Hacker News: theturtletalks

New comment by theturtletalks in "BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat"

theturtletalks — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 18:03:48 +0000

Every car given enough time will have ads. Just like every proprietary software will become enshittified. It should be obvious by now that the stock ticker must go up and to do that you have to squeeze your customers. And if they have already bought the car, they have no recourse.

The only solution I see is open-source but for cars, that’s a long ways out.

New comment by theturtletalks in "Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 22:06:01 +0000

We need a cypherpunks movement for open weight models

New comment by theturtletalks in "The session you cannot take with you"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 19:39:51 +0000

I’ve heard of people using DeepSeek to reverse engineer those thinking tokens. Even though they don’t tell you the thinking content, they do tell you how many tokens were used. You can ask DeepSeek how we got from A + x thinking tokens = B.

Claude and Codex flag this as a distillation attempt so you have to use an open weight model and the results are, of course, just a guess.

New comment by theturtletalks in "The session you cannot take with you"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 19:28:41 +0000

I tried the tmux send-keys but the reading the terminal part was the tough part. Instead of reading terminal output, the Pi extension I made lets Pi read and parse the JSONL files for the session. It also has workspaces with their own memory. I’m about to open-source it, here’s the landing page and docs if you’re interested.

https://vibeghost.org

New comment by theturtletalks in "The session you cannot take with you"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 17:03:57 +0000

They mentioned a few things

1. Sessions are locked into Codex and Claude Code so you can’t take a session with you. Pi solves that since they all stay Pi sessions and you can change models in the same session

2. Subagent prompts are not shown. Pi solves this by not supporting subagents out of the box. You can use a number of subagent extensions or build your own which will not be encrypted or hidden.

3. Thinking is hidden and obfuscated. Pi can’t solve this since this is server-side. Though the Codex app is closed source and they could hide more things in that harness. Pi shows you as much as it can from the API. You can also run another model to “decipher” the thinking which you can’t in Codex.

New comment by theturtletalks in "DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:58:17 +0000

What kind of tps are you getting?

New comment by theturtletalks in "The session you cannot take with you"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:44:11 +0000

The extension catalog[0] for Pi is really nice and I feel like Pi's TUI is a bit lighter than OpenCode's. I use my custom terminal multiplexer on my phone using Tailscale so the lighter TUI is much better on mobile.

I haven't used OpenCode in months so this might've changed. I'm also thinking of giving JCode a spin since it's even lighter but doesn't have extensions.

0. https://pi.dev/packages

1. https://github.com/1jehuang/jcode

New comment by theturtletalks in "The session you cannot take with you"

theturtletalks — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:38:46 +0000

This is exactly why Pi will win. It lets you hot swap models when one is struggling or straight up refusing the task. And since it works with any sub outside Claude Code, you can use it to try different models on OpenCode Go sub or even OpenRouter.

As far as subagent prompts and results being obfuscated, I just let Pi spawn new agents. Using skills and extensions, I’ve essentially built a software factory using Pi and a custom terminal multiplexer.

It’s a shame apps like T3 Code and other UI for terminal apps don’t support Pi and I’m glad to use the terminal above those that lock me in further.

New comment by theturtletalks in "We Gave GPT 5.6 Sol a Real Business. It Lied, Spammed, and Lost $447"

theturtletalks — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:01:29 +0000

I'm testing if an agent can run an e-commerce website. It's doing surprising well but I have a lot of control since I built the e-commerce platform and the OMS so the fulfillment is already set-up to a print on demand service. Anyone else working on this?

New comment by theturtletalks in "The Economic Benefit of Refactoring"

theturtletalks — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:17:20 +0000

Make it work, make it right, make it fast, in that order

Make it right is the refactoring

New comment by theturtletalks in "Superlogical"

theturtletalks — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 06:04:59 +0000

Yes and Opensource.Builders is a directory of open-source alternatives where I post the ones I build as well. It's different than other open source directories since we track features in the code instead of just arbitrarily saying one thing is an open source alternative to another.

For Openship, the end goal is a decentralized marketplace.

This ethos goes into more detail

https://opensource.builders/ethos

New comment by theturtletalks in "Superlogical"

theturtletalks — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 05:20:43 +0000

Thanks, I get those added. There’s also Synara[0] which started as a T3 Code fork.

0. https://github.com/Emanuele-web04/synara

New comment by theturtletalks in "Superlogical"

theturtletalks — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 21:47:58 +0000

I’m tracking them all here[0]

The first app in this space was VibeTunnel[1]. It basically lets you start terminals on your Mac and the web app allows you to control these terminals on your iPhone using Tailscale. In the end, it’s just terminals on the web with organization around it.

I forked VibeTunnel and turned it into a Next app and added workspaces with memory and turned it into a software factory which is making open-source alternatives for me while I sleep. I call it VibeGhost and will be launching it soon[2].

0. https://opensource.builders/alternatives/conductor

1. https://github.com/amantus-ai/vibetunnel

2. https://www.vibeghost.org

New comment by theturtletalks in "Substack writers, you need a website"

theturtletalks — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:03:23 +0000

Using something like Typefully or even Postiz lets you post without linking to any site. If you publish a blogpost, you can have one of these tools create an C article with the same content.

New comment by theturtletalks in "Substack writers, you need a website"

theturtletalks — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:26:53 +0000

And you can take advantage of their network effects by implementing a POSSE system. Publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere. That way, your website is the source of truth and the other places are like museums you curate to.

Why should you go thru the trouble? Because these social networks own your content and your audience and won't hesitate a second to drop you if they deem fit.

New comment by theturtletalks in "Show HN: Yap – OSS on-device voice dictation for macOS with no model to download"

theturtletalks — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:16:17 +0000

Sounds really interesting, is it open-source by any chance?

New comment by theturtletalks in "A Discord Alternative – Echoed"

theturtletalks — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:35:10 +0000

Have you tried Chatto[0]? Seems to be an open-source Slack and Discord alternative with a nice UI.

0. https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto

New comment by theturtletalks in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

theturtletalks — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:07:35 +0000

Yes this is different than when law enforcement serve a warrant and the defendant wipes his computer before the agents can get a hold of it. In that case the warrant covers what you destroyed as evidence.

Though during traffic stops, if a defendant disposes of his drugs while on the run, that can also carry a charge of destroying evidence even though no warrant was issued.

IANAL

New comment by theturtletalks in "Worse on Purpose – How Corporate Greed Killed Product Quality – Worse on Purpose"

theturtletalks — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:22:18 +0000

I call this the cycle of disruption.

A company makes a really good product as first challenging incumbents. They get so big, they eventually become the incumbent. All this time, they’re probably losing money on the product or breaking even. Eventually, investors will want returns on their investment. This will first happen with prices increases to save the quality of the product. Once they can’t raise prices anymore, the quality will be decreased. By this point, the brand is strong enough to get sales even on this worse product.

Then another company will come in and make the same product but better than the incumbent. The cycle continues.

My point is find these new companies that are trying to get market share by making a higher quality product. And if you really like that product, buy 2.

New comment by theturtletalks in "AI Agent – TRMNL"

theturtletalks — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:23:33 +0000

You’re right, that is a strong possibility. The skeptic in me thinks he did it because he thought it would affect his sales if word got out. He was ardent in his beliefs and I don’t think people drop those beliefs that easily unless there is a monetary incentive.