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Why I Write (1946)

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/
75•RyanShook•2h ago•16 comments

DeepSeek v4

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/
237•impact_sy•1h ago•65 comments

GPT-5.5

https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/
1198•rd•10h ago•816 comments

Bitwarden CLI compromised in ongoing Checkmarx supply chain campaign

https://socket.dev/blog/bitwarden-cli-compromised
691•tosh•14h ago•341 comments

A quick look at Mythos run on Firefox: too much hype?

https://xark.es/b/mythos-firefox-150
11•leonidasv•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Tolaria – Open-source macOS app to manage Markdown knowledge bases

https://github.com/refactoringhq/tolaria
142•lucaronin•6h ago•46 comments

Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-23/meta-tells-staff-it-will-cut-10-of-jobs-in-pus...
487•Vaslo•9h ago•461 comments

US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/23/politics/us-special-forces-soldier-arrested-maduro-raid-trade
77•nkrisc•6h ago•145 comments

MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code

https://blog.meshcore.io/2026/04/23/the-split
182•wielebny•11h ago•102 comments

TorchTPU: Running PyTorch Natively on TPUs at Google Scale

https://developers.googleblog.com/torchtpu-running-pytorch-natively-on-tpus-at-google-scale/
94•mji•7h ago•4 comments

Using the internet like it's 1999

https://joshblais.com/blog/using-the-internet-like-its-1999/
122•joshuablais•8h ago•73 comments

Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-71264-8
12•scubakid•36m ago•0 comments

Your hex editor should color-code bytes

https://simonomi.dev/blog/color-code-your-bytes/
533•tobr•2d ago•147 comments

An update on recent Claude Code quality reports

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/april-23-postmortem
614•mfiguiere•10h ago•483 comments

Show HN: Agent Vault – Open-source credential proxy and vault for agents

https://github.com/Infisical/agent-vault
92•dangtony98•1d ago•31 comments

UK Biobank health data keeps ending up on GitHub

https://biobank.rocher.lc
94•Cynddl•14h ago•24 comments

My phone replaced a brass plug

https://drobinin.com/posts/my-phone-replaced-a-brass-plug/
102•valzevul•12h ago•17 comments

Astronomers find the edge of the Milky Way

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomers-find-the-edge-of-the-milky-way/
100•bookofjoe•10h ago•21 comments

Incident with multple GitHub services

https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/myrbk7jvvs6p
227•bwannasek•12h ago•112 comments

Show HN: Honker – Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN Semantics for SQLite

https://github.com/russellromney/honker
240•russellthehippo•16h ago•60 comments

A programmable watch you can actually wear

https://www.hackster.io/news/a-diy-watch-you-can-actually-wear-8f91c2dac682
154•sarusso•2d ago•78 comments

Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/dining/la-marzocco-espresso-machine.html
53•mitchbob•3d ago•86 comments

Arch Linux Now Has a Bit-for-Bit Reproducible Docker Image

https://antiz.fr/blog/archlinux-now-has-a-reproducible-docker-image/
327•maxloh•1d ago•109 comments

Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

https://wheelfront.com/this-alberta-startup-sells-no-tech-tractors-for-half-price/
2163•Kaibeezy•1d ago•740 comments

DeepSeek-V4: Towards Highly Efficient Million-Token Context Intelligence

https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Pro
111•cmrdporcupine•1h ago•9 comments

French government agency confirms breach as hacker offers to sell data

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/french-govt-agency-confirms-breach-as-hacker-offer...
366•robtherobber•12h ago•123 comments

I spent years trying to make CSS states predictable

https://tenphi.me/blog/why-i-spent-years-trying-to-make-css-states-predictable/
56•tenphi•16h ago•24 comments

Writing a C Compiler, in Zig (2025)

https://ar-ms.me/thoughts/c-compiler-1-zig/
145•tosh•19h ago•41 comments

I am building a cloud

https://crawshaw.io/blog/building-a-cloud
1035•bumbledraven•23h ago•512 comments

Advanced Packaging Limits Come into Focus

https://semiengineering.com/advanced-packaging-limits-come-into-focus/
34•PaulHoule•2d ago•5 comments
Open in hackernews

Why I Write (1946)

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/
75•RyanShook•2h ago

Comments

jimbokun•1h ago
This is critical to consider in this age of slop. It’s important first to consider the purpose of writing anything at all. Slop almost always fails this test.
keyle•1h ago
People that don't understand this is best to explain to with AI music.

AI music appears to be reasonable music, but it carries no human emotion, it has no intent to exist and stand up on its own.

That's key to explain when it comes to writing or anything. AI assisted anything, sure, maybe, but AI for creative purposes is bland and ultimately poisons the well.

No one really wants to go see an AI movie at the cinema, except maybe to say that I tried an AI movie as a novelty item, like scented movie screening.

gdulli•23m ago
People who only see art as its surface content without all that other subtext are exposing themselves.
152334H•1h ago
homely and relatable, but why promoted on HN?

How many here have read Burmese Days, had the bookworm's childhood, and are imbued with that sense of political worldliness?

defrost•1h ago

  Hacker News Guidelines

  What to Submit

  On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. 
~ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang•1h ago
HN is for anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Historical and/or unexpected materials are welcome here! Having them on the site is a long tradition. (As is the "why is this on HN" comment, of course.)

It sounds like you know your Orwell - want to share something about that?

nomilk•1h ago
> I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts

A power to face unpleasant facts is a super power. The world would be a much better place if everyone had it.

dang•1h ago
Posted 9 times before but only a couple threads with comments, and not many of those:

George Orwell: Why I Write (1946) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7901401 - June 2014 (9 comments)

George Orwell: Why I write - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3122646 - Oct 2011 (1 comment)

fabmilo•1h ago
Writing it thinking. We developed our brain together with our hands. It feels slow but is actually faster for the end goal.
kuboble•46m ago
I think I haven't been exposed to such a good writing in years. (Which probably says as much about average modern writing as it does about my reading habits)

> Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention.

Story of my life is how to align that demon to force me into things I actually want to do.

blharr•24m ago
It's something that's really been worrying me these days. With AI creating literally floods of information, it's getting noisier and noisier.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn•13m ago
"I haven't been exposed to such a good writing in years." yes, this Orwell chap might have something about him!
svat•45m ago
> Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

This essay was written in 1946. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell_bibliography#Nov... consecutive books he published were:

* Coming Up for Air (1939)

* Animal Farm (1945)

Given the "seven years", it appears considered "Coming Up for Air" his previous novel, and "Animal Farm" not a novel. I wonder why?

In any case, the novel that he next wrote “fairly soon”, and which he predicted would be a failure, was:

* Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

caymanjim•15m ago
Animal Farm is considered a novella, which is shorter than a novel.
dzink•41m ago
He wrote for aesthetics and he wrote for politics. In the end, he saw the aesthetic writing as meaningless.