Hacker News Reader

iamspoilton Sandboxing Claude CLI with Tart on Apple Silicon

Sharing this with the community because I have found self-maintained fully sandboxed environments for CLI very liberating, alleviating my security concerns of bricking my host machines while providing great persistence. Having it as a lightweight self-contained native and reproducible headless VM for development workflows is quite refreshing, and something which I don't find documented enough.

Arguably, this workflow is more ergonomic than Docker for iterative dev work because the VM’s disk persists like a normal machine, so you just install things and move on without thinking about image layers, committing containers, or rebuilding to make changes stick.

iamspoilton Docker Sandboxes – Disposable, isolated sandboxes for AI agents

I recently wrote a blog post on using Tart for Macs for something similar that docker is doing here but with better persistence and control. My take is that the Tart approach is superior to this as it gives you a full dev machine with a single command line that allows agents to access files on host, install packages, maintain the vm and do whatever they want to do without compromising the host OS.

https://www.mrafayaleem.com/blog/sandboxing-claude-cli-with-...

iamspoilton Tailscale didn't stop the Hugging Face intrusion

Quoting Tailscale: This is our very Canadian apology: sorry you stepped on our toes. The attack didn’t exploit Tailscale, and Tailscale didn’t cause the compromise. But, we didn't stop it. Next time, we will.

iamspoilton Improving personal tax filing with Claude CLI and Obsidian

Have you looked at qmd by any chance? Thoughts on that for sqlite vs qmd in this case? https://github.com/tobi/qmd

iamspoilton Improving personal tax filing with Claude CLI and Obsidian

100% this! This is why I explicitly mentioned in my CLAUDE files to generously use Python for any calculations using the virtualenv. It was also my first time using Claude for tax related calculations so I did cross-check it against an online ACB calculator https://www.adjustedcostbase.ca

iamspoilton Improving personal tax filing with Claude CLI and Obsidian

I couldn't find an equivalent of this for Canadians but thanks for the tip.

The copy-pasting of data from my markdowns to the tax software was the hardest path for me as well.

iamspoilton Improving personal tax filing with Claude CLI and Obsidian

> I use structured JSON documents precisely for this reason, because with a well-defined schema the LLM can write TypeScript functions that must compile.

The intention of this is to reduce hallucination on information extraction, right?

Also, how do you convert your docs / information into JSON documents?

iamspoilton Improving personal tax filing with Claude CLI and Obsidian

An opinionated workflow showcasing how I used Claude and Obsidian together to help with my personal tax filing in Canada

iamspoilton Show HN: Channel Surfer – Watch YouTube like it’s cable TV

Is there an app for this I can download on my Apple TV?

iamspoilton When does MCP make sense vs CLI?

As a counter argument to the kubectl example made in the article, I found the k8s MCP (https://github.com/containers/kubernetes-mcp-server) to be particularly usefuly in trying to restrict LLM access to certain tools such as exec and delete tools, something which is not doable out of box if you use the kubectl CLI (unless you use the --as or --as-group flags and don't tell the LLM what user/usergroup those are).

I have used the kk8s MCP directly inside Github Copilot Chat in VSCode and restricted the write tools in the Configure Tools prompt. With a pseudo protocol established via this MCP and the IDE integration, I find it much safer to prompt the LLM into debugging a live K8s cluster vs. without having any such primitives.

So I don't see why MCPs are or should be dead.

iamspoilton Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)

Orchestera (https://orchestera.com/) - Fully managed Apache Spark clusters in your own AWS account with no additonal compute markups, unlike EMR and Databricks.

Currently implemented the following:

- Automated scale in / scale out of nodes for Spark executors and drivers via Karpenter

- Jupyter notebook integration that works as a Spark driver for quick iteration and prototyping

- A simple JSON based IAM permissions managementent via AWS Parameter Store

Work-in-progress this month:

- Jupyterhub based Spark notebook provisioning

- Spark History Server

- Spark History Server MCP support with chat interface to support Spark pipeline debugging and diagnostics

Open to feedback and connecting. Docs at https://docs.orchestera.com/

iamspoilton OpenAI could reportedly run out of cash by mid-2027

Question: Why aren't we seeing similar reports for Anthropic?

iamspoilton Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)

Spent my 2025 building https://orchestera.com as a side project. The premise is simple - to give Data Engineers and Data Scientists the opportunity to spin up Apache Spark clusters on Amazon EKS without them needing to know all the infrastructure details, how Spark works on Kubernetes, auto-scaling etc.

The platform I am building allows users to launch Spark on Kubernetes in their own AWS account without adding any markup costs to the CPU/Memory on EC2 instances. For example, AWS EMR offering adds a 25% markup cost on top of the EC2 instance pricing. Databricks markup is even higher ranging anywhere from 30% to 100% markup.

To learn more, check out the docs for the project at https://docs.orchestera.com/

iamspoilton The surprise deprecation of GPT-4o for ChatGPT consumers

It's coming back according to Sam https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1mkae1l/gpt5_ama_w...

iamspoilton IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

Manual, would do it once a month or so. Hasn't broken ever since I have been running HA. I run the full Haas OS btw.

iamspoilton IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

I second that. Home Assistant "just works". I have had it running on this cheap used HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Mini Desktop for more than 4 years now without a hiccup and barely any maintenance or hygeing work on it. Just sitting in my tv stand and doing it's work.

https://homeautomation.substack.com/p/setting-up-home-assist...

iamspoilton Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights

Looking at your projects, seems like you still have the hacker going in you! Saw Home Assistant one! Kudos!

iamspoilton Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights

Having a computer engineering background, what motivated you to become a pilot and switch careers?

iamspoilton Chegg Is on Its Last Legs After ChatGPT Sent Its Stock Down 99%

I have been super happy downloading the free adguard dns profile on my iphone and blocking ads across the entire spectrum. Makes reading on internet so much better. Here is the link if anyone is wondering.

https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html

iamspoilton Maestro: Netflix's Workflow Orchestrator

That's also my question.

iamspoilton [dead]

Canadian here who have been using Wise! Amazing product and experience.

iamspoilton Roundcube open-source webmail software merges with Nextcloud

I also have Nextcloud running on docker using linuxserver.io image and the upgrade process is a breeze. I usually upgrade by running watchtower once a month to update my docker images.

iamspoilton Meta plans to lay off 10k employees

Does anyone else find the irony in this statement from a company that is pushing for a Virtual Reality social world since almost the beginning?

> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.

> As part of our Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on understanding this further and finding ways to make sure people build the necessary connections to work effectively. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.

iamspoilton Hardware microphone disconnect (2021)

Does that mean MacBook microphone cannot work while operating in Dock mode?

iamspoilton Why is the Zoom app listening on my microphone when not in a meeting?

I can confirm I have noticed this so many times and decided to keep the Zoom app closed while not in a meeting.

iamspoilton Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi

I spend my last weekend setting up Home Assistant using VMWare on my spare machine. To say that it has been very rewarding is understatement. I am completely blown away by the possibilities that it enables. For instance, I have all my unsupported devices magically supported in HomeKit via the HomeKit Bridge integration in HA.