Nokia N900 Necromancy

First off, someone's doing some "necromancy" on an old Nokia N900 phone. Remember those? The article's about getting it running again. A lot of folks in the comments were reminiscing about how great it was, especially the keyboard. One guy, Fnoord, even mentioned how the successors like the Cosmo Communicator had great keyboards but no support. But jack_tripper pointed out that even if we techies loved it, it wasn't enough to save it from the iPhone.

Link to Nokia N900 Necromancy

Google de-indexed Bear Blog

Big oof for this guy: Google apparently de-indexed his entire Bear Blog and he has no idea why. People in the comments were saying this is a known "soft penalty" Google uses for spam, but it often hits good, legit blogs too, and once you get it, you almost never recover (terrycody). Someone else wondered if constantly requesting indexing was the problem (pentagrama). Scary stuff if you rely on Google for traffic.

Link to Google de-indexed Bear Blog

Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax"

Huge news on the legal front! Epic apparently won an appeals court case against Apple regarding iOS payments. Epic is celebrating it as "the end of the Apple Tax." This could mean big changes for app stores on iPhones, potentially allowing other payment options. Comments were all over the place, with some worried about security if phones become too open (rstuart4133), and others pushing for *all* critical devices, even pacemakers, to be open source (laggyluke). Wild.

Link to Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax"

macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

Apple's getting serious about AI on their own hardware. macOS 26.2 is rolling out support for super fast AI clusters using RDMA over Thunderbolt. Basically, you can chain a bunch of Macs together with Thunderbolt cables and get some serious AI processing power. Geerlingguy, that tech YouTuber, even chimed in saying he's been testing similar setups and it's been a bit rough, but this new RDMA capability sounds promising.

Link to macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters

The Tor Project is switching to Rust

Big architectural change for a major privacy tool: The Tor Project is rewriting parts of its code in Rust. This is a huge undertaking, but it makes sense given Rust's reputation for memory safety and performance. A lot of comments were praising Rust for preventing bugs that C/C++ often have, and some even went on about the pain of build systems like `make` and `CMake` (pdimitar, FieryMechanic).

Link to The Tor Project is switching to Rust

OpenAI are quietly adopting skills, now available in ChatGPT and Codex CLI

Looks like OpenAI is rolling out "skills" for ChatGPT and their Codex CLI. This is basically giving the AI tools to use, almost like plugins, but more integrated. One commenter (hadlock) had a wild idea: giving the LLM access to Ghidra, a reverse engineering tool, so it could decompile binaries. Imagine an AI that can reverse engineer code! There was also a warning about OpenAI's Plus subscription chopping off prompts if they're too long (energy123).

Link to OpenAI are quietly adopting skills

Rats Play DOOM

And for something completely different and awesome: "Rats Play DOOM." Yes, you read that right. Someone set up a VR-like environment where rats can actually play DOOM. It's super quirky and cool. Comments were discussing the ethics of it (efskap) and how they train them with rewards (chickenhun). Definitely a fun one to check out.

Link to Rats Play DOOM

Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

Finally, some industry news: the developers at Id Software, the folks behind DOOM, have formed a "wall-to-wall" union. This is a big deal in the gaming world, which is notorious for "crunch" culture. It's cool to see workers organizing for better conditions, and the comments were a lively debate about worker rights and the role of unions in tech.

Link to Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union