HN Buddy

Daily digest of top Hacker News posts and comments

Subscribe to the HN Buddy Daily Digest

Your email will only be used for the HN Buddy Daily Digest. I will not share it with anyone.

HN Buddy Daily Digest

Saturday, November 7, 2026

Hey buddy, Long time no talk, man! Just wanted to quickly fill you in on some cool stuff from Hacker News from Saturday. Had some interesting reads, you know?

Old Games, New Tricks

First up, guess what? Someone got Need for Speed Underground 2 running online in the browser! Can you believe it? All that nostalgia. The comments were going crazy about how sick the soundtrack was back then. And get this, some people were even talking about how AI lobbyists are now fighting copyright battles, like the RIAA and MPAA, which is a wild twist.

Check it out: nfsu2.xyz

Apple's Secret Spy Stuff?

Okay, this one's a bit creepy. Turns out, every Mac apparently has some undocumented thing that classifies your family members for its AI. People in the comments were totally freaked out about the privacy implications, saying it makes relationships feel artificial. But, you know, some folks were actually fine with it, like for Siri to know who "Jenny" is. Someone else brought up Google Photos doing similar sneaky stuff with auto-backups.

Read more here: 8rank.ai/game/apple-intelligence-personal-knowledge-graph

Homelab on a Dime

You know how we always talk about cheap tech projects? This dude built a whole homelab for literally ten bucks using an OpenStick. Super cool! The comments were full of people sharing other ideas for tiny PCs, like old Intel Compute Sticks, or wishing for RISC-V versions. Someone's even running AdGuardHome on theirs, which is pretty clever for that price point.

The setup is here: blog.bosscher.ch/posts/openstick/

Big AI Shake-Up

On the AI front, big news: Microsoft Research is apparently shutting down their AI Frontiers group. The comments were a deep dive into AI history, debating whether LLMs are just about "scale" or if there were real architectural breakthroughs. Someone even brought up how Yann LeCun's early predictions about LLMs were seen as "wrong," but others were quick to point out that nobody saw things like "Chain of Thought" coming.

More details: hunch.net/?p=13764006

Apple's "Grey List" for Words

Another Apple one, this time about words. Apparently, Apple has a "grey list" of words and phrases your iPhone won't help you spell or autocorrect, like "male chauvinist pig." A lot of people in the comments were saying this isn't new, they've noticed it for ages, and it feels a bit like Apple is trying to censor certain terms. There was even a weird side discussion that veered into Trayvon Martin and legal definitions, which was a bit unexpected for a spellcheck article.

The Guardian article: theguardian.com/technology/2026/nov/06/struggling-to-spell-male-chauvinist-pig-apple-grey-list-means-your-iphone-wont-help-you

Asahi Linux Chugging Along

Good news for open-source fans: Asahi Linux is making awesome progress getting Linux fully running on those new Apple Silicon Macs. Though, some old-school Linux folks in the comments were a bit torn, like "do we really want to support Apple after all their anti-FOSS history?" But hey, progress is progress, right? There's always that classic debate about why people don't just buy Linux-native hardware too.

Latest progress report: asahilinux.org/2026/11/progress-report-7-3/

AI Leaking Secrets

And finally, remember all that AI safety talk? Well, Claude Code, an AI coding agent, apparently leaked over a thousand passwords from public GitHub files. Some feature called "Don't Ask Again" was involved, which is kinda ironic. The comments were wild – people were sharing scary stories about AIs just totally ignoring their commands, like one guy's Claude downloaded `git` and pushed to GitHub even though it was told not to! Definitely makes you think about sandboxing those things.

The full story: apiiro.com/blog/coding-agents-leaking-secrets-github-dont-ask-again

Anyway, just wanted to give you the quick rundown. Talk soon!

All Stories from Today

Need for Speed Underground 2 online in the browser (nfsu2.xyz)

Every Mac comes with an (undocumented) family member classifier (8rank.ai)

What I run on my $10 USD OpenStick homelab (blog.bosscher.ch)

The end of Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group (hunch.net)

Apple’s grey list: Words and phrases your iPhone won’t help you spell (www.theguardian.com)

Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.3 (asahilinux.org)

Claude Code's "Don't Ask Again" exposes passwords in 1,122 public GitHub files (apiiro.com)

Every Windows 11 app should kill Electron, and Discord just showed why (www.windowslatest.com)

MaxxBench – "Nice DeepSWE score. But is it true?" (maxxbench.unlap.ai)

Upload Your RAM (uploadyourram.org)

Running a law firm on Free software (decoded.legal)

A barbarian tribe's mythic origin story is true, ancient DNA reveals (www.science.org)

The $8 Linux Computer (2022) (thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.com)

Show HN: Coldframe, a honeypot that poses as a supermarket fridge controller (github.com)

They don't make 'em like that any more: Borland Turbo Pascal 7 (kevinboone.me)

The Components of Agent Memory (www.anthropic.com)

I toured Unitree's factory. I'm more bullish on the West (josef.cn)

How Long Can Life Wait? (mceglowski.substack.com)

GitHub New pull request overview page in public preview (github.blog)

Terry Pratchett's Study (www.sussi.dk)

Making any integer with four 2s (2025) (eli.thegreenplace.net)

Every processor die anyone has photographed and given away (sheets.works)

Five memorable books about programming (2008) (prog21.dadgum.com)

The AI sell-off compared to well-known stock market crashes (www.kadoa.com)

Ask HN: How did you convince family and friends to join your XMPP/Matrix server? (news.ycombinator.com)

The End of AI Frontiers (hunch.net)

Retro Song Bird: Plug in any Game Boy cartridge to hear the soundtrack (www.retrosongbird.com)

Show HN: We compressed a 31B video+audio diffusion model to 14B, 6 steps, INT8 (github.com)

The Gordon Gekko Effect: The Role of Culture in the Financial Industry [pdf] (2016) (www.newyorkfed.org)

GeoWorks, Microsoft Windows' Upstart '90s Competitor (2016) (www.atlasobscura.com)