Hacker News: totalhack

New comment by totalhack in "Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses"

totalhack — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:50:05 +0000

If you are talking about the Copilot built into vs code, that's not been my recent experience at all. Very capable in agent mode since gpt 5.4 came out.

New comment by totalhack in "Python developers are embracing type hints"

totalhack — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 12:27:07 +0000

It's optional, and that's great, because its necessity or benefit is situational.

New comment by totalhack in "What makes Claude Code so damn good"

totalhack — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 20:07:37 +0000

Agree with this, though I've mostly been using Gemini CLI. Some of the simplest things, like applying a small diff, take many minutes as it loses track of the current file state and takes minutes to figure it out or fail entirely.

New comment by totalhack in "I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file"

totalhack — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 23:06:39 +0000

I use markdown files in vs code. Supports folding of sections, combined with a few keyword/char patterns that I highlight different colors. Also get code highlighting in properly labeled code sections.

New comment by totalhack in "Show HN: Companies use AI to take your calls. I built AI to make them for you"

totalhack — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:22:42 +0000

Did you find out what service he was using?

New comment by totalhack in "Business co-founders in tech startups are less valuable than they think"

totalhack — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 02:23:54 +0000

Well, pretty much everyone is less valuable than they think!

I've bootstrapped and sold two startups, first time with 5 (!) equal cofounders and second time with 3. I've learned a lot along the way, obviously some of that through mistakes of my own. Have my cofounders been perfect? Heck no -- one lacks the same level of drive, the other is less trustworthy (always multiple irons in the fire kinda guy). But we all have strengths, are all generally better off together, and have the combined skill set to run super lean. Even if you think you can do some things better alone, you can never do it all, and that grind will take quite a toll.

Related: over the years the topic of going into business with some of my best friends has come up, and I always say I would never do that. Running a fast-moving, high stakes business with multiple founders involves a lot of tough conversations and occasional relationship strain. My business partners are business partners first, friends second, and I think that's important to consider if you really value a friendship.

New comment by totalhack in "Apple M4 MacBook Air review: I have no notes"

totalhack — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 12:56:18 +0000

I just went through this process and ended up getting the HP Omnibook Ultra Flip with a core 7 258v, running Ubuntu 24.10. Performance is excellent, battery life is the best I've ever had on an Intel running Linux. If you truly need more RAM than 32 GB it won't be an option though.

The air or an mb pro seems so nice until I remember the sting of dealing with the dev environment and docker on a Mac compared to Linux. No amount of battery life or marginal jump in performance (which gets lost through needed virtualization) will make up for that for me.

New comment by totalhack in "Building AI agents to query your databases"

totalhack — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 16:23:03 +0000

There are a number of semantic layer tools out there these days. Each has their own unique approach, but essentially it's a meta layer on top of your database that can be used to do things like form queries or provide a consolidated API to your data (which may be in multiple databases).

Some comments on this thread mention popular semantic layer tools like cube.dev. I also made an open source one that I use regularly, though it's currently in I-hope-to-put-more-time-into-this-someday mode. Been busy with an acquisition this year.

https://github.com/totalhack/zillion

New comment by totalhack in "Building AI agents to query your databases"

totalhack — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 13:52:34 +0000

You are doing a lot of the work a semantic layer would do for you. I wonder if you would have better luck having the LLM talk to a semantic layer instead of directly to the database.

New comment by totalhack in "Xonsh – A Python-powered shell"

totalhack — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 23:22:35 +0000

This is slightly less interesting now that I can have AI remember bash script syntax for me.

New comment by totalhack in "Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC"

totalhack — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 23:19:47 +0000

Happy to see them announce the new AMD chips in the 13", but the prices are a little nuts compared to what you can get elsewhere.

I bet the desktop is interesting, but first I was in a 30m waiting room to access their website (what?!?) and then the button to pre order the desktop is broken. Ouch.

New comment by totalhack in "Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition"

totalhack — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 23:08:35 +0000

The constant struggle is the lagging support for the best hardware. Unless you want to buy a machine from a dedicated Linux shop (framework, System76, tuxedo), you are taking a risk buying anything remotely new without a lot of research into the hardware and hunting for posts about people who have had success. Those dedicated Linux shops are usually at least a generation behind too. It doesn't help that architectures are evolving rapidly in response to Apple's chips (not a bad thing long term).

Just bought an HP omnibook flip with an Intel 258v. From what I've read I expect most things to work, or work soon with kernel updates. All applications I care about work well. Would be nice to see OpenAI make a desktop app for Linux, or some other open source equivalent.

New comment by totalhack in "Show HN: Trilogy – A Reusable, Composable SQL Experiment"

totalhack — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 14:13:39 +0000

Thanks for taking a look! Happy to chat, DM me here: https://bsky.app/profile/totalhack.bsky.social

I have nothing against SQL of course. The simplified approach of a UI built on top of zillion or tools like it really enables a whole next level of productivity for business users that are never going to learn SQL, but also need more query flexibility than just "dashboards" without having to wait on a BI team for answers -- I die inside a little bit every time I hear of a company doing this. And as you have noted, I also think text-to-semantic-layer is an interesting approach for involving AI/NLP.

I've been pulled away from this project for some time due to an acquisition at my day job but hoping to get back into it soon!

New comment by totalhack in "Show HN: Trilogy – A Reusable, Composable SQL Experiment"

totalhack — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 20:44:48 +0000

Congrats on the launch. I made a tool that has some similar objectives but doesn't present as SQL itself like Trilogy seems to. I'll take a deeper look at Trilogy soon, always interested to see the variety of approaches to this.

https://github.com/totalhack/zillion

New comment by totalhack in "Show HN: Trilogy – A Reusable, Composable SQL Experiment"

totalhack — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 20:33:44 +0000

If I'm understanding your intent correctly, I think you could do that with Zillion.

https://github.com/totalhack/zillion

Disclaimer: been sidetracked by an acquisition at my day job this year, intend to put more time into this project soon, but I use it in production to great effect.

New comment by totalhack in "Apple's M4 Max chip is the fastest single-core performer in consumer computing"

totalhack — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 01:59:31 +0000

Running a 2024 xps 13 with Ubuntu for work and it's been solid. Had a Lenovo before this which was great bang for the buck but occasional issues with heating up during sleep. Would consider trying a Framework next.

New comment by totalhack in "Expect – Linux tool for automating interactive programs"

totalhack — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 12:23:23 +0000

Expect was the first tool that really hooked me at my first job at Sun. I had to write a tool to automate verification of the boot process during firmware dev, handling variety of odd/unexpected behaviors, paths, and prompts.

Many years later I heard they were still relying on that tool!

New comment by totalhack in "Show HN: We open sourced our entire text-to-SQL product"

totalhack — Fri, 24 May 2024 21:52:45 +0000

Is this more like text-to-semantic layer or does it throw the schema in the prompt and generate SQL with the llm?

New comment by totalhack in "Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice"

totalhack — Tue, 21 May 2024 01:24:02 +0000

Go f'in get 'em Scarlett.

New comment by totalhack in "Show HN: Hashquery, a Python library for defining reusable analysis"

totalhack — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 23:14:19 +0000

This looks cool. I built a similar open source semantic data / warehousing tool called Zillion. I use it to power my company's BI but haven't put as much time into the polish as you guys.

https://github.com/totalhack/zillion