Hey buddy,

Man, you gotta check out Hacker News from Monday. Some wild stuff on there. Lemme give you the quick rundown.

Tax Deduction for Software Dev

Okay, first off, there's this huge thread about a tax thing here in the US, Section 174. Apparently, a few years ago they changed it so companies have to spread out software R&D costs over five years instead of writing them off right away. People are saying this is seriously hurting startups and hiring, especially after all the layoffs. Some folks in the comments were saying it makes hiring engineers way pricier for small companies compared to other jobs. One person even said they couldn't start their company because of it. Sounds like a big mess for the tech scene.

Apple's New Dev Stuff

Then there's a couple of big Apple things. They announced a bunch of new tools for developers. One is about their AI models, called "Foundation Models," which they say run mostly on your device, which is pretty cool for privacy. They also announced this new "Containerization" framework. Comments are talking about how the on-device AI might make apps smaller and simpler. The container thing is apparently based on virtual machines, and some people were comparing it to older Windows tech ideas. Someone else was hoping Apple would finally make kernel development easier.

Apple's New Design Look

Related to Apple, they also showed off a new software design look that they're apparently using across all their platforms. The comments were pretty mixed on this one. Some designers were like, "eh, not feeling it," and thought it might just be a trendy thing for younger folks or even looked a bit cheap and amateurish in places, like using old Photoshop effects. Ha!

Kagi Hits 50k Users

Saw that Kagi, the paid search engine, hit 50,000 users. Seems like they're chugging along nicely. The discussion there was mostly about their growth and some specific features people want, like easier ways to use it on different computers or separating work and personal searches.

Google Phone Number Hack

This one was kinda scary. Someone wrote about how they figured out a way to potentially guess Google users' phone numbers just by messing with the account recovery page. Yikes. People in the comments were sharing stories about losing accounts over phone numbers and how recovery systems can be weak points. Someone pointed out that your phone number isn't even stored on the SIM card itself, which is kinda interesting.

Apple's Swift Container Package

Okay, back to Apple's container thing. There was also a separate link to the actual GitHub repo for their new Swift package for running Linux containers on macOS. So it's open source! People were speculating why Apple is doing this – maybe they want better integration than Docker or VMware. Folks are hoping that having Apple's own team work on it means they'll actually fix bugs in their virtualization stuff.

Free Speech Extremist Meets the FBI?

And lastly, there was this post with a wild title: "FSE meets the FBI". Sounds like some kind of free speech group or person had a run-in with the feds. The comments were all over the place, debating free speech, how forums like HN handle moderation, and even comparing political leaders. It got pretty heated, lots of back-and-forth about whether something someone said was a joke or serious.

So yeah, busy day on HN! Talk later man.