Man, you won't believe some of the stuff that popped up on Hacker News today, Friday. I gotta tell you about a few things that caught my eye. It was a pretty wild mix.

Apple Bug Fest

First off, there was this huge thread about "Bugs Apple loves". Basically, people were just piling on with all these super specific, super annoying bugs they keep finding in macOS and iOS. Like, one guy was talking about his Apple Music stopping lossless tracks after 15 seconds, or his Magic Mouse messing with scroll speeds even when no trackpad is connected. Someone even dropped a command-line trick to let you quit Finder, which apparently used to be a thing! It really sounds like Apple's got some weird gremlins in their system right now.

Microsoft Handing Over BitLocker Keys?!

Then, this bombshell: Microsoft apparently gave the FBI BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops. That one blew up, as you'd expect. People in the comments were super worried, especially since BitLocker often gets turned on by default on new Windows machines without users even realizing it. Lots of talk about privacy and how companies hold the keys to our digital lives.

Tesla's New Autopilot Fee

And get this, Tesla seems to have killed Autopilot and is locking basic lane-keeping behind a $99/month fee. Yeah, you heard that right. People are, understandably, pretty heated about cars becoming subscription services. Like, you buy the car, but then you gotta pay monthly for features that used to just be part of the package. Someone even compared it to how much a Spotify subscription costs compared to what CDs used to cost!

AI and Code Policies

There was also a lot of chatter about Ghostty's new AI Usage Policy for code contributions. It's basically outlining how developers can use AI tools when writing code for their project. Some folks thought it was a good, sensible approach to managing AI-generated code, while others were like, "Hey, if the code works and I understand it, why does it matter how I wrote it?" Someone even said it made them feel less "shame" about using AI to help them code, which is pretty interesting.

Light That Reacts to Radio Waves

On a lighter note, this super cool project: a guy built a light that reacts to radio waves. Like, it glows based on the Wi-Fi and other signals around it. It's more of an art piece, but it's a neat way to visualize all the invisible wireless noise we're surrounded by. Comments were talking about how our eyes perceive light differently than the logarithmic dB scale of radio signals, which is a good point.

Booting from a Vinyl Record!

And speaking of cool projects, there was an older article (from 2020) that resurfaced about booting a computer from a vinyl record. How wild is that? It's a total retro hack, and it really got people reminiscing about old-school tech, like when they used to broadcast Commodore 64 software over the radio in Finland. Super neat to see what creative things people can do with old tech.

ProtonMail and AI Spam

Finally, a blog post about "Proton spam and the AI consent problem". The author was complaining about Proton's spam filtering and how it ties into AI. The comments were a bit of a mixed bag – some agreeing with the spam issues, others getting into surprisingly heated political debates about Proton's stance in certain regions. But one cool thing someone pointed out was that you can actually reach a real human at Proton without much fuss, which is a rare positive these days!

Anyway, that's the gist of it. Pretty eventful Friday on the tech front!