Hacker Newsroom for 15 May: RAV4 Privacy Mod, MIT Funding Crunch, Bun Rust Rewrite, Mac eGPU Gaming

Hacker Newsroom for 15 May recaps major Hacker News stories, moving through rav4 privacy mod, mit funding crunch, bun rust rewrite, mac egpu gaming. 1. RAV4 Privacy Mod The next story is Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid, a post about physically disconnecting the car's data communication module and built-in GPS to stop Toyota from sending telemetry home. The article argues that modern cars have become surveillance devices on wheels, and it walks through the hardware teardown, the privacy rationale, and the tradeoff that some convenience features stop working while the car itself still functions. Story link Hacker News discussion 2. MIT Funding Crunch The next story is a message from MIT President Sally Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline, where she says MIT is still under pressure from the 8 percent tax on endowment returns, a sharp drop in federal research support, and new policy signals that are discouraging international students and scholars. The article says federally funded campus research activity is down more than 20 percent year over year, total sponsored research is down 10 percent, and graduate enrollment outside a few programs could fall by roughly 500 students. Story link Hacker News discussion 3. Bun Rust Rewrite The next story is Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged, a GitHub pull request that says a huge Rust rewrite of Bun has already landed in canary after only a short public window. The story matters because Bun is one of the most visible JavaScript runtime projects right now, and moving that much code into a different language this fast raises obvious questions about stability, process, and what exactly got proven before merge. Story link Hacker News discussion 4. Mac eGPU Gaming The next story is RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game? , a long project write-up about wiring a desktop NVIDIA card to a fanless MacBook Air over Thunderbolt and then building enough driver and virtualization plumbing to make games and AI workloads actually run. Story link Hacker News discussion 5. Claude Small Business The next story is Claude for Small Business, an Anthropic launch that packages Claude with connectors and prebuilt workflows for tools like QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365 so owners can offload payroll prep, invoicing, month-end close, and marketing tasks. The article frames it as AI moving out of the chat box and into day-to-day operations, with a human still approving anything that sends, posts, or pays. Story link Hacker News discussion 6. AI Skill Atrophy The next story is AI is making me dumb, a personal post from a developer who says relying on AI for writing and coding has started to erode both confidence and hands-on skill. The article is less about model quality than habit formation: the author says AI output often does not sound like him, and that after a year or two of pure prompting he has had to deliberately teach himself to code by hand again. Story link Hacker News discussion That's it for today, I hope this is going to help you build some cool things.