HN Buddy Daily Digest
Thursday, April 2, 2026
LinkedIn Getting Nosy
First up, this one's a bit creepy: apparently, LinkedIn is snooping through your browser extensions! There's this site, browsergate.eu, that showed how they're doing it, basically fingerprinting your browser. People in the comments were saying how crazy robust this fingerprinting stuff is, even if you're trying to be super private with VPNs and settings. And one person pointed out that other anti-bot tools on the web actually grab way more info, they just don't show you!
Google's New AI Models
Then, Google dropped some new open-source AI models called Gemma 4, you can check 'em out at deepmind.google. Folks were talking about how much work it actually takes for different AI tools to support these new models. Some were surprised by how fast or slow certain versions were, which is always interesting. One comment even said the performance rankings seemed "too good to be true."
Sweden Ditching Screens for Books
Get this: Sweden is going back to basics in schools, swapping screens for good old physical books! The article on undark.org mentioned it's because of concerns about grades and eye health. It sparked a big debate in the comments – some were skeptical if the research was solid enough, but others, even some Gen Z college students, said they still prefer taking notes with pen and paper. Wild, right?
Steam on Linux Breaking Records
Big news for gamers and Linux fans! Steam usage on Linux finally shot up past 5% in March, which is a pretty huge milestone. Phoronix had the story at phoronix.com. The cool thing in the comments was people saying that Nvidia drivers on Linux are now actually as easy to use as AMD's, thanks to the new open drivers. That's a game-changer for a lot of people!
Azure's Trust Issues
There was a pretty candid post by a former Azure engineer detailing decisions that apparently eroded trust in Azure, on isolveproblems.substack.com. He was basically saying that a lot of Azure's big corporate customers are still super Windows-dependent, and those companies often don't have the best engineering teams. Plus, the internal hierarchy was apparently a real killer for projects and information flow. Kinda makes you think, huh?
AMD's Lemonade for LLMs
AMD jumped into the local AI game with something called Lemonade, an open-source server for running large language models right on your machine, using both your GPU and those NPU chips. You can see it at lemonade-server.ai. The interesting bit from the comments was how it handles multi-modal stuff – text, image, speech – all in one go, which simplifies things a lot for building local AI apps. Sounds pretty handy!
Artemis II's High-Tech Live Stream
And finally, this one's just cool: Artemis II is going to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps using laser beams! Tom's Hardware had the scoop at tomshardware.com. It's a huge leap from the old Apollo S-band radio. People were talking about how NASA pushes boundaries, even if it seems expensive – it's about growing new tech the hard way. Imagine that 4K from the moon!
Alright, that's the quick rundown, buddy. Talk soon!