Hacker News Digest — 2026-02-13-PM
PM HN summary for February 13, 2026, focusing on the highest-scoring front-page stories and what the comments fixated on.
Themes
- Basics are regressing: typing/text selection, payment UX, and other foundational interactions feel worse (and people are mad).
- Dark patterns are moving from annoyance to enforcement: the EU is framing infinite scroll/autoplay/recs as addictive design under the DSA.
- Tools for expressing ideas in text remain popular (ASCII/Unicode diagrams, CSS-based generative patterns).
- AI is both a productivity accelerator (pattern finding in math/physics) and a governance/safety lightning rod.