Man, Monday on Hacker News was pretty interesting. Here's the quick lowdown on what got people talking:

The Annoying Contact Pages

First up, there was this article about how frustrating contact pages are, you know, the ones that make you jump through a million hoops just to send a message. It really hit a nerve with people.

What was cool in the comments was how some folks said that big companies like AWS actually have surprisingly good support, even for small-time users. And get this: that whole "add a credit card first" thing some services do? Turns out it's super effective at weeding out fraudsters, like crypto miners and worse. Wild, right?

Icons Everywhere in Menus

Then there was a good rant about icons in menus being absolutely everywhere now and how it's kinda overwhelming. The author was begging for help!

But the comments had some surprising counterpoints. A few people who are dyslexic said icons actually make things much easier for them to parse than words. And some power users said they're faster because they visually memorize the icons. So, it's not all bad! Though one person just jumped in to say MacOS has never been fun and KDE is miles better, haha.

GitHub Actions' Package Manager Woes

For the dev crowd, there was a big discussion about GitHub Actions and how its "package manager" might be the worst thing ever. Sounds like it's a real pain point.

People were complaining that using YAML for complex workflows is a messy nightmare and that writing infrastructure-as-code in a proper programming language is way better. And a big warning: you really need to audit these Actions because some of them pull and execute unpinned, dodgy scripts. Also, someone made a funny jab that "Unix admins" are now just "DevOps" or "SREs" and get paid double for the same work.

Microsoft's AI Demand Problem

Big news for Microsoft: apparently, they're having a problem with a lack of demand for their AI products. So much hype, but maybe not enough buyers?

The comments were a mixed bag. Some thought it was just typical "Microsoft hate," but others agreed that a lot of AI still feels like more hype than real, practical value for businesses. Interesting to see if that changes.

IBM Acquires Confluent

In big tech business news, IBM is set to acquire Confluent, the company behind Kafka. That's a huge move!

One comment pointed out that this is often how companies selling to enterprises survive – they eventually get bought by a bigger platform that can just add them to their sales catalog. Also, a bit of a downer, someone mentioned that Red Hat, another big IBM acquisition, has apparently been having annual layoffs since 2023. Yikes.

Microsoft Office Price Hike

And speaking of Microsoft, they're increasing Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices again. No surprise there, I guess.

Some people in the comments were grumbling, saying they could still be perfectly functional with Office '98! But others defended it, saying that M365 today is a massive cloud suite with tons of collaboration and admin tools, not just Word and Excel. Still, might make people think about alternatives like LibreOffice.

Earthquake in Japan

On a more serious note, there was a strong 7.6 earthquake off the coast of northern Japan, and a tsunami warning was issued. Hopefully, everyone there is safe and sound.

People in the comments were sharing tips for emergency kits, which is always good to be reminded of. And there was this wild comment about a manga from '99 that supposedly predicted the 2011 Fukushima disaster and then tried to predict another one in 2025. Super random timing with this news.

Uber Selling Your Data

Finally, Uber's at it again. Apparently, they're turning data about your trips and takeout orders into "insights" for marketers. So, basically, selling your data.

Naturally, people were pretty annoyed about the privacy implications. Comments highlighted how Uber pretty much killed off its competition, giving us fewer options, and now they're leveraging that. Some argue that the ads help subsidize prices, but others are just fed up with the privacy recklessness.

Anyway, that's the gist of it! Catch ya later!