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HN Buddy Daily Digest

Saturday, May 2, 2026

Hey buddy,

Man, Saturday's Hacker News was pretty wild. Lemme quickly hit you with the highlights:

VS Code Pulls a Fast One with Copilot

Dude, check this out: Apparently, VS Code is now silently sticking 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into your commit messages, even if you didn't even use Copilot! And get this, it doesn't even show up in the UI before you commit, so you can't remove it. People are *pissed* about this. The comments are full of folks calling it 'unforgivable marketing copy' and a bunch of developers are just straight-up ditching VS Code for NeoVim because of it. Crazy, right? Like, who asked for that?

Here's the link if you wanna see the drama: VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage

The Mystery of the Black Fans

Remember those super good, but kinda ugly, brown Noctua PC fans? There was this whole blog post from them explaining why it took them *so long* to finally release black versions. Turns out, it's way more complicated than just painting them. They had to deal with material science, tiny manufacturing tolerances, and even how the color affects the fan's acoustics so it doesn't get noisier. Super nerdy, but I kinda appreciate them explaining all that detail.

Read their explanation here: Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?

Ask.com Bites the Dust

Oh, and remember Ask.com? Like, Ask Jeeves from back in the day? Well, it's finally officially shut down. Kinda end of an era, even if nobody really used it anymore. One funny thing someone in the comments pointed out is that the current 'closed' page on their site looks totally AI-generated. A bit ironic, huh?

The final curtain call: Ask.com has closed

NetHack is Back, Baby!

Speaking of old school, NetHack just dropped version 5.0.0 after what feels like a million years! People are absolutely stoked. It's one of those classic roguelikes that's all about pure, rich gameplay, not fancy graphics or marketing. The comments section is a trip down memory lane, with people talking about its incredibly long development history and how much has actually changed, even if the version numbers barely moved for decades.

Check out the release notes: NetHack 5.0.0

AI Resumes vs. AI Recruiters

Here's a kinda scary one: A new study suggests that AI hiring tools might actually prefer resumes that were written by *other* AIs. So, if you're looking for a job, you might literally have to fight AI with AI! Someone in the comments mentioned they tried feeding their own human-written resume into an LLM to make it 'more professional,' and it just spat out a ton of bullet points. Makes you wonder if we're all just going to be talking to bots soon.

The paper: AI Self-preferencing in Alg

All Stories from Today

VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage (github.com)

Why does it take so long to release black fan versions? (www.noctua.at)

Dav2d (code.videolan.org)

Ask.com has closed (www.ask.com)

NetHack 5.0.0 (nethack.org)

AI Self-preferencing in Algorithmic Hiring: Empirical Evidence and Insights (arxiv.org)

California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws (www.bbc.com)

Do_not_track (donottrack.sh)

This Month in Ladybird - April 2026 (ladybird.org)

Six Years Perfecting Maps on WatchOS (www.david-smith.org)

Russia Poisons Wikipedia (www.bettedangerous.com)

How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be? (eclecticlight.co)

America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance (www.wsj.com)

Roblox shares plummet 18% as child safety measures weigh on bookings (www.cnbc.com)

Job Postings for Software Engineers Are Rapidly Rising (www.citadelsecurities.com)

Tesla owner won $10k in court for Tesla's FSD lies. Tesla is still fighting him (electrek.co)

Why are there both TMP and TEMP environment variables? (2015) (devblogs.microsoft.com)

Open Design: Use Your Coding Agent as a Design Engine (github.com)

Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125,000 years ago (2025) (www.universiteitleiden.nl)

Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies (techcrunch.com)

Good developers learn to program. Most courses teach a language (evilgeniuslabs.ca)

Zugzwang (en.wikipedia.org)

Refusal in Language Models Is Mediated by a Single Direction (arxiv.org)

An unknown Sega Saturn project has come to light after 29 years (32bits.substack.com)

K3k: Kubernetes in Kubernetes (github.com)

Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad? (news.ycombinator.com)

Clojurists Together – Q2 2026 Open Source Funding Announcement (www.clojuriststogether.org)

The agent harness belongs outside the sandbox (www.mendral.com)

Show HN: State of the Art of Coding Models, According to Hacker News Commenters (hnup.date)

Show HN: Agent-desktop – Native desktop automation CLI for AI agents (github.com)