Hacker News: havaloc

New comment by havaloc in "The Future of Email"

havaloc — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:43:32 +0000

I really like Fastmail, but I wish they offered a lightweight AI feature. Their filtering system is unmatched, yet I’d love a basic, privacy-focused AI filter powered by a small, private model they run.

For example, I could set rules like “if an email looks like a promotion, move it to the promotions folder.” I could roll my own MCP server sure, but that’s not the direction I want to go.

New comment by havaloc in "Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM"

havaloc — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:36:09 +0000

Come on, a one gigabyte Pi is under $50. There's no plot lost, it's just expensive RAM. 2gb is $75. That's where Pi plays well.

New comment by havaloc in "Siri AI"

havaloc — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:57:12 +0000

The 12gb number is weird, but also telling.

iPhones have 12gb, current Neo has 8gb, the next gen Neo is speculated to have 12gb (as it'll be based on a later iPhone chip).

New comment by havaloc in "Meta Keeps Delaying the Release of Its New AI Model to Developers"

havaloc — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 15:05:26 +0000

If you spend more than 1 minute on Facebook, you realize what they are potentially training their data on, and it is not good. Their advertising algorithm is very good, I'll give them that.

New comment by havaloc in "The desperation of NYTimes"

havaloc — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:26:15 +0000

And you should have the right to stop them immediately. I don't see how that's controversial.

New comment by havaloc in "VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare"

havaloc — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:43:42 +0000

I like how I can slap up a free Turnstile on my projects in two minutes and not have to worry about endless comment spam and user registration spam. Yes, I understand there's problems with Cloudflare, but there's also a lot of problems out there in the wild west of an open internet.

New comment by havaloc in "MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production"

havaloc — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:23:34 +0000

Now Mac is almost the same if not cheaper up front, and in the long run too. It's a wild thing to see.

New comment by havaloc in "MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production"

havaloc — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:22:27 +0000

Agreed, the only time I did upgrades on boxes is swapping out spinning disks for SSD, that saved me a whole upgrade cycle it was such an improvement.

New comment by havaloc in "MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production"

havaloc — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:20:20 +0000

What's sad is that in my experience supporting 80 users, Word et al work with fewer issues on Mac. The stack integration on Windows is fine, until it isn't.

New comment by havaloc in "What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications"

havaloc — Thu, 28 May 2026 01:46:38 +0000

Yes! iOS 27 needs to categorize notifications using AI. Apps aren't supposed to advertise to you, but some don't allow for that distinction. I want notifications on for when my sandwich is arriving, but I don't want push notifications for a promotion. Some apps are good about this, others don't allow that granularity. I hate the all or nothing.

On the flipside, I have an app that sends notifications. We don't abuse it or use it for promotions, and APNS and Google's version works perfectly fine for us.

New comment by havaloc in "The quiet renovation at Bitwarden"

havaloc — Tue, 19 May 2026 00:06:08 +0000

Strongbox already got bought out, but it's still very good and you can store the file wherever you want.

New comment by havaloc in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"

havaloc — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:24:32 +0000

I use it more and more as a primary, and it doesn't feel like I've made many tradeoffs at all. I even like the keys better, they aren't transparent, so the plastic feels different, but in a good way.

New comment by havaloc in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"

havaloc — Thu, 14 May 2026 01:34:04 +0000

I think I would cut the line at M3 or above. I think M2 uses an older architecture and it doesn't have WiFi 6E in it, and of course single core is a bit lower. Also M2 batteries are about maybe halfway done already unless the refurb replaced the battery.

New comment by havaloc in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"

havaloc — Wed, 13 May 2026 19:59:14 +0000

I bought a Neo as an out of the house computer and it really is a triumph. If the Air is good enough for 99% of the population, the Neo as is approaches good enough for 90% of the population at half the cost.

New comment by havaloc in "RAM prices are forcing companies to choose higher prices, worse specs, or both"

havaloc — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:35:20 +0000

I really don't understand why more companies don't emulate Apple in terms of line simplicity. Look at Dell for a great example of a sprawling product mix. I can't imagine having that many product varieties helps with profitability.

In the consumer space, I recently bought a Sonicare toothbrush, and the number of models and combinations is staggering. 1000x plaque removal, 750% plaque removal, it's ridiculous.

New comment by havaloc in "RAM prices are forcing companies to choose higher prices, worse specs, or both"

havaloc — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:30:18 +0000

The MacBook Neo proves that gadget "shrinkflation" is largely a choice. I own an Neo and I continue to marvel at how capable, nice, and yet inexpensive it was.

New comment by havaloc in "Business Owners Are Worst Clients"

havaloc — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:23:33 +0000

I own a business and I go out of my way to respect other businesses, because I know how hard it is to own one.

New comment by havaloc in "California high-speed rail price tag jumps to $231B, nearly 7x 2008 estimate"

havaloc — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:19:02 +0000

Maybe California should ask Brightline to take a look at it. They've had some pretty good success in Florida, although it's a totally different model.

New comment by havaloc in "When the cheap one is the cool one"

havaloc — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:22:35 +0000

I bought a Neo to "replace" an M3 MacBook Air "travel/out of the house/outside" laptop. Are there drawbacks? Most certainly, but it feels like something special, and I enjoy the slightly smaller form factor. The main drawback is perhaps the most surprising, the screen, which is really good at 500 nits, draws a disproportionate amount of energy compared to the rest of the system, so you get about 3.5 hours in bright sunlight / maximum brightness.

As the only IT person in an 80 person unit, I can say the Neo trounces Dell Latitudes in a lot of ways, those have awful 250 nit screens out of the box, and they are nearly $1,200!

New comment by havaloc in "Norway Set to Become Latest Country to Ban Social Media for Under 16s"

havaloc — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:03:55 +0000

However bad you think 65+ users are on social media, it's way worse than you think. Imagine being scammed by ads and grinding the remaining years of your life away with that. Yikes. I've seen it with my own eyes. It's awful.