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jonathang6kon Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)

I've found it hard to keep up with movie and TV news (particularly when the new Backrooms film is coming out).

So, I built an agent to help remind me -- it's a subscription based service that sends you updates every morning, and stores your preferences so it can learn what you like.

https://holly.garelick.net

jonathang6kon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2024)

Location: Seattle, WA

Remote: Open to remote, on-site, and hybrid

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Swift, Python, Java, JavaScript, SwiftUI, UIKit, Django, SQLite, MySQL, Node.js, React, AWS

Résumé/CV: https://garelick.net/resume

Email: jonathan at-symbol garelick dot-symbol net

I'm a senior generalist with a background in web and mobile (iOS) development. I have worked for multiple startups, including Neeva (acq. by Snowflake). Strong bias to action and experience taking products from 0 to 1. Cheers!

jonathang6kon Wells Fargo Fires over a Dozen for 'Simulation of Keyboard Activity'

If you have to monitor your employees’ keyboard activity, you have a hiring problem.

jonathang6kon Should we teach high schoolers Scratch?

Hmm, I’m not sure that’s a great comparison…Brainfuck is deliberately complex, and certainly not designed for learning.

jonathang6kon Should we teach high schoolers Scratch?

To be clear, I’m not saying high schoolers shouldn’t be learning more complex languages.

My main point is that Scratch should not be stigmatized. It can be a good introduction to get kids “hooked” :-)

Harvard even uses Scratch in their CS50 course!

https://cs50.harvard.edu/scratch/2024/

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Thanks for the suggestion! Someone else had the same great idea. https://github.com/jonathangarelick/SoundSeer/issues/25

Unfortunately, that particular feature will require Spotify to give me additional approval, which requires 6 weeks (or more, unfortunately). I will try my best to add this as soon as possible.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Thank you for the feedback! I am currently exploring how to monetize while doing right by my free users.

Some more advanced integration with Spotify (Liking songs, for example) requires approval by the Spotify team which can take up to 6 weeks. I can gate this and additional cool stuff behind payment. Right now I am considering $2, but frankly, I am new to this so I am not sure how to price it. Any additional thoughts are welcome.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Thank you! :-)

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Very cool. I'll take some time to check it out!

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Yes! I got tired of interrupting my work "flow" to find out about a cool new song. Now I can focus just a bit more.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Love the site design. Thanks for sharing.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Yep! The current release actually still uses AppleScript. The next release will use Scripting Bridge to hook into the app's playback state change events. Much more efficient.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

I'm not too familiar with this, but macOS does have a "Now Playing" icon in the top menu bar whenever audio is playing. It works for all audio sources (Chrome, Spotify, etc). However, to my knowledge, Apple doesn't expose this API and the tool itself is not configurable.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Good times :D

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

Hmm, that's odd. Not sure exactly which approval you are referring to, but here is my experience:

The Spotify Web API actually required no approval, because it does not integrate with the user's account.

The current version of my app uses AppleScript, and was approved by the App Store within 24 hours. The next version will use Scripting Bridge, but I don't anticipate that will be an issue.

In the most technical sense, my app is not really an extension to the Spotify app, it is a standalone app that communicates with the Spotify app using Apple Events.

Hope this helps :-)

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

That's awesome, I'll be sure to check it out!

I deliberately chose not to use marquee because of CPU usage, but if there's a more efficient way, I can definitely integrate that.

jonathang6kon Show HN: See your current Spotify song in the menu bar

In case you'd like to learn more about my development process, I wrote a brief blog post here: https://www.garelick.net/2024/04/22/some-thoughts-on-going-f...

A significant portion of the code was written with Claude Opus. I was very impressed with its abilities.

jonathang6kon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2024)

Location: Seattle, WA

Remote: OK or hybrid/onsite in Seattle

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: JavaScript, Python, Django, React, scikit-learn

Résumé/CV: https://garelick.net/resume

Email: jonathan (at) garelick (dot) net

Senior full stack engineer with startup experience. Comfortable working in dynamic, fast-paced environments. Most recently I worked for Neeva, a search engine startup that was acquired by Snowflake.

Learn more about me from my blog: https://garelick.net