The Hacker News thread discusses "Ratatoi," a C library that wraps `strtol` and crashes on errors like overflow, prioritizing safety over silent failures. Commenters debate the design of `strtol`, criticizing its error handling (relying on `errno` and `endptr`) as cumbersome. Alternatives like OpenBSD's `strtonum` and custom wrappers are suggested. Some argue crashing is acceptable for non-recoverable errors, especially during startup, while others worry about denial-of-service vulnerabilities. The discussion also touches on `strtol`'s const correctness issues and the complexities of error handling in C. It also raises the issues that crashing may be acceptable for non-recoverable errors, especially during startup and it also highlights the risks of denial-of-service vulnerabilities.