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HN Buddy Daily Digest

Friday, November 21, 2025

Hey buddy, Man, you gotta hear about some of the stuff from Hacker News on Friday. Some really interesting bits.

Valve and Steam Devices

First up, there was this article about Igalia helping Valve power up Steam devices. Sounds like they're doing some cool behind-the-scenes work. What was interesting in the comments was this talk about how Valve, even though it's a huge company, tries really hard not to be hostile to its users, unlike some other big tech companies. There was also a debate about Valve's "flat" company structure, with some ex-employees saying it's not as flat as it seems. Wild!

Wealthfolio 2.0: Open Source Investment Tracker

Then there was this Show HN for Wealthfolio 2.0. It's an open-source investment tracker, and now it's got mobile and Docker support. Super handy if you're into tracking your money without giving all your data to some big company. People in the comments were all over the topic of data privacy, especially with services like Plaid. Some folks were saying, "Of course they sell your data," while others mentioned tools like Beancount as alternatives.

French Judge Digitally Cut Off by USA

This one was pretty wild: a French judge apparently got digitally cut off by the USA. Sounds like some serious geopolitical drama. The comments were deep, talking about "digital sovereignty" and how countries trying to protect their digital space can clash with things like free trade agreements. Made you think about how intertwined everything is.

Olmo 3: Open-Source AI

On the AI front, there was a post about Olmo 3, an open-source AI model, trying to lead the pack. People were discussing how these big language models shouldn't just memorize everything, but rather be able to look up information when needed, like using a RAG system. Someone also mentioned how useful having a local, "dumb" LLM running on their computer is for quickly answering basic questions, like how to kill a WSL instance. Pretty cool for everyday use.

Arduino's Terms and Conditions Change

This was a big one for the maker crowd: Arduino updated its terms and conditions, and now it's "no longer an open commons." Sounds like they're tightening things up, which is a bummer for a lot of people who loved how open it was. Many in the comments were already saying Arduino is overpriced anyway, and they mostly use clones or switch to alternatives like ESP boards or Raspberry Pis. So, not everyone was surprised.

Dependency Cooldowns

There was a really good article arguing that we should all be using "dependency cooldowns" in software development. Basically, instead of instantly updating every library, you wait a bit to see if there are any immediate bugs or issues. The comments had some strong opinions on package managers like NPM and the whole semantic versioning thing, and how vulnerable supply chains are to attacks. Makes sense to be cautious, right?

Making PS2 Games in JavaScript

And finally, this blew my mind: you can apparently make PS2 games using JavaScript! How crazy is that? The article was pretty detailed. In the comments, someone even shared a little Python script they made to convert zip files to ISOs, which was a hassle mentioned in the main post. It's wild what people are doing with web tech these days.

Anyway, just wanted to give you the quick rundown. Talk soon!

All Stories from Today

Helping Valve to power up Steam devices (www.igalia.com)

Show HN: Wealthfolio 2.0- Open source investment tracker. Now Mobile and Docker (wealthfolio.app)

How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA (www.heise.de)

Olmo 3: Charting a path through the model flow to lead open-source AI (allenai.org)

Arduino published updated terms and conditions: no longer an open commons (www.molecularist.com)

We should all be using dependency cooldowns (blog.yossarian.net)

You can make PS2 games in JavaScript (jslegenddev.substack.com)

Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next? (disassociated.com)

Prozac 'no better than placebo' for treating children with depression, experts (www.theguardian.com)

Homeschooling hits record numbers (reason.com)

HP and Dell disable HEVC support built into their laptops' CPUs (arstechnica.com)

California DMV approves map increase in Waymo driverless operations (www.dmv.ca.gov)

It's hard to build an oscillator (lcamtuf.substack.com)

FAWK: LLMs can write a language interpreter (martin.janiczek.cz)

How Cops Are Using Flock's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists (www.eff.org)

Making a Small RPG (jslegenddev.substack.com)

Solving Fizz Buzz with Cosines (susam.net)

LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs (lapdhelicoptertracker.com)

XBMC 4.0 for the Original Xbox (www.xbox-scene.info)

Nursing excluded as 'professional' degree by Department of Education (nurse.org)

Why top firms fire good workers (www.rochester.edu)

The New AI Consciousness Paper (www.astralcodexten.com)

Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different? (crazystupidtech.com)

Discontinuation of ARM Notebook with Snapdragon X Elite SoC (www.tuxedocomputers.com)

Pixar: The Early Days A never-before-seen 1996 interview (stevejobsarchive.com)

Jmail: Gmail Clone with Epstein's Emails (jmail.world)

Brexit Hit to UK Economy Double Official Estimate, Study Finds (www.bloomberg.com)

EXIF orientation info in PNGs isn't used for image-orientation: from-image (bugzilla.mozilla.org)

Germany: States Pass Porn Filters for Operating Systems (www.heise.de)

Is Matrix Multiplication Ugly? (mathenchant.wordpress.com)