HN Buddy Daily Digest
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Hey buddy,
Man, you gotta check out some of the stuff on Hacker News from Saturday. Some pretty cool posts popped up. Lemme hit you with the highlights real quick.
Code Stuff - Push Ifs Up and Fors Down
Okay, so there was this article about organizing your code better. The idea is to put your checks and conditions (like `if` statements) earlier in the function or block, and your loops (like `for` loops) later. It apparently makes the code easier to read and understand because you deal with the simple cases first and the complex iteration later. People in the comments were debating if the examples in the article were too simple, but others pointed out you gotta use simple examples to explain general ideas, right? Someone even brought up how this lines up with some fancy programming theory stuff.
Privacy Drama - Proton vs. Switzerland
This one's kinda wild. Proton, you know, the secure email and VPN company based in Switzerland, is threatening to pack up and leave because of a new surveillance law there. They're saying the law would make them less private than even Google! The comments got into how Switzerland's direct democracy works, like referendums, and how it makes it harder for lawmakers to pass bad stuff. Someone compared it to how tough it is to change the constitution in the US. Another comment just sounded bummed out about people not caring enough to vote against bad laws these days.
New JavaScript Feature - Resource Management
For the web dev folks, JavaScript is getting a new feature called "Explicit Resource Management" with a `using` keyword. Basically, it helps you automatically clean up things like open files or network connections when you're done with them, which is super handy and prevents leaks. The comments were mostly positive, talking about how useful it is, especially when you have multiple things to clean up. Though, of course, someone thought the new syntax was terrible!
Security Alert - O2 Location Bug
Okay, this is a bit scary. A security researcher found a flaw in O2's network (a phone carrier) where you could apparently find a customer's location just by making a call over 4G (VoLTE). The researcher wrote about how they tried to report it first. People in the comments were thanking the researcher for finding and disclosing it, but also talking about how risky it can be for researchers to report these kinds of vulnerabilities. Someone mentioned that on some Android phones, you can even get diagnostic info easily via USB without rooting the phone.
Finding Stuff in a Crowded World - Curation
There was this interesting article asking, if everything is just dumped online without anyone really sorting or recommending the good stuff (curation), how do we actually find things we like? Like music, movies, whatever. The comments had a good chat about this. Some people argued there isn't actually *more* good stuff being made, just more noise. Others talked about relying on friends, specific communities, or old-school methods like following certain DJs (like the famous John Peel sessions!). It seems like people are finding their own ways to filter the firehose.
Space Stuff - Dead Stars
Got a bit sciency too. There was a post about dead stars and how they don't radiate, maybe getting into black holes. The comments were pretty deep, talking about complicated physics concepts like Kruskal coordinates and different ideas of acceleration. Someone pointed out how hard it is for physicists to agree on stuff when there are so many working on similar problems. One comment mentioned you might survive crossing the event horizon of a black hole but get squashed by tidal forces right before the singularity. Intense!
Old School Tech - N64 Lighting Tricks
And for a dose of nostalgia, someone wrote about how developers did lighting tricks on the Nintendo 64 using color palettes. It's pretty technical but cool to see how they squeezed performance out of that old hardware. The comments had people reminiscing and debating how standard the N64 hardware was compared to other consoles of that time (like PlayStation). Someone also mentioned that demo scene folks are still doing impressive things with these old machines, even if the scenes are simpler.
Anyway, gotta run. Just wanted to give you a quick heads-up on the cool stuff from Saturday. Talk later!