Hacker News: maguay

New comment by maguay in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

maguay — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:34:04 +0000

I've always wanted a writing app built around experimentation, where you could write multiple takes on a paragraph then swap them in and out to see how each sounds in context. That, and I wanted a writing app that treated both Markdown and Rich Text as first class citizens, with side-by-side documents for notes alongside a draft, full keyboard control, and more.

And so I built it: https://reproof.app/

It's taken forever (never reinvent the text editor, they say, and they're right) but it's finally at the point where a handful of us are using it for daily writing, and it's just about ready to launch.

The physicists who convinced Fermilab to send Brazil's emails

maguay — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:06:45 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/brazil-fermilab-email

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48219373

Points: 58

# Comments: 17

The best ideas come from the arena

maguay — Thu, 07 May 2026 08:58:12 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reproof.app/blog/amex-history

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047089

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by maguay in "Email could have been X.400 times better"

maguay — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 03:15:48 +0000

And yet, when the USPS did deliver email (via paper, no less, with their E-COM system), over half of the message volume was sent by one mass-mailer: https://buttondown.com/blog/the-e-com-story

Afraid the spammers will always be with us.

Email could have been X.400 times better

maguay — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:10:09 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/x400-vs-smtp-email

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47873323

Points: 239

# Comments: 206

New comment by maguay in "People love to work hard"

maguay — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:29:34 +0000

I definitely was channeling my feelings when yelling at Cursor/Claude for the umpteenth time to do what I asked it to do or so help me...

New comment by maguay in "People love to work hard"

maguay — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:32:45 +0000

People love to work hard on goals they're excited about, when the work feels meaningful, when they know how to clearly make progress on the task, when there's a shape to the work and a clear criteria for completion, when some combination of the financial and psychological rewards of the work are better than they'd get doing something else in the same time.

People hate work that feels undervalued, that's not clearly defined, that feels like an endless churn with no end in sight, when harder work does not turn into better results for them.

AI it feels like is making the latter far more common than the former.

New comment by maguay in "The Claude Code Source Leak: fake tools, frustration regexes, undercover mode"

maguay — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:28:54 +0000

Absolutely hilarious that it's watching for frustration.

I'd discovered, perhaps mid-2025, that Cursor was noticeably better at fixing bugs if I started cursing at it. Better yet, after a while it would seem to break and start cursing itself ("Oh yes, I see the f*** problem now" and so on). Hilarity ensued.

What a world, where cursing at your machines can make them get their act together.

New comment by maguay in "Show HN: I made an email app inspired by Arc browser"

maguay — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 03:07:16 +0000

You've got a shot at building a new Sparrow here. This looks really nice. Unsure that every email message needs a tab on the top, too—I think you could almost just rely on the left sidebar and treating the emails there as tabs. That, and some j/k shortcuts to quickly flip through the emails in your inbox would be great.

Too Much Color

maguay — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 02:28:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/too-much-color/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47420950

Points: 143

# Comments: 67

New comment by maguay in "“This is not the computer for you”"

maguay — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 05:10:13 +0000

My first computer was a hand-me-down Compaq LTE laptop, several times removed from the original owner, with a 700MB hard drive and Windows 95 a decade after those were leading-edge specs. It had only Word and Access, of all things, and little room for more.

But it was mine, I tinkered with it forever, learned databases enough to turn Access into a basic quasi-Excel for my needs, cataloged things that really didn't need to be tabulated, and generally learned as much as that little machine would let me.

That was a limited computer, one that couldn't possibly have let me do what I needed to do when I hit university. But it got me started, taught me to tinker, and I'm prety sure pushed me to learn more than a state-of-the-art for the time computer would have.

And so I do wonder, at times, if it's the nostalgic look back at early computing that makes people inclined to say "my god that would have been an amazing computer to start out with" when you look at an entry-level computer. I'm inclined, even, to say man that's going to be an epic $100 computer on the second-hand market in a half decade or less.

When at the same time, it's actually a solid machine for more of us than us geeks with our inflated expectations of computers have than we'd like to accept. That, too, is pretty cool.

How to Send Email to Space

maguay — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:39:29 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/email-in-space

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47348015

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by maguay in "The Brand Age"

maguay — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 03:24:02 +0000

Tudor says they'll pay around a third to a half for something pretty close made by the same parent company but with a different movement and branding.

Thin Is In

maguay — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 02:29:12 +0000

Article URL: https://stratechery.com/2026/thin-is-in/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056417

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by maguay in "Japan's Dododo Land, the most irritating place on Earth"

maguay — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 15:50:43 +0000

Reminds me of Japanese Mundane Halloween costumes, dressed up as a person holding a tray in a food court trying to find a table to sit at or some other similarly common life scenario.

New comment by maguay in "Luce: First Electric Ferrari"

maguay — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 01:32:55 +0000

That is the point that cracked me up the most.

Bang paths, source routing, and how email trips were planned

maguay — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 12:41:39 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/blog/email-source-routing-history

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944599

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by maguay in "Ask HN: In the real world we pay for everything so why not software?"

maguay — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 02:14:37 +0000

I have a longstanding suspicion that paying for internet service makes people feel like they've paid for everything on the web, and thus expect it to not cost more after that initial fee. That the companies who provide software and content online are, generally, not at all connected to their ISP isn't necessarily intuitive to the average person outside of tech.

That's increasingly changed, thanks to some combination of Netflix and other consumer-facing subscriptions, the App Store's easy payment mechanisms, and in-app purcahses for digital goods in games spilling over into the real world. There's still more mental friction to paying for things online and more expectation of free by default, for most people, in tech than in the real world.

I Accidentally Misinformed an AI

maguay — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 08:39:45 +0000

Article URL: https://pithandpip.com/blog/how-to-teach-an-ai

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158132

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by maguay in "10 years of writing a blog nobody reads"

maguay — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 01:59:10 +0000

Agreed. I've used the em dash for well over a decade and love it, but am having to train myself to not use it simply to not appear as though my text is written by AI.

At least avoiding the "it's not just that X, it's Y" style that AI loves is easy enough!