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TheCapeGreek

1,115 karma · joined March 14, 2018

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TheCapeGreek··on An Update on Orion for Linux and Windows
Anecdotally, the niche it solved for me for a while was "Safari for optimal performance on mac, but with proper extensions like ublock".

I used it regularly for almost a year, eventually got off because of some UI bugs that came up and because the Safari dev tools feel so clunky/need relearning compared to Chrome & FF.

TheCapeGreek··on PostgreSQL for Everything
Anecdotally:

The main caveat as someone who works on mostly average web CRUD apps, is that "Use PG/SQLite for everything" usually falls flat when the tools I use day to day don't support that use case super well or have rougher edges.

If your framework/ORM/whatever of choice doesn't support the full feature set of that driver compared to Redis/ES/Whatever you're replacing, you'll find yourself going down rabbit holes doing workarounds instead of staying with the "happy path" and just using separate tech for what it's specialised in.

If you already are doing most of these sorts of features by yourself instead of with frameworks, maybe it's fine, but this does start to feel like a time-to-release hindrance if you don't want to fiddle with the minutia.

TheCapeGreek··on Humanising LLM Outputs Is Dumb
>[...] you are asking it to continuously compress its output into a lower-bandwidth format. That compression is lossy.

Yes, that's exactly what I want. I want to know what is done with a high level why, NOT a paragraph explaining each line of code modified.

A frequent tweak I've made on coding work with Claude in the last month is asking it to restrict its comment length to 1 line/sentence max. I just want `// This happens because XYZ upstream`, not `// Historically from ticket blahblah there was some dummy code where we discovered ancient runes and that led us to looking into your birth records and then triangulated an issue in XYZ upstream that we compensate for here`.

The model's "most information dense representation" is very similar to how we compress data in the first place: most of it is redundant or unnecessary for the purposes of storage. I'll "decompress" the 1-liner context myself when I read it again in 6 months. But I can't stand reading just so much slop commentary when we're all writing more code at once and having to review more than ever.

TheCapeGreek··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
Building South Africa's version of TCGPlayer/Cardmarket/etc, for Yu-Gi-Oh! https://lekkerduelist.co.za

There's competition in the other TCGs, and of course a 2-sided marketplace is one of the hardest things to seed. So this is mostly just a project that I can put any fresh ideas into that I wouldn't be able to at my dayjob.

TheCapeGreek··on Vite+ Beta
Because VILT is dead and Livewire is now on version 1100?

I've worked on both stacks in the last few years across several clients. Honestly like with anything in tech it seems to mostly fall apart with half-regarded usage of the tools in growing teams that don't care about their quality in favour of "get ticket done".

TheCapeGreek··on Show HN: TownSquare, a tiny presence layer for websites
In a small local scene with several whatsapp groups, I put "don't be an edgelord" as a catch-all rule rule when I started a discord in the community.

Lo and behold, the EXACT person I had in mind when making the rule, moaned about it.

Works as intended.

TheCapeGreek··on Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
For better or worse, AI is beating on video essays too.

Maybe my attention span is truly stuffed, but I really can't stand it when a video essay is the most succinct source on a topic - waiting for someone to express their thoughts in speech, with sometimes slow cadences or their own waffling, combined with sponsor segments (yes I use SponsorBlock, but sometimes or on other devices ads get through), etc.

So I use AI summary for a lot of informational videos now unless I actually am watching it for the entertainment and production value. I don't need 10 minutes on "this will change the way we look at XYZ" that has only 1 minute of real information in it.

TheCapeGreek··on Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails
Yes, which is why I commented why I did - poster was pointing at the Netherlands which seemed to misconstrue the current state of the problem.
TheCapeGreek··on Claude Fable 5: mid-tier results on coding tasks
Personally I think the verdict is still out on if Opus & co are actually worse, or the rate at which we move with these tools now is faster than we're used to for managing tech debt and compounding complexity with rapidly built software.

If nothing else, using the smart model for planning to hand off to the previous gen for implementation still seems like a useful pattern.

TheCapeGreek··on Digital Sovereignty Becomes an Imperative as the US Reads Dutch Emails
Is this about EU Chat Control? Because that was mostly pushed from Denmark no?
TheCapeGreek··on Claude Fable 5: mid-tier results on coding tasks
I'll mirror some other anecdata here: Not finding Fable to be amazingly godlike at actual coding, but it does seem better at planning, architectural thinking, and reviewing code. Used it to think through some longer form refactors that involve some product decisions and changes, and found it to provide more thoughtful feedback. However that's just my subjective experience, and I don't think it's provably that much better to make me want to go pay for API pricing when the free trial is over.

My plan is to make hay while the sun shines: get some planning in over the next week or so, and just let Opus take care of it when I get to actual implementation.

TheCapeGreek··on The quiet renovation at Bitwarden
There is one underrated feature that I switched to Bitwarden for, away from KeePass: the emergency contact access. You can designate contacts that can request access to your account. If you don't deny the request within a time frame, they are granted access.

So much of our lives is now digital. Important accounts of all kinds, banking, etc.

Waiting on several giant corps to grant your loved ones access after they go through the bureaucratic hole of documentation is... rough.

Putting my master password in my will feels the same as just writing it on a note on my desk. Putting it in a note in a safety deposit box is high effort and cost.

Anyone got a better alternative way to set this up if self-hosting and not going with Vaultwarden?

TheCapeGreek··on I let AI build a tool to help me figure out what was waking me up at night
Responding here to short-circuit all the replies to this:

You shouldn't be looking at just various kinds of earplugs as options for this. You can get custom made earplugs for your ears for differing use cases (sleep, concerts) at an ENT.

TheCapeGreek··on Should I run plain Docker Compose in production in 2026?
> Images buy you a versioned artifact with all the code-level dependencies baked in.

Fair enough, that buys a little bit of time to not break deployments I supose.

> When the build process completes, it tears down the overlayfs

Ah okay, I misunderstood you then - I was referring to Docker-less servers and my build steps running there, not building the images on the machine.

Thanks for the info!

TheCapeGreek··on Should I Run Plain Docker Compose in Production in 2026?
I guess what I'm asking for is what the point is of a "baked" image for interpreted language ecosystems. Already using multi stage builds.

"Builds" are the same as deploys, so when working with server(s) instead of larger scale deployments, I'm not seeing the benefit of the whole "build image, pull on server" pipeline when I can just ditch the registry and added layers by doing those steps on the server as I would normally in other kinds of scenarios.

But I have seen this in action, which is why I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

The clearer benefit to me seems to be in this scenario to use it as a fast environment provisioning tool.

TheCapeGreek··on Should I Run Plain Docker Compose in Production in 2026?
> you end up having to copy all the build dependencies (source code) to the host

> disk, i/o exhaustion

This is why I mentioned specifically for ecosystems like PHP, which are interpreted. I'm specifically asking for that use case.

I'm not building binaries, my "build" steps are actually deployment steps (npm build, composer install, etc) that I'd be running in exactly the same way on the host. The image I'm deploying by definition also contains my source code because I'm not deploying anything compiled.

TheCapeGreek··on Should I Run Plain Docker Compose in Production in 2026?
> IP ratelimited for Docker Hub

How? What I'm describing is using Docker less.

> The build process can exhaust resources on the host

Maybe, but I've yet to have a host where that's the case for usual CRUD fare.

> The advantage is simplicity, and it's often worth the risk.

That's basically what I'm evaluating for here.

For bog standard LAMP or similar stack applications, I've not understood the advantage of going through the build-image-then-pull-on-host rigmarole. There's more layers involved there than something like provisioning with Ansible and just having a deploy script to run the usual suspects.

But I have seen that done fairly often, hence was wondering what the point was.

TheCapeGreek··on Should I Run Plain Docker Compose in Production in 2026?
Somewhat adjacent in how I look at using Docker at all in prod, here's what I always wonder:

Is using Docker/Compose "just" as the layer for installing & managing runtime environment and services correct? Especially for languages like PHP?

I.e. am I holding it wrong if I run my "build" processes (npm, composer, etc) on the server at deploy time same as I would without containers? In that sense Docker Composer becomes more like Ansible for me - the tool I use to build the environment, not the entire app.

For the purpose of my question, let's assume I'm building normal CRUD services that can go a little tall or a little wide on servers without caring about hyper scale.

TheCapeGreek··on MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
Apple's RAM price bumps were already insane, now they'll get worse.
TheCapeGreek··on British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
East-West in US is a lot different to a 1 hour shift. Hence minor jetlag.
TheCapeGreek··on Show HN: uBlock filter list to blur all Instagram Reels
Nice. Love seeing simpler solutions like this pop up.
TheCapeGreek··on Show HN: uBlock filter list to blur all Instagram Reels
Firefox has lost the plot, Orion is close but still has the odd UI bug that makes it tough to recommend, Safari is just Safari.

There is no truly good, independent, feature complete browser out there right now if you want to avoid Chrome and have something that a) works and b) isn't hostile to the userbase.

Brave at the very least said they'd keep supporting Manifest v2 extensions, though not sure how you'd acquire them anymore unless Chrome web store has kept the listings up.

TheCapeGreek··on Show HN: uBlock filter list to blur all Instagram Reels
Haven't checked on it since about mid last year but Facebook settings didn't work with it for me.

LinkedIn has also been especially hard to find a good blocker for to remove the sponsored/suggested posts from the timeline (it's just full of garbage engagement bait hot takes).

I just vibecoded a tampermonkey script to block scrolling on Instagram and also block reels. I also had it redirect from the `/reels/` URL to `/reel` which is just the single video view (for when friends link me memes), but it seems they removed that.

TheCapeGreek··on Show HN: uBlock filter list to blur all Instagram Reels
I use ScreenZen for mobile - it can block specifically short form content so you can stick to the actual social parts.
TheCapeGreek··on Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
Tons of non-Apple phones support NFC payments, unless you're specifically referring to Jolla.
TheCapeGreek··on Claude Code Remote Control
Wispr Flow just got an Android release, so everything except it talking back to you is now doable
TheCapeGreek··on Claude Code Remote Control
Doesn't have to be. Before OpenClaw was a thing, people were experimenting with setups to allow them to drive their agent remotely.

And of course, OpenClaw is built to be a very generalist agent with a chat interface - same effective outcome as remotely controlling an AI harness, but not exactly what everyone wants.

TheCapeGreek··on Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows
Definitely not the case, not in all regions, not even within the same country.

We only found out for my family member after the 3rd neurologist's opinion after ~2 years of this.

Not everyone does their professional due diligence - cue endless anecdata about the healthcare industry. It's good to just be aware.

TheCapeGreek··on Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows
PSA to those with family affected by dementia/Alzheimer's at a relatively early age (say <70yo): Get them tested for STDs, specifically Syphilis.

Left untreated for a very long time (decade+), it spreads to the brain and causes dementia among other things. Older generations with stigmas, taboos, or from lower educational backgrounds seem (to me) less likely to get tested, so it seems plausible.

Source: Have recently discovered this myself with a family member from their neurologist.

TheCapeGreek··on An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward
Isn't this part of the default soul.md?
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