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HN Buddy Daily Digest

Monday, May 18, 2026

Hey buddy,

Man, Monday on Hacker News was pretty wild, especially with all the AI stuff. Lemme hit you with the highlights:

Elon's Lawsuit Against OpenAI

First up, big news: Elon Musk actually lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. Remember all that drama? Well, the court sided with OpenAI. One commenter even called Elon an "idiot" for appealing, saying his lawyers must be loving all the extra cash. Sounds about right, huh?

You can read the TechCrunch article here: Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI

Files.md – Obsidian Alternative

Then there's this cool new project, a Show HN called Files.md. It's an open-source alternative to Obsidian for your notes. People were talking about how every line of code that adds value should give back to the project, which is a neat idea. Also some technical chat about Go and Docker, but mostly just a cool new tool.

Stopping AI Bot Spam on GitHub

Speaking of useful stuff, a company posted about how they stopped AI bot spam in their GitHub repo using Git's --author flag. Apparently, people are getting tons of "AI slop" and scam comments. Some folks in the comments are even blaming GitHub and Microsoft for encouraging all the LLM-assisted PR bombing. It's getting crazy out there with all the bots!

Check out their blog post: We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag

Anthropic Acquires Stainless

Another AI company, Anthropic, just acquired Stainless. It's another one of those growth moves. What's interesting in the comments is one person basically saying, "Why can't things just stay small?" And someone else had a pretty brutal take, suggesting that most Silicon Valley developer output could probably be replaced by like, ten bucks a day in Gemini 3 usage. Yikes!

Here's the announcement: Anthropic acquires Stainless

Eric Schmidt Booed Over AI Speech

This one's wild: Eric Schmidt, the ex-Google CEO, got booed during a graduation speech about AI. Apparently, a lot of students are just fed up. Comments mentioned that for many, AI is a "pain in the ass" because it forces everyone to constantly upskill or risk getting fired. There's a growing feeling, especially among younger folks, that "AI is bad."

Read about it here: Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation

Iran's Bitcoin-backed Ship Insurance

In other totally different news, Iran is apparently starting Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for the Hormuz strait. That's a pretty wild mix of geopolitics and crypto, right? The comments were pretty deep into political talk, so I won't get into that, but the headline itself is definitely something.

Bloomberg had the story: Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait

Haiku OS on M1 Macs

And finally, for some retro-tech goodness: Haiku OS, that open-source BeOS-inspired operating system, now runs on M1 Macs! How cool is that? Keeping old-school tech alive and kicking on modern hardware. Though oddly, the comments section got sidetracked talking about capitalism, not Haiku itself. Go figure.

Check out the progress: Haiku OS runs on M1 Macs now

Anyway, that's the gist of it for Monday. Catch you later!

All Stories from Today

Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI (techcrunch.com)

Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian (github.com)

Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting (radleybalko.substack.com)

We stopped AI bot spam in our GitHub repo using Git's –author flag (archestra.ai)

Anthropic acquires Stainless (www.anthropic.com)

Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation (www.nbcnews.com)

Project Glasswing: what Mythos showed us (blog.cloudflare.com)

Show HN: Auto-identity-remove – Automated data broker opt-out runner for macOS (github.com)

Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait (www.bloomberg.com)

Actually, democracy dies in H.R. (www.nytimes.com)

Haiku OS runs on M1 Macs now (discuss.haiku-os.org)

It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness (www.noemamag.com)

Click (2016) (clickclickclick.click)

The FBI Wants to Buy Nationwide Access to License Plate Readers (www.404media.co)

Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops? (indiepixel.de)

We let AIs run radio stations (andonlabs.com)

Who will buy your services if you fire us all? (carette.xyz)

Qwen 3.7 Preview (twitter.com)

'We mould trees to grow into the shape of chairs' (www.bbc.co.uk)

AI eats the world (Spring 26) [pdf] (static1.squarespace.com)

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25 (www.vaticannews.va)

Linux security mailing list 'almost unmanageable' (www.theregister.com)

Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions (www.ftc.gov)

Multiple commencement speakers booed for AI comments during graduation speeches (www.nbcnews.com)

Enough with the AI FOMO, go slow-mo, says Domo CDO (www.theregister.com)

Hyperpolyglot Lisp: Common Lisp, Racket, Clojure, Emacs Lisp (hyperpolyglot.org)

1024000^2 Blocks, 2B2T Minecraft Server World Download Project, and Discoveries (github.com)

New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC (apnews.com)

Learn Harness Engineering (walkinglabs.github.io)

Most Americans don't trust AI – or the people in charge of it (2025) (www.theverge.com)