Just quickly calling to tell you about some wild stuff from Hacker News today, January 15th, 2026. You gotta hear this.

The most suspicious URL shortener ever

First up, there's this new URL shortener, right? It's called CreepyLink.com and its whole deal is to make your links look as suspicious as humanly possible. Like, not just a bit dodgy, but full-on "don't click this" vibe. And get this, someone in the comments tried it and Chrome immediately gave them a big red "Dangerous site" warning! So it actually works! Another guy said all shorteners are suspicious anyway, which is fair. There was even a mention of a "phishyurl" for *even more* suspicious links. Wild.

China's insane renewable energy push

Then there were these incredible photos showing off China's massive wind and solar farms. The scale is just breathtaking. The comments were saying that last year, China's new power generation was actually over 100% renewable, with new coal plants just being used for backup. Someone did point out that the "100 panels per second" stat was a peak during a price change rush, but still, the overall picture is nuts.

Apple and Nvidia fighting over chips

Big tech drama! Apparently, Apple is really scrambling for chip manufacturing space at TSMC because Nvidia is taking up so much capacity for AI chips. It's like a battle for who gets the best toys. A wild comment suggested Apple should just buy Intel to secure their own fabs, which sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but hey, maybe!

Palantir's "ELITE" app for ICE raids

This one's pretty heavy. There's a report from 404 Media about Palantir's "ELITE" app being used by ICE to basically pinpoint neighborhoods for raids in Minneapolis. Lots of really intense discussion in the comments about constitutional rights and how data is being used. Some folks were even calling out Palantir employees for "vice-signaling" on the board, whatever that means.

Solving the loneliness epidemic

There was a big "Ask HN" thread about how to solve the loneliness epidemic. Lots of heartfelt stories and ideas. One person talked about building an art practice after volunteering at Burning Man, which sounds pretty cool for meeting people. Another guy goes on night walks and talks to homeless people and store clerks, genuinely helping them. Someone else was kinda skeptical, wondering if it's really an "epidemic" or just "false expectations" from social media.

Wikipedia turns 25!

Can you believe it? Wikipedia is 25 years old! Made me feel old just reading it. People were sharing memories and discussing the constant "edit wars" and how the site handles controversial topics. One commenter made a good point that even when an article sticks to facts, editors can still push an agenda by selectively leaving out certain true information. Makes you think, right?

AI vs. Tech Writers

Finally, there was this letter to companies who fired tech writers because of AI. The author was basically saying AI isn't a magic bullet, especially for documenting new tech where there's no existing data for LLMs to learn from. The comments had a good debate, with some saying AI's pattern matching is surprisingly good, and others comparing it to the printing press, making information cheaper to publish, which could actually improve overall quality. It's a real hot topic right now, obviously.

Anyway, just thought you'd wanna hear about that. Catch you later, man!