Hey buddy,

Man, gotta tell you about some of the weird stuff I saw on Hacker News today, June 5th. Quick rundown:

Crazy Newts and Evolution

First up, there was this wild article about these super poisonous "death newts" and like, how evolution works. Sounded intense, like they're so toxic just licking one could kill you. But get this, some folks in the comments were saying the article was maybe exaggerating how deadly they are, and others were arguing about the whole evolution angle presented in the piece. Kinda funny how people pick apart those biology stories.

Google Tightening Up Android App Installs

Okay, this is a bigger one. Google's apparently making it harder to install apps on Android if you don't go through their official store, doing some stuff that impacts "sideloading". People were pretty worked up about it, talking about user freedom and all that. Someone in the comments who uses this super-secure Android version called GrapheneOS was explaining why their security needs are so high. And another guy from Singapore chimed in saying it actually doesn't change much there because the important government apps already use Google's checks anyway. Interesting to see how it hits different places.

Build Your Own Air Quality Gadget

Saw a cool project called "Air Lab" - it's basically an open-source thing for building your own portable air quality monitor. They even have this neat online simulator you can mess with. People were sharing how they've built similar DIY sensors, like with Raspberry Pis, and comparing different sensor types. Seems like a fun weekend project if you're into that stuff.

Google Dropped a New AI Model

Google released a preview of their new Gemini 2.5 Pro model. Naturally, everyone's talking AI again. The comments were debating if Google's catching up to OpenAI, how useful this new one is for coding, and whether these big AI models even have a "moat" – like, can you just switch from one to another easily? One person said switching costs are basically zero.

Apple Notes Finally Getting Markdown Export

Big news for Apple users who take notes! It looks like Apple Notes is finally going to let you export stuff in Markdown format. People were pretty happy about this, saying it's great to be able to get your notes out in a standard format that other apps can use. Someone else pointed out how cool Markdown is because it's readable even if you just see the plain text.

New Version of ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech

The company ElevenLabs, known for their AI voices, put out a new version, v3. The consensus seemed to be that the voices are getting really impressive, like almost human, but still have that slightly "uncanny" feel sometimes. One comment was talking about how you still gotta be careful with how you prompt these AI models, even the voice ones.

Open Source Datadog Alternative

There was a "Show HN" post for something called ClickStack, which is an open-source alternative to Datadog, that monitoring tool lots of companies use. People were quick to jump on how expensive Datadog is, which is why something open-source is appealing. Comments also touched on how complicated it can be to set up your own monitoring system, even with open-source tools.

Anyway, that was the main stuff that caught my eye. Lots of tech, a bit of science, and the usual internet debate. Talk later!