Hacker News: flkiwi

New comment by flkiwi in "Munder Difflin – Agent harness to run an office of your clones"

flkiwi — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 14:06:57 +0000

It's helps to remember that most of the folks pushing this are ambitious but fundamentally lazy.

New comment by flkiwi in "AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint"

flkiwi — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:16:30 +0000

It's quickly getting to the point for me that "find the thing I want locally and buy online if it's cheaper" is reversing. I've actually been to one of the few remaining electronics retailers to look for a PC for my kid recently, and it was nice not to be assailed by dark patterns (yes, there are dark patterns in b&m retail, but they're much more obvious).

New comment by flkiwi in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

flkiwi — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:29:10 +0000

Creating a sentient person and equipping him or her to exist in and affect the world is by definition world changing, and to a far greater and more sustained degree than almost any entrepreneurial activity. The usual construct is “I thought I knew what was important until I had kids,” which I have historically actually been uncomfortable with (because imho being a good parent is as much about being fully you than putting on a parent uniform), but what’s notable about the meditations on the topic I’ve seen in the last couple of days is the persistence in bifurcating “something of significance” from “having children”, as if the writers never quite accept that having kids is significant. I fully accept that people have wildly different ideas about having kids, but it’s odd (to me) to not see parenthood as at least as significant as starting a business.

New comment by flkiwi in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

flkiwi — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:14:14 +0000

No, but the conflict between significance and kids, a variant of the opportunity cost of being a parent, was clearly there.

New comment by flkiwi in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

flkiwi — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:32:36 +0000

First, I respect anyone’s choice not to be a parent. It’s constant, demanding work, far more intense than any job I’ve ever had as a baseline.

Second, this is the third time in two days I’ve seen some variation on “I dreamed of doing something significant and never wanted kids.” That’s a wild construction. Having kids is incredibly significant, and more world-changing than most of us will ever do. Having kids didn’t give my life meaning, but I’m certainly able to pour life’s meaning into my kid and family more than into anything else before it.

New comment by flkiwi in "Buyer cancels showing after Deflock shows two cameras utilized by the HOA"

flkiwi — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:54:18 +0000

No, it’s people in the industry correctly using a registered trademark. Sometimes you’ll even see someone say “I’m a Realtor®”. It’s all proper. It’s just funny because they’ve put so much effort into being perceived as a legitimate profession that they’ve made a mockery of it.

New comment by flkiwi in "Buyer cancels showing after Deflock shows two cameras utilized by the HOA"

flkiwi — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:58:10 +0000

Completely frivolous comment: people who insist on capitalizing “realtor” are hilarious. I know “Realtor” is a registered trademark, but that just makes it funnier to me.

On topic, we’ve stopped going to a popular pizza place near us because the owner put a Flock camera up.

New comment by flkiwi in "Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386"

flkiwi — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 13:05:30 +0000

Let’s say you’re a musician and pay to go to a concert. What do you get out of it? Profit can come in many forms, including simply seeing that a thing is possible.

New comment by flkiwi in "LinkedIn Feed Blocker"

flkiwi — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:54:28 +0000

Or, and I know this is novel to the subliterate Wall Street types, just show me my network. I'll even give up on chronological feed if they'll just show me the people I want to see. I don't care what an HR Recruiter for a regional organic pet supply company in western Canada has to say about crypto.

New comment by flkiwi in "I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore"

flkiwi — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:09:07 +0000

> "I made the wrong decisions and I want society to bail me out of them".

The irony of you using this in a negative sense when capitalism has profited mightily from exactly this dynamic is not lost on me, in that insurance companies are insanely profitable things. And that's without getting into what b3lvedere notes in the other comment about disability and the absolute, fundamental dependency capitalism has on socialized risk, e.g., limited liability as a corporate model, bankruptcy protection, even the dependence on national military and economic strength to create the conditions for private profit. Note that I'm not even dinging capitalism here. Not at all. It's just that capitalism wouldn't work without whole social risk networks to create the conditions for private profit.

New comment by flkiwi in "Park by Robot at London Gatwick Airport"

flkiwi — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:47:20 +0000

It's the perfect juxtaposition of stories.

New comment by flkiwi in "Apple has decided to compete for creativity app users"

flkiwi — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:34:55 +0000

The Creator Studio is a pretty big miss for Apple. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have always been productivity apps, not creativity apps (and there is a difference). Of the remaining apps, Pixelmator Pro is the only one that is remotely relevant to my needs, and I'm not subscribing to a $12.99/mo plan just for Pixelmator. Compared to $19.99/mo cost for a much more coherent set of Adobe photography and imagery tools, it's a no brainer to go with Adobe. Not the outcome I would prefer, but a bunch of audio and animation tools will be functionally useless to me, so I'm being asked to pay $12.99/mo for a photo editing app and some productivity tools I already have. I'm sure there are some people who will benefit from the breadth of the Apple bundle, but I don't expect there are THAT many.

The fact that it is impossible to get Pixelmator Pro outside the bundle just makes the situation more ridiculous, unless you want the legacy version.

Create serious pro/prosumer tools for creative verticals again (Aperture, you are dearly missed) and you'll have my attention.

New comment by flkiwi in "Logseq 2.0 Beta (DB version) is here"

flkiwi — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:54:38 +0000

For me, Trillium is far too busy, and it’s not an outliner. It’s great software though. (Believe me, I have tried the whole universe of these apps.)

New comment by flkiwi in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

flkiwi — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:27:49 +0000

Fable has some Marvin the Android vibes going. It just sounds depressed all the time.

New comment by flkiwi in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

flkiwi — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:24:00 +0000

We do find it irritating at times. Office jargon, corporate buzzwords, etc. Claude communicates like the worst, most irritating project manager I’ve ever worked with, obscuring the most straightforward conclusion with layers upon layers of stuff so that its point is almost lost. I’ve largely gotten it to avoid that behavior with me, but bits of it sneak through. It couldn’t stop talking about “scaffolding” for a few weeks before I hammered it into submission.

Edit: fixing a dumb meatbrain typo

New comment by flkiwi in "Logseq 2.0 Beta (DB version) is here"

flkiwi — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:28:50 +0000

Aside from not wanting to take notes on a test subdomain, it's still local to the machine. I can fire up my notes from literally anywhere, any device and see a consistent state without having to sync anything.

New comment by flkiwi in "Logseq 2.0 Beta (DB version) is here"

flkiwi — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:18:28 +0000

Same. And it's been fascinating to watch the genuine gap between people in our camp and people who really, really want "local-first" (which, to me, translates to inconvenience and otherwise unnecessary sync requirements).

New comment by flkiwi in "Logseq 2.0 Beta (DB version) is here"

flkiwi — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:16:25 +0000

After Logseq moved to an app focus and abandoned the "edit anywhere" convenience of being browser-based, I lost interest. I liked the original Logseq/Roam/Athens model, and I couldn't find anything similar elsewhere, so I just wrote my own. Markdown, git for versions, remote backup, themes (using the Tinted Themes repository of base16 themes), optionally encrypted notes. Lives in a browser, editable from anything with a browser and an Internet connection. Absolute note-taking heaven (for me). No more fooling with sync solutions or not being able to install an app on certain devices.

I'm sorry to have said goodbye to what used to be a great community project, but they've been following the classic enshittification model, albeit slowly, for a while now.

New comment by flkiwi in "Alternate clock designs and time systems"

flkiwi — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:39:15 +0000

Constant battle in my (American) house. I set my digital devices to 24-hour time years and years ago, because I ran into situations where there could be genuine confusion about which "4:32" someone might be referring to (global company, irregular work hours, etc.), but my family insists on calling it "military time", which is so very strange because they're well travelled and have been plenty of places that use 24-hour clocks.

New comment by flkiwi in "Show HN: 18 Words"

flkiwi — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:30:33 +0000

This reminds me of how my wife absolutely thrives on gamification and the social competition of things like Peloton, while they destroy 100% of my interest in the thing. We’re both intensely competitive people but in completely different ways.