Quick call, saw some wild stuff on Hacker News today, thought you'd wanna hear.

Sideloading Saga

First up, there was a big article about sideloading apps, you know, getting apps outside the official store. It got a ton of comments, and people were saying how expensive it is for manufacturers to make an open platform. Someone even brought up how Google got smacked for illegally restricting competition back in 2022, so it's not like they didn't try to lock things down. Another interesting take was that piracy often comes from messed-up pricing, not just wanting to steal stuff. Like, if software was affordable, people would just buy it.

AI vs. Hospital Bills

Then, get this, someone used AI to negotiate a hospital bill down from $195,000 to $33,000! Can you believe that? The comments were wild, with people sharing their own horror stories about medical bills. Apparently, these insane prices aren't always malice, but tied to how the insurance system works. Also, a lot of folks pointed out that "out-of-pocket maximums" aren't always a fix because a long-term illness can hit that max multiple years in a row. Pretty grim stuff, but AI saving the day is kinda cool.

Europe's Own LLM

On the AI front, there's this new thing called EuroLLM. It's an AI model built in Europe to support all 24 official EU languages. Sounds great, right? Because apparently, even the big-name AI models, including the Chinese ones, don't actually do a great job with all those languages, according to some native speakers in the comments. So this could be a big deal for them.

Samsung's Fridge Ads

Okay, this one's gonna make you mad. Samsung is officially putting ads on their smart fridges with a software update! You pay like three grand for a fridge, and now it's gonna show you commercials? People in the comments were recommending non-smart fridges like Liebherr or Miele, or just using a smart plug on a dumb washing machine to get notifications when it's done. Seriously, ads on a fridge!

Austria Dumps Microsoft

Good news for open source though! The Austrian Ministry of Education is kicking Microsoft out and switching to Nextcloud. Apparently, they're going full open source. People were talking about how governments often outsource IT instead of building internal teams, and some were weighing in on how LibreOffice Calc compares to Google Sheets or web Excel – sounds like it's "good enough" for a lot of stuff.

AirPods Pro 3 Flight Woes

Heard about the AirPods Pro 3 having problems on flights? Apparently, the noise cancellation isn't cutting it for airplane noise. A bunch of people in the comments were saying that Bose headphones have always been way better for noise cancellation, and they just stick with them. So much for Apple's fancy new earbuds for travelers.

Linux Gaming Breakthrough

And finally, for us nerds: A new report says that nearly 90% of Windows games now run on Linux! That's insane! People were even joking that maybe fewer Windows games run on Windows itself. Sounds like gaming on Linux is getting super viable, especially with AMD hardware. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Alright man, gotta run. Talk soon!