. Do I wish to be taller to impress a potential romantic partner? Absolutely not. But I'm shorter than most men in my country, so on social occasions in public (club, party, whatever), I struggle to make my way to the bar, because I literally cannot see a thing. I cope that with being on the louder side to make my way. It is what it is.

Also:

> "smash your face with a hammer"

> "tiptoemaxxing"

Everything but seeing a therapist, huh?

univocal•1m ago
I'm 174cm and one ugly motherfucker at that, and yet some of the most beautiful women I've ever met asked me out by the simple virtue of being a somewhat decent and caring human being. There's an interview where Elle Fanning straight up admits that the 167cm tall Jack Black is one of the most fascinating men she's ever met[1].

I can't believe there are communities that genuinely listen to someone like Clavicular Whatever or Andrew Tate for advice when there's an inordinate amount of empirical evidence that shows that the importance of mere appearances is almost negligible compared to attitude and personality when we talk about seduction (or even simple human interaction).

Like... yes, join that theatre or dance class, and don't be afraid to look goofy or ridicule when you show your sensitive, fragile or funny side. Sure, it will be rough and it will probably hurt, often and repeatedly, at the beginning. But in the long term it's surely more effective than moping around saying girls don't like you while paying someone to enlarge your jaw or whatever.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KW_yQp02W0

kylehotchkiss•1h ago
> From guys trying to make it past women’s six-foot filter

IMO this filter is a red flag unless she is taller herself. What benefit is there to getting past it? Don't reward people for being overly arbitrary in this stuff ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Height is a dumb status symbol for a country where getting ahead for most people is no longer possible.

lostmsu•1h ago
That depends on your dating goal.
ryandrake•1h ago
There was a Reddit post a while ago (so take it with appropriate authority) plotting the distribution of men's reported height[1]. It's a pretty normal bell curve, with a distinct spike at exactly 6'0.

I wonder how much of the exaggeration is caused by the US measurement system providing an easy numeric threshold of "6". Does a similar spike appear when you limit the population to those using the metric system?

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xmeh3p/oc_...

_--__--__•5m ago
180cm is the roughly equivalent round number benchmark but it's a bit shorter and most European populations are a bit taller on average than Americans
twiss•1h ago
I think this is more common when reporting heights in feet+inches than in cm. Rounding up 1.76m to 1.80m seems much weirder than rounding up 5'11" to 6', since all measurements in cm are very precise-sounding.
comrade1234•52m ago
I had a funny experience in a group where height came up and I answered that I'm 6'1" and a girl in the group exclaimed that that's her boyfriends height too but he was standing next to me and was probably six inches shorter. Everyone looked very embarrassed and did the looking around but not at anyone thing...

How to Build Long-Running AI Agents Without Timeouts

https://medium.com/inside-the-if/how-to-build-long-running-ai-agents-without-timeouts-21ecf9d09b99
1•sukhpinder0804•30s ago•0 comments

Show HN: Knowable, the AI tutor that follows your work on paper

https://knowable.ca/
1•samuelzxu•55s ago•0 comments

Best-Known Sorting Networks

https://bertdobbelaere.github.io/sorting_networks.html
1•NooneAtAll3•1m ago•0 comments

On The Energetics of Large-Scale Computation Using Astronomical Resources

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GQbS34OkMF6q9r0ZyuSvB9hu4TUQL-Nc
1•FloorEgg•4m ago•0 comments

Simple input–output dependencies explain neuronal activity

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-026-03306-3
1•E-Reverance•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: An x402-powered billboard for autonomous agents

https://theagentbillboard.com/
3•alexreysa•4m ago•0 comments

OpenEvidence

https://www.openevidence.com/
1•bookofjoe•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Formally verified polygon intersection – Opus 4.8 oneshots, prev failed

https://github.com/schildep/verified-polygon-intersection
8•permute•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: OpenPaper - No algorithm, no account, just your sources as a newspaper

https://github.com/falense/openpaper
1•falense•13m ago•0 comments

I'm tired of LLM skill slop, so I built mine with regression tests

2•iliaov•14m ago•0 comments

Thorium, an alternative nuclear fuel [video]

https://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel
1•nailer•14m ago•1 comments

Show HN: SpotOn WC26 – a free World Cup 2026 bracket game that scores itself

https://spoton-wc26.netlify.app
1•DensitySam•15m ago•0 comments

Thinking About AI Through Architecture and Philosophy

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/06/ai-companies-hiring-philosophers/687417/
1•genjimain•16m ago•0 comments

Rekwest – adv request for Node, zero deps

https://www.npmjs.com/package/rekwest
1•bricss•16m ago•0 comments

South Atlantic Anomaly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly
2•mooreds•17m ago•0 comments

Elon Musk is stealing your retirement

https://www.stvn.sh/writing/elon-musk-is-stealing-your-retirement-sb3bz85
4•mooreds•18m ago•0 comments

Skate 3 Recompiled: A native port of the Xbox 360 game for Windows and Linux

https://github.com/mchughalex/skate3recomp
1•turingfeel•18m ago•0 comments

If AI business is greatest business ever, why are they doing IPO?

2•OnuRC•20m ago•1 comments

Claude Opus 4.8 system prompt leaked

https://gist.github.com/gulbaki/92595fe75578680a14c52a8f9c6765ea
1•bakigul•22m ago•1 comments

Anthropic warns AI could soon help build its own successors

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/04/anthropic-warns-ai-build-successors
5•devonnull•22m ago•0 comments

Consciousness in AI: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (2023)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708
2•i5heu•24m ago•0 comments

The Networking Workgroup

https://swift.org/blog/announcing-networking-workgroup/
1•frizlab•24m ago•0 comments

Synaptic high-frequency jumping synchronises vision to high-speed behaviour

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72509-2
2•PaulHoule•25m ago•0 comments

Audi reveals 1,001-HP Nuvolari hybrid supercarl, so much for going all-electric

https://electrek.co/2026/06/04/audi-nuvolari-1001-hp-hybrid-supercar-v8-r8-successor/
1•Bender•26m ago•0 comments

Book of Cron Job

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01716-0
2•tahoupt•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Wallflower.app – A Combined Mastodon and Bluesky Client

https://thewallflower.app
2•tldrthelaw•32m ago•0 comments

IPv6 zones in URLs are a mistake

https://xeiaso.net/notes/2026/ipv6-zones-go-url/
4•xena•34m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Intencion – Product analytics that improves your AI agents continuously

https://intencion.io
1•sakuraiben•35m ago•0 comments

The push to bring AI doctors into American medicine

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/06/04/inside-trump-backed-push-bring-ai-doctors-in...
2•bookofjoe•35m ago•2 comments

Millennials Are Set to Inherit Trillions–But for Most, It Will Come Too Late

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/great-wealth-transfer-inheritance-too-late-millennials/
1•littlexsparkee•38m ago•0 comments