An Internet bemoans Apple's (business model: "Uber for turtlenecks") anti-competitive practices in the smartwatch market. Apparently, connecting a non-Apple watch to an iPhone is like trying to feed a vegan at a Texas barbecue - technically possible but deliberately unsatisfying. Hackernews erupts into predictable outrage about Apple dodging antitrust scrutiny while simultaneously arguing that Apple's 50% smartphone market share isn't monopolistic enough to matter. Some Hackernews defend Apple's walled garden as if Tim Cook personally promised them stock options, insisting that consumers "chose" this ecosystem prison. Others helpfully point out that Garmin watches also work with iPhones, which is immediately countered by actual Garmin users explaining that "works with" means "displays notifications you can't respond to." The thread eventually devolves into bizarre automotive analogies about oil filters, because nothing says "I understand tech monopolies" like comparing smartwatches to Ford parts.

An Internet (business model: "Uber for necromancy") resurrects a defunct smartwatch operating system and slaps it on some new hardware. Hackernews, ever the nostalgic bunch, immediately engages in the time-honored tradition of demanding features they'll never use. The thread quickly devolves into a heated debate about NFC payments, with commenters passionately arguing whether tapping a watch is somehow more convenient than extracting a card from a wallet—a problem that has apparently plagued humanity since the dawn of commerce. Meanwhile, armchair hardware engineers chime in with unsolicited advice about which Nordic SoC would have been better, as if they're personally invested in the bill of materials. The creator politely deflects feature requests by pointing to the "open source" repository that, ironically, can't actually be compiled. Nothing says "hacker culture" quite like celebrating a device that can't run Spotify but will definitely show you text messages from 2015.

A federal court rules that AI-generated art can't be copyrighted, presumably because there's no way to sue a neural network for plagiarism. The plaintiff deliberately listed his AI as the creator rather than himself, perhaps hoping to secure royalties for his computer in the inevitable robot uprising. Hackernews debates legal interpretations with the confidence only software engineers could muster, certain they could replace the entire legal system with a more efficient algorithm if only someone would let them. Some argue that human-assisted AI art should be copyrightable, while others wonder if selecting one AI image from thousands counts as authorship. The entire discussion ignores the obvious fact that most AI art is already derivative of human work that was scraped without permission, making this entire copyright debate a spectacular exercise in missing the point.

An Internet discovers that Apple TVs will happily accept man-in-the-middle certificates, and uses this to strip YouTube ads from the protobuf stream. Hackernews is shocked that YouTube (business model: "Uber for cat videos") doesn't implement certificate pinning like a banking app, as if YouTube's C-suite lies awake at night fretting over the 0.0001% of users who might block ads with a pfSense proxy. Other Hackernews debate the finer points of certificate pinning, revealing their deep knowledge of TLS by parroting Wikipedia articles and confidently stating that "most apps" do things exactly the way they think they should. The thread descends into speculation about why Google doesn't simply embed ads directly into video streams, with armchair CTOs explaining the computational costs as if they'd personally reviewed YouTube's infrastructure budget. Not a single Hackernews considers that perhaps Google engineers have better things to do than engage in an endless cat-and-mouse game with people who are too cheap to pay for Premium.

A dictator (business model: "Uber for Fascism") decides the best way to stay in power is to retroactively annul his opponent's university degree. Hackernews is shocked to discover that arbitrary power is arbitrary, and immediately pivots to discussing whether property taxes mean they don't really own their houses. Several Turks express concern about their deteriorating democracy, while Americans rush to make the conversation about themselves and their own impending doom. The thread quickly devolves into the standard Hackernews political roundabout, where users debate whether young people want change because they watch too many gore videos, old people resist change because they've seen too much of it, and whether Trump is more like Erdogan or less like Erdogan. Nobody proposes a startup to solve democracy, which is the real tragedy.