Hacker News: saratogacx

New comment by saratogacx in "XCancel service is suspended until further notice"

saratogacx — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 16:53:31 +0000

On mobile, uBO has been able to get around the "use our app" block. It took a week or two for the filters to get updated but now it is a non-issue. Tested in Firefox and Vivaldi on Android.

New comment by saratogacx in "OpenClaw 2.0, Accidentally"

saratogacx — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:36:39 +0000

When I tried OpenClaw it quickly turned into a lethargic mess which I really didn't see myself wanting to maintain long term. I looked at other alternatives which were similar enough to do what I was looking for (mostly scheduled tasks using data on my computer and some API data). I saw a mention of nanoclaw which I looked at but didn't try personally. I eventually settled on trying picoclaw[1] because it was extremely small, fast, and had enough features to do the job for me. It is under 10mb, fairly straight forward go codebase, and works with multiple model providers or locally hosted.

1 https://picoclaw.io/

New comment by saratogacx in "“It works better in the app”"

saratogacx — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:25:58 +0000

My android phone will put apps into "deep sleep" and remove all their permissions if I haven't opened it in a month or so. I just toss travel apps into a folder in my launcher and they are there if I need them but become just a consumer of drive space on their own.

New comment by saratogacx in "The turbulent AI era is here"

saratogacx — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:35:43 +0000

We have also seen this play out with WFH/Covid. The recall into centralized structures, regardless of the technology available to mitigate the need, was fast and broadly applied.

Our current social structure is actively resistant to decentralization and I don't see that changing unless there is some forcing function to break that hold and keep it broken for new norms to settle into expectations.

New comment by saratogacx in "Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance"

saratogacx — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 21:25:14 +0000

> No, they haven't figured out anything. Just vibe coding it with their bleeding dege models.

I'm sure you were saying "bleeding edge" but my first impression was to translate dege to mean degen/degenerate which made this so much more fun to read.

New comment by saratogacx in "Pixel 11 Pro Fold feels like the end of an era"

saratogacx — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 21:59:04 +0000

Samsung's 1 hand mode doesn't just shift the UI down, it downscales it to the left or right (swappable with a tap) so, for example, on my S24Ulta my one thumb can reach the entire screen height and width.

New comment by saratogacx in "Introducing Toast 1"

saratogacx — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:40:52 +0000

Looking through your blog it is very much keeping the brand baked in. It would be a nice little nod to toss a couple sentences about the branding on the about page or somewhere so if someone wants to know how you came to it they can. Leaving it to "wink, nod, inside joke you'll never know" is a bit off-putting when you are building a brand around the theme. It also makes it more memorable for those that read the blurb.

New comment by saratogacx in "Anime User Interfaces"

saratogacx — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 03:29:46 +0000

Right now I see you are 11 of 34 comments on this post and all follow this same dismissive tone. Lighten up and let people enjoy stuff.

New comment by saratogacx in "Claude Opus 5"

saratogacx — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:20:17 +0000

My understanding is that you get $20 in api credits each month and a one time $100 until mid September. So you can still use the model with a subscription but you aren't getting any kind of discount.

I burned through $45 in 3 prompts to fix some bugs in my code (Some kind of tricky to isolate). That thing burns through cash so fast I don't see myself using it outside of maybe building execution plans for other systems

New comment by saratogacx in "It's getting harder to focus every day"

saratogacx — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:05:17 +0000

I think it depends on how you use it. All things in moderation and all. I've had one for years but when I set it up it only allowed it a few notifications. When meetings start during my work day, getting e-mail to my personal account, and when I get messages from my wife, that's it.

So when I'm not working the watch is... just a watch.

New comment by saratogacx in "Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers"

saratogacx — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:56:04 +0000

You don't need to put in a lot of effort to convince people that creepy, deceitful, generally unlikable, rich folks are doing things you won't like and are lying to get away with it.

New comment by saratogacx in "Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain"

saratogacx — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:19:21 +0000

> That's the most annoying thing about password managers, and a major reason I still don't use them: there exists no password manager that is cross-platform (desktop/mobile in particular), local-first, and isn't sketchy or enshittified or otherwise on HN's current "don't use it, use instead" list.

I had the same frustration, I ended up with Keepass, the store is a open spec db[0] that has several clients, I use it across windows, android, and Linux without any issue and just sync with your favorite file sync tool.

0 - https://keepass.info/help/kb/kdbx.html

New comment by saratogacx in "Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them"

saratogacx — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:30:59 +0000

The thing about PC though is that there is no exclusivity. Steam built an extremely well respected brand but if that were to turn, the moat is shallow, install a competing client and buy games from there instead. The only internal competition for consoles is digital or physical retail (Or I guess buying game codes could be pseudo-digital).

New comment by saratogacx in "Grok Build is open source"

saratogacx — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:34:46 +0000

It has had one for months. The desktop app has a "code" mode which is Claude Code in GUI form

New comment by saratogacx in "Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip"

saratogacx — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:41:33 +0000

128MB ram... Your hard disk could be upgraded to 12.8GB of total space for an extra $50.

Also, you get this _sweet_ 8MB nVidia 3d graphics card!

New comment by saratogacx in "GPT‑Live"

saratogacx — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:11:42 +0000

Funny enough I have only encountered two voice modes that were okay to use tools and they are so far out there that you wouldn't even think to try. Bixby and Perplexity (in android phone digital assistant mode) both seem happy to use whatever the account is connected to. I mainly use it for managing my local phone's calendar. Claude chat can interact with it but voice can't which is frustrating.

New comment by saratogacx in "Costco is the anti-Amazon"

saratogacx — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 02:00:35 +0000

Government Regulations[1]

> According to the Costco U.K. website, memberships to those stores are only available to certain groups of people. Since the store is classified as a wholesaler, this complies with the U.K.'s wholesale store laws. These dictate that wholesale stores are only accessible to those working for select business sectors.

[1] https://www.thedailymeal.com/1483679/costco-uk-membership-re...

New comment by saratogacx in "Please stop the AI confidence theater"

saratogacx — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 20:26:54 +0000

Probably not, it just re-baselines. Now the scams aren't for bread money but are for entertainment money. If the time resource isn't changing and the effort isn't changing but the needs fulfilled become wants fulfilled you're getting more joy from each dollar scammed instead of just substance.

It may make pity scams less effective though so I'd expect the implementation to change to focus more on creating urgency and less on altruism.

New comment by saratogacx in "A retrospective of my time on the internet"

saratogacx — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:02:07 +0000

At the time it was happening I recall thinking "This should be a typical flair up that'll die down to smolders in a couple of weeks and life will continue" as so many dicey internet things had done in the past but that time there was something that kept that fire burning, it wasn't organic feeling, it was as if it was hooked up to life support just to stoke more engagement and stronger, more subtlety incompatible opinions.

It worked, we collectively fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It keeps working. It will likely keep working for a long time as people continue to feel empowered by self-entrenchment and the want for affirmation that they're on the right side of history.

New comment by saratogacx in "Updated Xbox Console Prices"

saratogacx — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:17:47 +0000

You need to format it as code. (Blank line followed by code lines, indented by 2+ spaces)

  Console          Price -> Old       New
  ------------------------------------------------
  Xbox Series S 512GB       $399.99   $499.99
  Xbox Series S 1TB         $449.99   $599.99
  Xbox Series X 1TB Digital $599.99   $749.99
  Xbox Series X 1TB         $649.99   $799.99