Hey buddy,

Man, you wouldn't believe some of the stuff on Hacker News today. Had to call and give you the quick rundown.

Precision Clock Mk IV

First off, this dude built this crazy accurate clock, like, super precise. The article (https://mitxela.com/projects/precision_clock_mk_iv) is all about the tech he used. People in the comments were chatting about how you can actually get decent GPS signal indoors for timing, which I didn't really think was that reliable. Someone else brought up how old CDMA phone networks used to broadcast GPS time openly. Wild.

Beware of Fast-Math

Okay, this one (https://simonbyrne.github.io/notes/fastmath/) is kinda important for coding. It's a warning about how sometimes compilers try to make math calculations faster, but they can actually change the results slightly. Apparently, this is a big deal in places like high-speed trading or audio software where tiny differences matter a lot. People were saying it can totally mess up if you need your results to be exactly the same every time, like for testing.

Rejecting Bots

There was this post (https://lambdacreate.com/posts/68) about fighting off bots using simple tools. Always a hot topic. The comments had some cool tips, like setting up "honeypots" to trap bots or using tools like fail2ban. One surprising thing someone mentioned was seeing bots repackaging YouTube content into apps on smart TVs. That's a new level of scummy bot activity.

AI Responses May Include Mistakes

Shocker, right? Article (https://www.os2museum.com/wp/ai-responses-may-include-mistakes/) basically says AI models like ChatGPT can mess up and make stuff up. Comments were talking about how this "hallucination" thing is super hard to fix completely. Some people think AIs should just summarize info from reliable sources instead of trying to generate answers from scratch. And get this, someone said they're already seeing "screen-free" summer camps popping up, like people are reacting against all this AI/deepfake stuff.

Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?

This was a cool thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44144473). Someone asked if anyone's actually making a living just selling access to an API. And yeah, turns out lots of people are! One guy mentioned his two-person team runs an API for fine-tuning AI image models and they're doing it full-time. Another wild story was a guy who built a system, quit his job, and then his old company ended up becoming his first customer for the API. Seriously creative ways folks are doing it.

The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

Okay, this one's a bit random (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/business/toto-toilet-japan-bidet.html), but got tons of comments. It's about how popular fancy Japanese toilets with bidets are getting. People were cracking me up in the comments talking about how sewage systems in places like Spain can't even handle regular toilet paper sometimes. Someone else shared that they just use their shower hose as a makeshift bidet, haha. Also talk about how much electricity these things suck up.

My five-year experiment with UTC

Finally, this guy wrote about living his life based on UTC time, not his local time zone, for five years (https://timestripe.com/magazine/blog/timezone/). He said it was actually pretty cool and helped him feel more productive. The comments went back and forth on whether time zones are the actual problem or if it's just about getting used to things. Someone brought up how Japanese TV schedules for late-night anime handle the day change weirdness differently, which was kinda interesting.

Anyway, that was the main stuff. Talk later!