Hacker News: zippergz

New comment by zippergz in "Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish"

zippergz — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:55:17 +0000

I have a lot of hobbies. Programming is one of them, but not the only one. There are times that some piece of software would help me with one of my hobbies, but I don't want to steal time from hobby X to build the software. And often these don't involve the kind of coding that I want to be doing for fun. This has been a sweet spot for LLM-aided coding for me. I've built several hobby helper apps where the goal was making one of my other hobbies more fun rather than programming. It's still hobby time, not work, but the hobby is not coding.

New comment by zippergz in "iPhone Pocket"

zippergz — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:11:07 +0000

Can we also not have Levi's? Ford cars? Jack Daniel's? All of their namesakes died a very long time ago.

New comment by zippergz in "A modern 35mm film scanner for home"

zippergz — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 20:49:54 +0000

I haven't done 4x5 in a while, but I have an HP flatbed with a 4x5 adapter (purchased used on ebay) which does an OK job for the price.

New comment by zippergz in "Uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade"

zippergz — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 23:14:26 +0000

I dread running my own Python projects if I haven't worked with them in a while.

New comment by zippergz in "Not paying with cash"

zippergz — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 01:46:24 +0000

Curious what part of the world this is in. I can recall a grand total of three places I've seen in my area do this. It's a tiny minority here.

New comment by zippergz in "Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail"

zippergz — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:58:38 +0000

I think this is something that sucks about your particular sorting facility or you're just very unlucky. I've been using Informed Delivery since it launched, in two different states, and while it's not perfect, I find it pretty accurate, especially for normal mail (envelopes, postcards, and so forth). I'd guesstimate that it misses a real non-junk mail item less than 1% of the time, and it misstates when something will be delivered 5% of the time or less. Certainly not enough to offset the value of the service.

New comment by zippergz in "Occasionally USPS sends me pictures of other people's mail"

zippergz — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:43:32 +0000

I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of that is happening - in many cases, items get marked as "shipped" when the label is printed, but often shippers don't hand the package off to the carrier until days later. I can't prove it but sometimes it very much feels like sellers, especially on platforms like etsy and ebay, make sure to print the label immediately and mark the item as shipped so they can claim fast shipping, but then are in no hurry whatsoever to actually get the package in transit. Maybe this is not nefarious and is just a side effect of the way the systems work together, but as a customer it's pretty annoying. For me it's less about how long it takes to get the item and more about feeling mislead on whether it is actually on its way or not.

New comment by zippergz in "Someone at YouTube needs glasses"

zippergz — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 16:02:59 +0000

Yes, this search thing is absolutely infuriating.

New comment by zippergz in "FTC takes action against Uber for deceptive billing and cancellation practices"

zippergz — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 21:08:00 +0000

This is the same thing the food delivery apps (including Uber Eats) do. I have screenshots showing the estimated delivery time pretty consistently jumping up anywhere between 20% and 50% from what it shows on the initial screen to what you get once you've placed the order. And then often they don't even make that time estimate.

New comment by zippergz in "Milwaukee M18 Battery Reverse Engineering"

zippergz — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 20:46:49 +0000

I believe you on the technical details, but as an anecdote, I have M12 batteries that are 10 years old and still working fine. At least, good enough that I have noticed no issues with them and I don't even know off the top of my head which of my batteries are newer and which are older. I also have a bunch of M18 tools and batteries, and I've noticed no particular difference in how they age compared to the M12 ones. But I'm just a DIY homeowner, so my usage is relatively light.

New comment by zippergz in "Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain"

zippergz — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:38:55 +0000

Markmonitor is much more about the people and service behind it rather than the software. To replace markmonitor you don't need a dev to write a tool. You need a dev to write a tool, and then a team of people who build relationships with everyone in the domain world and are available 24/7 to make calls and deal with issues if they come up.

New comment by zippergz in "AI agents: Less capability, more reliability, please"

zippergz — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 18:28:58 +0000

I have HAD a human assistant who booked flights for me. But it took them a long time to learn the nuances of my preferences enough to do it without a lot of back and forth. And even then, they still sometimes had to ask. Things like what time of day I prefer to fly based on what I had going on the day before or what I'll be doing after I land. What airlines I prefer based on which lounges I'd have access to, or what aircraft they fly. When I would opt for a connecting flight to get a better price vs. when I want nonstop regardless of cost. And on and on. Probably dozens of factors that might come into play in various combinations depending on where I'm going and why. And preferences that are hard to articulate, but make sense once understood.

With a really excellent human assistant who deeply understood my brain (at least the travel related parts of it), it was kind of nice. But even then there were times when I thought it would be easier and better to just do it myself. Maybe it's a failure of imagination, but I find it very hard to see the path from today's technology to an AI agent that I would trust enough to hand it off, and that would save enough time and hassle that I wouldn't prefer to just do it myself.

Ask HN: What are you using for email marketing?

zippergz — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 15:27:35 +0000

I'm helping a friend who is starting a business and I'm way out of date on what's good. Are there any email marketing tools I should have her look at beyond the usual suspects (mailchimp, campaign monitor, klaviyo, etc.)? Is there anything new out there or is this just a stagnant field? If you're early stage what are you using?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413302

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by zippergz in "Hyperspace"

zippergz — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 17:00:12 +0000

It does not make hard links. It makes copy-on-write clones.

New comment by zippergz in "Hyperspace"

zippergz — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 16:59:59 +0000

A copy-on-write clone is not the same thing as a hard link.

New comment by zippergz in "Google banned me from Google Voice"

zippergz — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 17:54:49 +0000

Similar problem with email addresses. Tons of stuff relies on it, and providers can shut it off at will. Which is why I use my own domain - at least I can move it to another provider if I get shut down. But that has its own limitations and is not reasonable to expect a normal person to deal with.

New comment by zippergz in "Claude for Desktop"

zippergz — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 13:33:06 +0000

This caused me a problem because I signed up with my personal email address, and then wanted a separate account for work but I only have one phone number and they won't let me use the same one on two accounts. I don't really care about giving them my phone number (it's out there everywhere anyway) but this has really reduced my ability to use their product.

New comment by zippergz in "Claude for Desktop"

zippergz — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 13:30:29 +0000

Have you updated? Mine has search, in 1.2024.289.

New comment by zippergz in "Using an 8K TV as a Monitor"

zippergz — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:11:51 +0000

Agreed. To each their own, but the obsession with the biggest and/or most possible screens is something that is very hard for me to relate to. As soon as I am regularly craning my neck to see all of my screen real estate, it is no longer a positive in my life. I'm glad these solutions exist for people who enjoy them, but they are definitely not for me.

New comment by zippergz in "We're forking Flutter"

zippergz — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 20:48:31 +0000

They do.