Hey buddy,

Man, Wednesday on Hacker News was pretty wild, lots of interesting stuff. Lemme quickly hit you with some of the highlights.

Crazy Scales of Life

First up, there was this super cool interactive website called "Size of Life". It lets you scroll through and see how tiny or huge different living things are. Like, did you know the smallest animal, a Myxobolus Shekel, is smaller than a white blood cell? And the biggest butterfly is bigger than a human brain! Someone in the comments also mentioned these tiny critters called tardigrades – apparently, every single one of a species has the exact same number of cells. Blew my mind a little, dude.

Rust in the Kernel is Official!

Big news for the tech crowd: Rust is officially no longer experimental in the Linux kernel. That’s a huge step, man. People are really hyped about the memory safety benefits compared to C. There was a big debate in the comments about how many vulnerabilities C really has versus how Rust could prevent them, with some questioning Google's reported figures. Definitely a hot topic.

Valve vs. HDMI Forum

Remember how Valve's been trying to get proper HDMI 2.1 support for Linux? Well, apparently the HDMI Forum is still blocking it. It's a real pain for anyone trying to get the most out of their Steam Deck or other Linux devices with modern displays. Comments were talking about how a lot of this is down to specific chip limitations in TVs, and just general IP/trademark headaches. Super annoying, right?

Google's Gemini API Key Headache

Oh man, if you were thinking of playing with Google's AI, you might wanna hold off. Someone wrote a whole post about how getting a Gemini API key is an absolute nightmare. Just an exercise in pure frustration, apparently. Sounds like classic Google, with their products feeling all disjointed and weird. A bunch of people in the comments totally agreed, mentioning hitting quotas even with paid accounts and docs sending them in circles.

NYC's Congestion Pricing Pays Off

Here's some good news for a change: New York City's congestion pricing actually cut air pollution by a fifth in just six months! That's pretty significant. People in the comments were discussing how it helps retail by encouraging foot traffic and also got into the nitty-gritty of how much pollution comes from things like tire dust from EVs versus brake dust. Pretty cool to see a direct positive impact.

AI Grading Old HN Threads

And finally, this was a fun one: someone used AI to auto-grade decade-old Hacker News discussions with the benefit of hindsight. Basically, seeing which predictions came true. It's a neat idea, and the comments had some interesting thoughts on how good LLMs are at "reciting historical facts" versus real understanding. Someone even joked about predicting 1+1=2 in 2035 to game the system. Haha!

Alright man, that's the quick rundown. Catch ya later!