Hey buddy,

Man, you gotta check out Hacker News from yesterday, Sunday. Some interesting stuff popped up. Lemme give you the quick rundown:

Apple's Trust-Eroding F1 Ad Thing

Okay, so first off, there was this whole hoopla about an Apple Wallet ad for an F1 movie. People got spooked because it felt like Apple Wallet was watching what they were doing, maybe even tracking stuff like buying other movie tickets. The article on Daring Fireball called it "trust-eroding." Comments were kinda mixed; some folks brought up how Android apps are also annoying with notifications, and others pointed out that not everyone even got this F1 ad, so it's still a bit mysterious how Apple decided who saw it.

Making a VM Think It Has a CPU Fan

This one's kinda techy but cool. Someone wrote about how they messed around to make a virtual machine believe it actually had a physical CPU fan, even though it doesn't. It's a neat hack playing with how software interacts with virtual hardware. The comments got into stuff like how gaming in VMs with hardware passthrough (for the graphics card) works really well these days, and some debated the technical details of how a system even "knows" if a fan is missing.

New Open Source Tool: Octelium

There's a new open-source project called Octelium trying to be a free alternative to popular tools like Teleport, Cloudflare Tunnels, Tailscale, and Ngrok. It's for setting up secure access, like Zero Trust stuff. It was a "Show HN" post. The comments were... lively. Some people were excited about an open-source option, but others thought the project's intro used way too many tech buzzwords. The creator actually jumped into the comments to answer questions, which is always cool to see.

Losing US Satellite Data Could Mess Up Hurricane Forecasting

Alright, this one sounds pretty serious. An article from The Guardian talked about how losing access to some key US satellite data, maybe due to cuts, could really hurt hurricane forecasting, potentially setting it back "decades." Yikes. Comments mentioned specific satellite instruments that are apparently way better than the ones they'd be left with, and people linked to other articles about different hurricane forecast models.

Weird Ransomware Trick: Russian Keyboard

This was an interesting blast from the past (a 2021 article from Krebs on Security) that got resurfaced. Apparently, a bunch of ransomware strains are programmed to check if a Russian keyboard layout is installed on the computer, and if it is, they just stop and don't encrypt anything. The comments suggest this is probably hackers trying to avoid hitting machines in Russia to stay off the radar of Russian authorities. Also, maybe the targets they *really* want (like in the US) are more profitable anyway.

Google Gemini Wanting Access to Messages/Calls

Okay, here's another privacy one. A story on Laptop Mag says Google's Gemini is getting an update that will let it access your messages and calls, and get this, even if you say you don't want it to or turn off related activity tracking. The comments were pretty annoyed about this, especially the part about accessing WhatsApp messages. Someone suggested using a privacy-focused mobile OS like GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google apps as a way to try and limit this.

The $25k Car Might Be Extinct?

Saw this article about how it's getting super hard to find a new car in the US for under $25,000. It seems like that price point is just disappearing. The comments talked about how keeping really old cars running gets expensive fast unless you can fix everything yourself, how regulations (especially in Europe) are forcing cars to have more expensive features, and how things like even minor damage can really tank an older car's value.

Yeah, so that's kinda the highlights from yesterday. Lots of tech, some security weirdness, and a bit of real-world stuff mixed in. Talk later!