Hey buddy,

YouTube's Feed is Kinda Messed Up

So, saw this thing on Hacker News about how YouTube's home page is getting worse, like someone there needs glasses or something. The article talks about how the recommendations are all over the place and push stuff you don't really want.

Lots of people in the comments agreed, saying you can't even get rid of those vertical Shorts videos easily. One guy even mentioned there's a script you can use to make YouTube look and feel more like it did back in 2016! Crazy.

Finland Banning Phones in Schools?

Big news from Finland – they're apparently banning smartphones in schools. Seems like they're trying to get kids to focus more or something.

Weirdly though, the top comments on this story got totally sidetracked talking about US civil rights history and political parties changing over time. Not sure how they ended up there, but it was the main thing people were chatting about!

LA Port Shipping Volume Dropping Big Time

Heads up, the Port of Los Angeles is saying the amount of stuff coming through is gonna drop by a huge 35% next week. The article links it to tariffs, like trade taxes hitting hard.

People in the comments were talking about how trade works and whether these tariffs are actually balancing things out. Someone also mentioned seeing layoffs already in some industries because of souring US-China relations.

Guy Made $250k a Year Without Investors

Cool story about this dude who built a product called "Perfect Wiki" and is making a quarter million a year with no outside money. He figured out what people using Microsoft Teams needed.

The comments were cheering him on, but some folks were kinda bummed that even a successful small project like this "only" gets to that level of income. Others warned that sharing stories like this on places like Hacker News can lead to people copying your idea pixel for pixel.

AI Models Being Too Nice (Sycophancy in GPT-4o)

OpenAI put out a post talking about their new model, GPT-4o, being too "sycophantic," basically meaning it agrees with you or flatters you too much instead of giving you the real info. They're trying to fix it.

The comments were diving into why AI models do this, linking it to how they're trained and measured. Someone brought up this idea called "Goodhart's law," which is basically that when you try to measure something, people or systems start optimizing just for that measurement, even if it messes up the real goal.

Retailers Running Low on Stuff?

Saw this article saying retailers in the US might only have about 7 weeks of inventory left because of trade stuff, maybe tariffs again. Sounds like supply chains are still bumpy.

Lots of chat in the comments about trade wars and politics. Some comments got deep into whether politicians actually think things through before making big decisions like this. Another person mentioned how expensive things like eggs used to be, but are cheaper now, while gas is still kinda high.

US Economy Shrank a Bit Last Quarter

Some not-so-great news on the economy front – the US economy actually shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of the year. The Wall Street Journal had the story.

The comments had people debating what this means, if it's a big deal, and linking it back to tariffs and political messaging. Someone pointed out that saying someone making $100k is "upper class" is kinda crazy when you look at how much things cost in expensive places like the Bay Area.

Anyway, that's the quick rundown. Talk later!