January 9, 2026
Popcorn mode: comments unleashed
Looking for flagged discussions on HN? See what's active
Hacker News’ Active tab is pure popcorn—unless you hate flame wars
TLDR: Hacker News’ Active tab ranks posts by comments and age, letting heated and even flagged threads stay visible. The crowd is split: some love the “popcorn” transparency, others say it fuels flame wars, while RSS and hckrnews offer backdoor ways to track what gets buried.
Looking for the spiciest Hacker News debates? The new-ish Active view is basically a drama magnet: it ranks threads by raw comment count and age—no likes, no filters. One user summed it up with a shrug and a siren: “No upvotes, flags, anti-flame war detection…” The crowd split fast. Fans call it popcorn mode, critics say it’s a chaos feed that boosts shouting matches over substance.
Cue confusion: “What does flagged even mean?” asked one commenter, while another dropped a pro tip—your RSS (a simple, old-school subscription feed) still shows flagged threads and original links. And for the chaos-curious, there’s the fan-favorite workaround: hckrnews.com, a chronological list of homepage stories even if they get flagged off the front page. Translation: If a post got reported into the shadows, you can still find it.
Meanwhile, the Active tab is serving a buffet of brawls: “AI coding assistants are getting worse,” Anthropic clamping down on Claude Code, Vietnam banning banking on rooted phones, and even Bose unlocking old speakers. Some cheer the transparency (“pretty cool view!”), others worry it supercharges flame wars. Whether you love debates or hate drama, the Active tab is where the internet’s tech arguments go to stretch their legs.
Key Points
- •The Hacker News “active” page lists current high‑engagement discussions with titles, sources, points, and comment counts.
- •The feed includes items labeled as “[flagged]” that remain visible in the active view.
- •Prominent technology items include Anthropic’s policy change on Claude Code, Kagi’s Orion for Linux alpha, and Bose opening APIs for SoundTouch speakers.
- •Policy topics feature Vietnam’s ban on rooted phones for banking apps, the European Commission’s open source evidence call, and a U.S. visa bond requirement.
- •Developer‑oriented entries cover WebAssembly, Rust‑based embedded frameworks, executable Markdown with Unix pipes, and compact data representation for chess positions.