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Comment by pimeys | Hacker News Reader

Cool. Just want to chime in that I wanted to see how quickly GPT-5.5 can turn this into a KDE Plasma 6 Plasmoid. Took about 10 minutes and two dollars, and now I have a nice QML app showing the same information in my taskbar.

Just wanted to say this because I feel it's really crazy that I can just do this today...

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To save me 10 mins and $2, is this posted to GitHub somewhere?

Absolutely this is worth packaging for KDE.

Although I imagine if you don't have the motivation to make it in the first place, you likely don't have the motivation to package it.

I've got Opus crunching on it now, will update when I have it finished and published

Edit:

https://github.com/Zetaphor/whatcable-linux

Running on my Fedora KDE machine right now. Also includes a CLI so you could wrap your own widget

I still need to figure out publishing, doing this in between work meetings.

This is so cool that we can port useful stuff like this in minutes, thanks for sharing!

I packaged it for Arch Linux AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/whatcable-linux

I do not use KDE and wanted just command-line version of it without any Qt dependencies, so I've burned some tokens and produced just that:

https://github.com/vzaliva/whatcable-linux-cli

Sorry, I'm late to the party but there's no rust port yet, so ..

https://crates.io/crates/whatcable

Thanks to the previous implementers/clauders.. I don't take any credits.

I have Claude working on a port to Intercal. Says it may take awhile, I'll post updates when they're available.

> Swift --(claude)--> Plasmoid --(claude)--> CLI --(claude)--> Rust-Port --(claude)--> Intercal

Is this the human centipede of programming?

Yes, as long as there are humans reviewing and quality-gating the outputs at every stage.

Otherwise, it's just a very long exoprosthetic digestive tract.

Seems so.

--> GnomeShell/js --(claude)

https://github.com/abrauchli/usbee - it uses the rust port so I feel it's a legit addition to the centipede ;)

Interesting. GPT-5.5 implementation was simpler with Python and a QML code.

Python was a choice offered during the ideation phase but I chose to go with the C++ implementation

I am happy to package it and port it for Gtk/GNOME today.

If you end up doing that, please post it here. I'd be a very happy user of that extension

Also happy to test it out on Gnome

https://github.com/abrauchli/usbee - still missing some features but it's a start. Happy to take PRs.

I feel like this is so lazy bothering maintainers for it is not great.

No need to bother maintainers, just package it up and upload it to the KDE store as a Plasma extension. Then it can appear for download in "Get New Widgets" in Plasma edit mode. Plenty of "lazy" widgets in there.

Admiral Ackbar has entered the chat.

Making something has a well-defined end. Packaging something for distribution is an easy way to walk yourself into a long-term commitment.

It's 1st of May here, so probably not doing it today. Looking into it a bit more when I get back from the parties. but it's basically just three files: QML for the UI, some python code to parse /proc data and a metadata file.

> It's 1st of May here

Is that date significant somewhere? It was an nice sunny Friday for me.

It's May Day, which is a labour holiday everywhere except North America commemorating the Haymarket Affair when American police brutally repressed striking workers .

In North America we have Labor Day in September to distance it from the historical associations with actual organizing and police brutality.

Still widely noted in Chicago, where the Haymarket riot took place. There's even a very well-attended reenactment every year.

North America is a big place. Generalizations always fail.

You do know that no sea/ocean has split the continent and that Mexico is still in North America right?

1st of may is festive day in Mexico.

May Day has been around significantly longer than the Haymarket Affair.. a couple thousands years at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day

That's actually a different holiday celebrated on the same day. Why the other holiday got the name May Day is beyond me.

International Workers Day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day

It's huge in Berlin. First sunny and warm day this year and techno parties everywhere.

May Day - like labour day in Canada/USA... but on the first of May

I would argue nothing about American Labor Day has anything to do with labor at all. Honestly we should just rename it “Summer’s End” because there is literally no theme. The ad flyers for the sales on that weekend have, if any perceivable theme at all, red, white and blue / Stars and Stripes for some reason. It’s traditional that school starts the day after it, but in many places that’s been dragged several weeks sooner into August for some sick reason.

We just don’t even have any holiday that honors labor, laborers, or labor unions.

>> We just don’t even have any holiday that honors labor, laborers, or labor unions.

That holiday is May Day but it's not federally recognized in the US specifically to hinder labor organizing in this country. President Grover Cleveland went with the September alternative proposed by one of the early unions because it was "less inflammatory" than May Day which was preferred by all the other unions.

> I would argue nothing about American Labor Day has anything to do with labor at all. Honestly we should just rename it “Summer’s End” because there is literally no theme.

Isn't that true of most holidays pretty much anywhere in the West these days? Sure, there's Christmas and Halloween and Easter that have specific themes, but excepting deeply-religious communities who practice associated traditions, they're as meaningful as cosmetic items in free-to-play games. But every country has a bunch of other holidays that most people don't know or care about much beyond knowing it's a day off.

You’re not entirely off-base. But I think that people do get that Memorial Day, in addition to being the most popular day to BBQ, is about appreciating those who gave their lives in service of their country (i.e. they died for us). Valentine’s Day is about love. But Labor Day? People say “well uh I guess it’s about…work? Which we celebrate by not working lol”

> in many places that’s been dragged several weeks sooner into August

Do you mean April?

I mean they start school in August in many places now, instead of the traditional September, the Tuesday following Labor Day, a change which I think is dumb.

Did exactly this with the Sennheiser BTD-700 Bluetooth dongle. Found someone had done the work to create a little C library for controlling the dongle and with that Claude had created a nice widget for KDE to control my headphones.

Yeah it's insane how quickly the platform issue get solved by LLMs for 90% of software.

I fixed lots of old tools' issues with using older broken APIs as well this way.

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