Health Data Spies

First off, there was this huge story about European health data getting sold to a US company run by ex-Israeli spies. Super sketchy, right? People in the comments were rightly fuming about how "free" services often just hide data usage in the fine print. Someone even mentioned how *not* using platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn can actually cost you opportunities, which is a weird flip on the whole data privacy thing.

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Plain-Text Flashcards

Then, there was this cool little project called Hashcards. It's basically a super simple, plain-text system for spaced repetition – you know, like flashcards but just in text files. It's for people who want something minimalist, maybe like an alternative to Anki. Some folks in the comments were saying how flashcards can be a drag, but others who live in the terminal were excited about a non-GUI option.

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Claude's Oopsie

Remember Claude, the AI? Well, they had some "elevated errors" across many of their models. They put out a status update, which is pretty transparent of them. What was cool about the comments was how many people appreciated that transparency. They were saying how much they learn from companies that actually publish post-mortems when things go wrong.

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What Are You Building?

The "Ask HN: What Are You Working On?" thread for December was hopping, as usual. Always great to see what people are cooking up! Some highlights: someone's building an AI-powered home improvement platform with live consultations, which sounds pretty neat. Another guy made a ski map app with turn-by-turn navigation – apparently the only one! And get this, a command-line game about space pirates playing basketball across the galaxy, totally P2P. Wild stuff!

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AI and Automation Headaches

There was a deep-dive article, "AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2," talking about how AI isn't always the silver bullet for automation. It gets into the unexpected problems that pop up. The comments brought up some classic reads, like "Children of the Magenta" about cockpit automation. Also, a good point was made that art and writing aren't just about solving problems; they're expressions, which AI often misses the mark on.

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GraphQL's Enterprise Blues

A pretty big one for the devs was titled, "GraphQL: The enterprise honeymoon is over." The article argues that GraphQL, while popular, isn't always the best fit for big companies because it can get really complex to manage at scale. But the comments were mixed – some agreed, sharing horror stories of teams adopting it without experience and making a mess. Others pushed back, saying it's actually growing strong in the enterprise space if done right.

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Security Breach Post-Mortem

Finally, a real cautionary tale: "Shai-Hulud compromised a dev machine and raided GitHub org access: a post-mortem." A company shared details about how a dev machine was breached, which then led to their GitHub organization getting compromised. It's a good read for anyone in tech. The comments had some interesting discussion about AWS keys being stored in cache files, which is a bit of a security headache, and a debate about whether the problem is package managers allowing arbitrary code or the lack of oversight on what code gets run.

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So yeah, that's the gist of it! Catch you later, man.