Hacker News: statictype

Show HN: Open Finder files in Google Docs with one click

statictype — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:58:33 +0000

This is an itch I've been meaning to scratch for some time.

https://glint.statictype.org/

Glint is a simple utility that lets you double-click xlsx and docx files in Finder and open them in your Google account.

I don't use Office and I don't like Numbers and Pages. My current workflow is to open Google Sheets/Docs and manually import files that are shared with me. Its a tedious process, and Google's design sense doesn't make it any easier.

This app tries to solve that.

It registers file handlers for .xlsx and .docx. It uploads the file the first time you open it. After that, it adds some metadata to the file so next time you open it, it directly opens the existing Google Doc without trying to upload it again.

This is the kind of utility app that exists because of agentic coding tools like Codex and Claude Code.

This problem has been an annoyance for years but not annoying enough that I wanted to spend time wading through the quagmire of Google Docs APIs and credentials and re-learning macOS UI programming with Swift.

I tried Codex for this, and while I still prefer Claude Code by a good margin, Codex pretty much one-shotted a rough version of what I wanted.

Let me know what you think!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47219627

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by statictype in "Revisiting "Let's Build a Compiler""

statictype — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 08:10:08 +0000

This article sums it up perfectly. I was interested in building a compiler long before going to college and this was the most accessible body of work.

Building a recursive descent parser from scratch was an eye opener to 17yo me on how a seemingly very complex problem that I had no idea how to approach can be made simple by breaking it down into the right primitives.

New comment by statictype in "Replacing a $3000/mo Heroku bill with a $55/mo server"

statictype — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 23:06:00 +0000

Thanks for this. We resorted to setting ram thresholds in systemd.

Is earlyoom a better solution than that to prevent an erratic process from making an instance unresposnsive?

Palantir: Understand the Moat to Understand the Valuation

statictype — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 03:16:00 +0000

Article URL: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4829854-palantir-understand-the-moat-to-understand-the-valuation-let-the-story-play-out

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45601098

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by statictype in "Show HN: AgentMail – Email infra for AI agents"

statictype — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 07:06:40 +0000

You can do this with SES on AWS or Mailgun. We use SES for this exact use case. Giving agents programmatic access to an email inbox and programmatically creating inboxes.

New comment by statictype in "WhatsApp introduces ads in its app"

statictype — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 09:44:36 +0000

The free version doesn’t show ads. Come on.

Salesforce Acquires Informatica

statictype — Tue, 27 May 2025 16:03:07 +0000

Article URL: https://investor.salesforce.com/news/news-details/2025/Salesforce-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Informatica/default.aspx

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44108244

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by statictype in "Management = Bullshit (LLM Edition)"

statictype — Fri, 23 May 2025 08:52:42 +0000

The problem is, it's not necessarily the job of the person who is tasked with doing it.

These are the kind of things that fall between the gaps in smaller companies and there's no expert to build this disaster recovery plan because there is no risk or compliance department.

It falls into the lap of whomever is dealing with the audits or whoever has a reputation for getting things done and unblocking people.

New comment by statictype in "Sri Lanka scrambles to restore power after monkey causes islandwide outage"

statictype — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 12:40:49 +0000

It’s all relative. Having lived and driven in India for many years, the driving in Sri Lanka is very organized and civil.

But I get what you’re saying.

New comment by statictype in "Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today"

statictype — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 01:36:42 +0000

Optimizely also sold to private equity many years ago. Presumably the founderts aren't there any more.

New comment by statictype in "I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research"

statictype — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 03:38:27 +0000

It is interesting that their 'About' page mentions a lot of their work but no mention of Adani - which would have arguably been their biggest.

Perplexity Acquires Carbon AI

statictype — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 06:19:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/welcoming-carbon-to-the-perplexity-team

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42546976

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Low Code/No Code Platforms

statictype — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 15:44:51 +0000

Article URL: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1nqhWUJgsr3JsAmfMxTpmO41QgqQa430tki0S45Y8cZ0/mobilebasic

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42100745

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by statictype in "A new JSON data type for ClickHouse"

statictype — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 02:42:31 +0000

Do you have a link to the Snowflake whitepaper?

New comment by statictype in "Ask HN: Must-Read Books for Startups?"

statictype — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 08:13:12 +0000

The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz

This is probably one of the best

Shoe Dog - Phil Knight. A great read about the struggles of how Nike started. But was left unsatisfied as the book ends with the company going public but doesnt cover its ascension in the late 80s/90s and how that went down.

New comment by statictype in "An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax"

statictype — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 02:51:49 +0000

>I perfectly understand the rationale behind the pricing model. The point is that "only large enterprises need or care about SSO" is completely wrong-headed and detrimental to the overall security posture of any business customer. That is and should be unacceptable.

I made this comment the last time the SSO Tax question came up: We routinely deploy our platform to large customers for 6 or 7 figure contracts. The number of them who actually deployed SSO (without just asking if we comply with it) is less than 20%.

New comment by statictype in "Micro-libraries should never be used"

statictype — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 03:38:35 +0000

I have found that micro libraries are being replaced by ChatGPT generated functions.

New comment by statictype in "After my dad died, I ran and sold his company (2018)"

statictype — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 23:35:01 +0000

Wasn’t your dad also a specialist in that sense (the technical founder as you put it)?

Great writing, btw.

New comment by statictype in "Small Business and Mid Market Is Not Easier Than Enterprise"

statictype — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 01:34:55 +0000

We routinely sell mostly to large enterprises. Yes, its not proportionally more difficult than selling to SMEs. However the problem with enterprise accounts are:

1. They hijack your roadmap. You go into danger of building one-off features and bespoke software

2. Your risk is concentrated into fewer accounts. When you lose an enterprise customer you risk disrupting your cashflow and quarterly targets

3. If you dont yet have product market fit it becomes more difficult to achieve it (related to point 1)

Interested to hear what others think.

New comment by statictype in "Tell HN: Microsoft.com added 192.168.1.1 to their DNS record"

statictype — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:38:23 +0000

For all this to work you need to control the domain. Is that easier than simply breaking into their systems and owning their servers?