Hacker NewsSunday, December 14

A long-time Apple developer and customer had his Apple ID permanently locked after attempting to redeem a $500 gift card purchased from a major retailer. This disabled his devices, locked him out of iCloud data including family photos, and cost him access to thousands of dollars in apps and media. Apple Support refused to explain the ban or escalate the case, suggesting he create a new account which could worsen his situation as a professional developer.

This guide explores alternatives to smart TVs for users seeking privacy and simplicity. The top recommendation is using an Apple TV box with an offline smart TV for better performance, fewer ads, and minimal tracking. While true "dumb" TVs are increasingly rare and have quality limitations, options include brands like Emerson, Westinghouse, and Sceptre. Other alternatives discussed are projectors, computer monitors, and digital signage displays, each with their own trade-offs regarding features, cost, and functionality.

OpenAI has quietly implemented Skills support in both ChatGPT and their Codex CLI tool, following Anthropic's Skills mechanism introduced in October. ChatGPT now has a /home/oai/skills folder with capabilities for spreadsheets, documents, and PDFs, while Codex CLI allows users to install custom skills in their ~/.codex/skills directory. The author successfully tested both implementations and believes Skills represent a significant development in AI tooling that could benefit from formal standardization.

macOS Tahoe 26.2 SDK release includes fixes for AirDrop device discovery issues, Instruments allocation reporting problems, and StoreKit subscription purchase bugs. New features include RDMA over Thunderbolt 5 for low-latency communication, AppStore age rating API, and virtualization serial number corrections.

Researchers built a complete VR system that allows rats to play DOOM, featuring a motion-tracked treadmill ball, panoramic headset, trigger mechanism, and reward system. The open-source project evolved from a basic setup to an advanced modular version with improved sensors and screens.

The author discovered SQLite's powerful JSON capabilities, where you can store raw JSON documents and create virtual generated columns with indexes for fast querying. This approach provides schema flexibility without data migration - you can add new indexed columns later as needs change, combining NoSQL flexibility with relational database performance.

The Tor Project released Arti 1.8.0, a Rust rewrite of Tor that addresses memory safety issues in the original C codebase. The update introduces circuit timeout improvements to reduce traffic fingerprinting, adds tools for migrating onion service keys, and includes various routing and protocol enhancements.

id Software employees have successfully unionized, with 165 workers voting to join the Communications Workers of America. This brings Microsoft's total unionized workforce to nearly 4,000. The union push was driven by concerns over remote work policies, mass layoffs, crunch time, and unfair pay across the gaming industry.

GNU Unifont is a free font project that provides glyphs for every printable Unicode character in the Basic Multilingual Plane and growing coverage of other planes. It's dual-licensed under GNU GPL and SIL Open Font License, allowing commercial use. The latest version 17.0.03 is available in multiple formats including OpenType, BDF, and PCF, with specialized versions for different uses like APL programming and Japanese text.

The Koralm Railway will drastically reduce travel time from Graz to Klagenfurt from three hours to 45 minutes, improving connections to Western Styria, southern Carinthia, Hungary and Italy while strengthening Europe's Baltic-Adriatic Corridor and reducing CO2 emissions.