This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on Jan 21, 2026.

Feel free to leave feedback on Github: https://github.com/denolfe/hacker-news-highlights

• (00:00) - Intro

California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-01-09/california-has-no-areas-of-dryness-first-time-in-25-years
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46698660

Unconventional PostgreSQL Optimizations
https://hakibenita.com/postgresql-unconventional-optimizations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46692116

Anthropic's original take home assignment open sourced
https://github.com/anthropics/original_performance_takehome
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46700594

Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691243

cURL removes bug bounties
https://etn.se/index.php/nyheter/72808-curl-removes-bug-bounties.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46701733

The Unix Pipe Card Game
https://punkx.org/unix-pipe-game/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694124

Instabridge has acquired Nova Launcher
https://novalauncher.com/nova-is-here-to-stay
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696357

IPv6 is not insecure because it lacks a NAT
https://www.johnmaguire.me/blog/ipv6-is-not-insecure-because-it-lacks-nat/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696303

The challenges of soft delete
https://atlas9.dev/blog/soft-delete.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46698061