Hey buddy,

Just saw some wild stuff on Hacker News today, figured I'd give you the quick rundown. It was Sunday, February 1st, 2026, so you know, weekend vibes, but still some cool tech.

Netbird – Open Source Zero Trust Networking

First up, this Netbird thing, which is basically open-source zero-trust networking. People are really digging it, kinda like a simpler, self-hosted Tailscale. But get this, some folks in the comments mentioned it can be a bit flaky on slow connections, which is a bummer if you're not on fiber. And there was this one super honest guy in the comments who was like, "I'm super green at VPNs, don't take my advice!" Haha, gotta appreciate the honesty.

Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down

Then there was this post about teaching a neighbor to keep the volume down. Man, the comments section was a goldmine of neighbor horror stories! People were sharing all sorts of wild experiences. Someone even tried offering their noisy neighbor a nice speaker system they weren't using, but the neighbor just said no! Wild. And one person just went full conspiracy, saying "everything IS ALL LIES." Classic HN.

Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

Remember those old school copy protection dongles? Someone just posted about figuring out how to defeat a 40-year-old one! Super cool reverse engineering stuff. People in the comments were comparing it to modern DRM, like how it took crackers over a year to simulate a social network just to crack Red Dead Redemption 2. And apparently, Diablo 3 still doesn't have a crack, even for single player. Crazy!

What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent

On the AI front, someone wrote about what they learned building a minimal AI coding agent. Key takeaways were that context transfer between sub-agents is still a pain, and they think AI API prices are gonna drop over time. It sounds like these coding agents are good for specific, focused tasks, but not so much for trying to redo a whole codebase. One comment even called it a "You might not need Vercel AI SDK" post, which kinda sums up the vibe.

List animals until failure

There was also this super simple, but fun, game called "List animals until failure." You just type animal names until it doesn't recognize one, or you run out. People in the comments were getting into debates about animal classifications, like whether a chipmunk is a squirrel (it is, apparently!), and some even made German versions of the game. Simple, addictive fun.

My iPhone 16 Pro Max produces garbage output when running MLX LLMs

Speaking of tech, apparently the new iPhone 16 Pro Max is spitting out garbage when running MLX LLMs. Like, it can't do basic math for AI models correctly. People are scratching their heads in the comments, wondering if it's the Neural Engine or some floating-point weirdness. Seems like a pretty big bug for a "thousand dollar" phone, as the author put it.

TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

And finally, more Apple drama: Time Machine is apparently broken *again* with the new Tahoe OS. Loads of people in the comments were sharing similar frustrating experiences, saying they've had backups fail or drives get corrupted over the years. Some even joked that Apple just wants you to buy their iCloud storage instead of using Time Machine. Classic.

Anyway, that's the gist from HN for today. Gotta run! Talk later!