Hacker News: nkotov

New comment by nkotov in "I used AWS cognito for a startup. I wouldn't do it again"

nkotov — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:52:26 +0000

Friends don't let friends use AWS Cognito.

New comment by nkotov in "Stripe acquires Clerky"

nkotov — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 23:18:58 +0000

If they buy Mercury - it's game over.

New comment by nkotov in "The myth of Snow Leopard"

nkotov — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 19:09:18 +0000

I still have a MacBook from that era and to this day - it boots up and runs apps fine without issues (though a bit slower than I'm used to). It's been my little time capsule of how my life was in middle school / high school.

New comment by nkotov in "BMW iX5 Blows Away the Competition with 460-KW Charging, 435-Mile Range"

nkotov — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:57:15 +0000

Only had a handful of Waymo experiences but a lot more with Tesla. Tesla may be leading but is still not great. Driven over 100k miles in autopilot and roughly 30k in FSD miles, you still need manual intervention about 5-10 percent of the time for various reasons.

New comment by nkotov in "BMW iX5 Blows Away the Competition with 460-KW Charging, 435-Mile Range"

nkotov — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:54:05 +0000

I own a G90 M5. While definitely a heavy car, I love having best of both worlds on demand. Having driven 7 different Tesla's previously as daily drivers, there is something convenient about being able to fill up extremely quickly when on road trips. My only issue with it is the small gas tank which means I have to refill it once a week currently with the way I drive.

I really don't like BMW's direction with Neue Klasse. It just looks stupid for the sake of being different.

New comment by nkotov in "Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds"

nkotov — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:20:00 +0000

Maybe I'm in the minority here (early 30s, married + kids), but my social media feed is primarily my friends. Though, if we go into the Reels tab, my friends and I share videos back and forth through DMs.

I have an alt account for business / lifestyle content that I like consuming. That's the only place I actually follow content creators. And even then, I check the account once or twice a day and rarely view/engage with Instagram stories.

Back to my personal account - I have 2-3 people out of the 198 that I follow that are trying to hop on trends and become influencers. Rest just do photo dumps + daily stories. But the reality is only 20-30% of my friends actually share something (post or story), rest are just silent observers.

New comment by nkotov in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

nkotov — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:07:46 +0000

I would be willing to pay for IG subscription that's ad-free. It's gotten hilariously terrible right now that every 3-4 stories has a 2-page ad with a button on it. It's gotten so bad to the point where I stopped checking stories.

New comment by nkotov in "Flipper One – we need your help"

nkotov — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:57:48 +0000

I'm in a similar boat. I'm not passionate enough about technology with the Flipper Zero. Don't get me wrong, really cool device but I've pretty much just used it as a toy to play snake on and a universal remote. If it just had a 3.5mm jack, I would use it as an MP3 player as well.

New comment by nkotov in "Two computers, one monitor, zero fiddling (2025)"

nkotov — Mon, 18 May 2026 20:39:08 +0000

I have a similar setup for my MBP + Windows Desktop. I ended up using a simple USB switcher for all the devices and just running two inputs and manually switching between screen inputs. One button press for USB switch, one source switch on monitor. If I need something from the other computer during the use, I just remote in.

New comment by nkotov in "Forget the AI job apocalypse. AIs real threat is worker control and surveillance"

nkotov — Mon, 11 May 2026 17:04:14 +0000

Was this written by AI? There's several times where it feels like I'm reading a ChatGPT response.

New comment by nkotov in "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"

nkotov — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:50:05 +0000

It does a lot but at the end of the day, if the core functionality is just not good anymore, maybe put all the side projects on the actual side and focus on how to make sure core functionality suck less.

For example - We adopted GitHub Actions, then we swapped it out this year. Our own primary use case is code hosting + PRs. We want it to talk to the other (better) tools that intended for their use case. We want it in a secure yet fast and available manner. Nothing else. I don't care about projects, issues, or whatever super app they're trying to become.

New comment by nkotov in "Tell HN: An app is silently installing itself on my iPhone every day"

nkotov — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 05:14:35 +0000

Had this happen as well. I haven’t used Headspace in years. Randomly had the app appear on Home Screen.

New comment by nkotov in "Claude Code to be removed from Anthropic's Pro plan?"

nkotov — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:36:20 +0000

Just like they gave plenty of notice regarding OpenClaw?

New comment by nkotov in "Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?"

nkotov — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:06:44 +0000

I use it daily and also implemented it for a customer for a very specific use case. The Claude subscription change made it less desirable to use but I still enjoy it.

New comment by nkotov in "The MacBook Neo"

nkotov — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:09:53 +0000

I had a similar view, then I realized I was not the target user. My kids love playing Minecraft on the iPad. Great little device for entertainment.

New comment by nkotov in "Personal Computer by Perplexity"

nkotov — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:58:59 +0000

Giving non-technical people agents with custom skills, quickly (like literally in under an hour). We've done a couple similar deployments but with some hard guardrails and it's been a hit.

New comment by nkotov in "MacBook Neo"

nkotov — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:36:59 +0000

Outside of college students, I think this also unlocks the Mac to rest of the world. Now $599 allows most of the world to buy/lock into the Apple ecosystem. 8 GB is the only issue I have but everything else is such a good compromise for the price.

New comment by nkotov in "I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard"

nkotov — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:16:25 +0000

I love the design of this. All the small touches like the front door open.

New comment by nkotov in "AI is going to kill app subscriptions"

nkotov — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:08:19 +0000

Same goes for Docusign - many competitors exist but the reason Docusign is still popular is because they own the verb and "trust" of the general population.

New comment by nkotov in "Competition is not market validation"

nkotov — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:15:14 +0000

This one strikes straight to the heart. We pivoted post YC batch to what was hot at the time and saw a lot of competition (some raising millions more than us). We thought this market validation. Five years later, almost every single company on that list has either died or pivoted.