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joshstrange

23,226 karma · joined July 11, 2011

Email: Josh@JoshStrange.com Github: https://github.com/joshstrange

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/joshstrange; my proof: https://keybase.io/joshstrange/sigs/9yQAUjB3P9Xt5_LeWFPzRkPZv_m7q7M-EgiD3XOB6eo ]

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joshstrange··on Show HN: Parrot – Open-Source Smart Meeting Recorder with Co-Pilot on Mac
Tried this out, and it might be due to other apps on my computer or something but the audio it records has a echo. When I go to play back a speaker's voice it sounds I can hear what sounds like 2 audio streams, slightly offset. Maybe it's something to do with SoundSource/ARC or my other meeting transcribing app.

One more feature I'd love is the ability to export the text/transcript in markdown automatically. I have another tool (MeetingTranscriber) that does this and I like that so I can put the transcripts in my Obsidian Vault which I already expose to the various agents I use.

joshstrange··on The last time my family was replaced by technology
> But it makes me wonder: what if what we loved about this job was never only the code?

This exactly. Look, I "love" code but only because of what it allows me to do and there is plenty of code/coding that I don't love. Not to be too hippy-dippy but I'm a builder, I like to build things. Build things for myself, build things for others. The code was _always_ a means to an end.

Sure, it was cool I had this skill that many people didn't have but I also used to have skill in managing the windows machines and things like the registry. When I first switched to macOS I felt lost, I had this "skill" that was no longer needed but after a while I realized that was a good thing, I wasn't wasting my time fiddling with crap that was just getting in the way of _using_ my computer.

Similarly I may mourn the loss of writing code but at the end of the day code was just a way for me to build, if there are better tools to build (LLMs) then I'm all for it.

joshstrange··on Solving Factorio Quality
Agreed, and aside from balancers and some train grid blueprints I don't use external blueprints. There are just some things I don't like re-inventing. Sometimes if I do a back-to-back factorio game I'll bring over some blueprints but I learned early that external blueprints are the quickest way to ruin the game for me.
joshstrange··on GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price
> 50% cheaper cache than GPT-6 Sol will get you far more mileage on Codex.

Cache doesn't help you much when you are compacting every 5 minutes...

I was shocked at how quickly I ran out my $100/mo subscription with a single agent (sol medium).

joshstrange··on Show HN: Raven – The harness of harnesses, built for RSI
I continue to yearn for a harness of harnesses but each one I try (or build) takes me uncomfortably far from the work being done.

I don't want to be a prompt shuttle, though I feel that way sometimes. Performing the same dance for each ticket I work on. My issue is that, to bastardize a common joke/phrase, 50% of the things the agent stops for are things it (or another agent) could answer for me, but it's a different 50% task to task.

With HoH's I constantly feel like I'm getting peppered with unimportant questions or being kept out of the loop of things that really need my eyes on it. Threading that needle has been particularly difficult.

joshstrange··on macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
My rule has been a 1 year delay but that sometimes makes life hard for Xcode/APIs or changes where your iOS and macOS device must both update for certain features. I bit the bullet and upgraded to 26 after about 6 months but updated to 27 within days because it had to be better than 26, and it is, there are just still a lot of issues.
joshstrange··on macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
> Bugs are elsewhere in the system, too. Sometimes the search bar in System Settings simply refuses to work.

Yep, I've run into this and issues where clicking the search results or normal sidebar items in settings do nothing. Even after killing and restarting Settings.

Golden Gate is better than Tahoe IMHO but only slightly. I hope they circle back to the myriad of bugs/UI issues they introduced.

joshstrange··on What Sentry's 16GB selfhosted taught me
I find I greatly prefer to read non-professional writers in their own voice rather than the ideas regurgitated by an LLM. I promise I’m not trying to attack you or similar, just trying to give some advice.

It’s become a trope, but it’s true, if you feel the need to use an LLM, I’d rather you just post your outline/prompt. It’s smaller and easier to read.

LLM proofread? LLM suggestions? Sure, but always writing with your own words makes it infinitely more appealing, even if you aren’t the best writer.

I look back at many of my blog posts and cringe but it’s me, it’s clearly “me”. I’ve tried to use LLMs to mimic my “voice” but found them wanting and so I only use LLMs in communications to businesses/corporations, not individuals.

My, personal, line in the sand is any personal email, blog post, text message, discord/chat, etc will always be written by me. I think it comes down to respect for someone else’s time.

Perhaps I will be rolled over and lose this battle in the long term, but for now that’s where I’ll hold the line. And before someone says otherwise, I’m a _heavy_ LLM user, I’m a huge fan of them, but for communication and in things like blog posts I feel the need to be “me” and I think that makes for better reading, it improves the message I’m trying to convey which means more people will read it and/or consider it.

joshstrange··on OpenAI: Tomorrow we are re-opening the Pro $200 subscription
I can believe that (20x is not 4x of the 5x plan) but I’ve been on the $100/mo Codex and the $200/mo Claude plans and I can run the whole week with multiple agents on Claude, mean while I burned through my whole week in 1 day on Sol. Yes, it’s half the price of my Claude plan but even if OpenAi actually gave 4x usage for the next plan up (which they just halved), it would still be less than the usage I get from Claude.

I used a reset and tried Astra and it also burned though my weekly usage in a day, with a _single_ agent.

I might be totally wrong but I wonder how much is due to context window. Codex felt like it was compacting every 5 seconds, that really screws your cache reads.

joshstrange··on OpenAI: Tomorrow we are re-opening the Pro $200 subscription
I prefer being able to get through a day without running out of usage.

I tried both sol and astra and they both decimated the $100/mo plan’s weekly limits in a single day running only 1 agent. Blew my mind. I’d always heard your subscription went further on OpenAI/Codex.

Comparatively I can run multiple opus agents in parallel almost continuously and stay under my limits.

joshstrange··on What Sentry's 16GB selfhosted taught me
I don’t have a problem with llm-generated/assisted software, but I can’t handle LLM-generated blog posts. I read enough LLM output everyday already.
joshstrange··on MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta
If your access patterns are fixed and not going to change, if your schema is pretty much solidified, then yes, I don't doubt that at all. But few things I've worked on have had such stable access patterns or schemas that they would benefit.

I enjoyed solving the challenges around using DynamoDB way more than I enjoyed using it on an ongoing basis.

joshstrange··on MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta
> AI makes it much less painful to move off of legacy and/or overpriced software.

Agreed. While DynamoDB != MongoDB, they are similar. I built a product on DynamoDB (Single-table-design) and while it was cool to find a way to make relational data work in DynamoDB, it was always a chore. New feature development was a huge PITA as was changing schema in any way. Sure, I might have been "holding it wrong" but after a weekend with Claude I migrated everything to Postgres and have been incredibly happy with that change something like 4-6 months later.

joshstrange··on Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent
Chipmaker thinks the answer is more chips... No surprise.

At the current state of LLM-tech I'm completely opposed to any kind of "watchdog" concept just like I'm opposed to banning open models, regulatory capture, etc.

I'd rather we all have access to these tools then to keep them sequestered by the largest/most-powerful governments (which is the natural outcome for any of this "slow down" bullshit).

joshstrange··on The smart home graveyard is getting crowded
You can get that exact same experience with Zigbee/z-wave smart switches. I have 74 of them in my house (replaced them all when I moved in) and haven’t had to think about them past that. They work by flipping the switch, they work by voice (Alexa), and via HA and anything that can talk to HA.

If HA goes down I can just walk over and use the switch. A downgrade over yelling into the air for sure but my downgrade is your daily experience.

If someone comes over that doesn’t know how or doesn’t want to use the smart speakers, they can just walk over and flip a switch.

After moving HA off a Pi I found it to be rock solid and I don’t think about it at all unless I want to make or tweak some automation or I get a new device. Adding Claude into the mix for creating/modifying automations is awesome.

joshstrange··on My brother's new high rise apartment doesn't allow individual internet services
The last apartment I lived in (2019) was in the process of switching to building-run Internet, forcing us to give up our individual cable modems for the building WiFi. They had something like a limit of 15 devices you were allowed to connect and no Ethernet/wired, it was WiFi only.

When I talked to them about it they seemed completely befuddled as to why someone might need more than 15 WiFi connections or why someone would need a wired connection.

Thankfully I was moving out and just slow-rolled giving up my equipment until I left.

joshstrange··on Microsoft abandons personal AI chatbot race with Copilot reboot
https://archive.ph/XJG5V
joshstrange··on Oracle on the hook to pay data centre investors even if site has no electricity
> best relational database

Hard disagree. Oracle's database will always live in my mind as a complete waste of money. Some con-man, I'm sorry salesman, sold a previous (idiot) executive on it at a previous company I worked for. The exec was long gone and lots of time was wasted trying to adapt our application (that used MySQL) over to Oracle until we finally pulled the plug. But not after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on time and equipment. We re-purposed the hardware into effectively a big NAS.

joshstrange··on I'm Tired of Being on the Network
Is this just an ad for the MiSTer?

Look, I understand the issues the author has with our current world, though I'd argue there are methods to avoid many of the things they mention (like ads). But it was hard to follow between the silly examples (Steam Deck games needs updates? And?) and the legit issues. Also I'm not sure what kind of rose-colored glasses they are wearing but I will never agree that the "ads were interesting" on AM or FM radio. Thankfully I was not subjected to radio, and the ads which I abhor, for long before I gained control over what I wanted to listen to and when. To pine for such times is anathema to me.

This is such an incredibly pessimistic look at our present. I'll be the first to tell you about what I see as wrong in our society and the author make a number of salient points, but we live in an age of wonder. Yes, there is bad, plenty of it, avoid it is hard but not impossible. Or maybe I'm just an earlier version of the author who still believes in a Star Trek future (TNG/Voy/DS9, not the crap they are putting now, though Lower Decks was a joy).

My phone is a freaking tricorder, I control robots in my house, I turn on/off the lights with my voice, and I can build new software by talking to my computer. I don't deny the bad, nay, evil in the world, but what a bleak outlook this author paints.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
> If you aren't, don't pretend it's some moral stand and not just you being a cheapskate.

sigh please read what I wrote, I didn’t say piracy is morally justified, I said it’s annoying that paying all the services for access to content (side note: I don’t care about movies, when I watch anything it’s normally TV) you get an objectively worse experience when compared to someone who pirated the same media.

Spotify was able to crush music piracy because they provided a better experience. I find it annoying that the same is not true for video. There was a small golden era of Netflix then it all went to shit.

Lastly, the economics of stream vs buy (license or physical media) is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Mostly because there is plenty of media I care about that is near impossible or completely impossible to buy physical media (my preference, then ripped to Plex). If every show I wanted was available on BluRay or similar quality then this wouldn’t be a discussion, or at least not one I cared about. I find it frustrating that there is no legal way to acquire all the content I want and so I’m forced to pay for shitty streaming platforms.

joshstrange··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
> I don't think any adult generation has ever had an opinion this extreme about their youth.

Literally every adult generation has done this for time immemorial, just like the "kids these days" or "the next generation is screwed because X". I'm not saying no kid can have genuine belief nor was I saying that no kid has a coherent anti-AI argument _but_ this article is talking about slang, just because "that's ai" is slang and has negative connotation does not, for one second, mean that kids using that are actually anti-AI. It's slang, not a policy position.

People are reading way too much into that. In 1 year the slang will have moved on and will not be the basis for how they think about AI. Go look at the history of slang, it's not policy forming in the way it's being presented by some in this thread, that's the issue I have.

Just like when kids my age said "that's gay", that didn't mean they were all homophobic, it was slang. Some of those people grew up to be actual homophobes, some grew up to be gay, some grew up to allies. The same will happen here and none if it will be due to the year/months that it existed as slang.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
> It’s a prerequisite for having an app that does video on Apple TV

It's not. Netflix is a _very new_ addition (last year) to the Apple TV app (which is ironic seeing how Netflix was highly integrated into ATV before they moved to apps on the ATV).

All of your services might be represented at this point in time but it can (and has) changed over time.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
> At pre-insane levels, $8k of storage would have been petabytes of non mirrored space.

Not quite. Before the insane prices I was able to get 4x 20TB for $1,200, so $300/20TB, so $8000/300 = 26.6, call it 27 drives, so 27x20 = 540TB, a little over half a petabyte, not "petabytes" (before mirror/raid/etc).

If you were buying that over time and keeping your price-per-harddrive about the same, you'd come up with much lower (since you would have been buying smaller drives in the past. Also smaller/older drives have to be rotated out due to age/wear/too-small so it's not all additive.

But you are correct, there is a difference between "data hoarders" and people that pirate and it's an important distinction (eww, that sounds a little AI-y, but I wrote it).

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
I guess it really comes down to:

1. How much content are we talking about?

2. How many people use your server?

Yes, QuickSync is amazing but hard drives alone (for a larger collection) are incredibly expensive (today). Even before prices shot up I know people that sunk $8K+ into hard drives alone.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
> I really like AppleTV

The service? The Hardware? The App on the hardware? (Great job naming Apple...)

I agree that the Apple TV is the best experience one can have. It can be further enhanced by using a single app (Plex/Plezy/Jellyfin/Infuse/etc). Jumping between streaming services and their hostile, horrible UIs is such a pain. The Apple TV app was meant to improve that situation but without buy-in from all the streaming providers (which they will never get) it's always going to be playing second fiddle to the high seas.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
It's pure joy to be able to always answer "I haven't seen it" when someone starts with "Have you seen that ad...".

The disrespect that streaming companies show their customers is insane. I'm sure most of the customer don't even know what they are missing, the hoops they have to jump through, the mental load to switch between all those terrible, hostile UIs, etc...

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
It's absurd because in a sane world we'd have rules similar to playing music on the radio. If all the content providers provided a stream/video to resellers (and couldn't refuse to license/sell) then we could have a company that did the same thing as pirates can build, legally.

Instead the content is silo'd in a bunch of massive companies that don't care about UI/UX and exist only to force more ads down our throats.

This isn't about being law abiding or not for the sake of it, it's about the best experience _at any price_ is unobtainable without breaking a law.

And yes, I'm in favor of abolishing copyright and/or significantly limiting/curtailing it. Some short exclusivity window (<5 years, ideally <1 year) and then anyone can redistribute it paying small royalties for another <5-10 years, then it's public.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
Just a note, sailing the seas safely is fairly easy today but unless you want a more involved setup and only want to keep unwatched or unwatched plus a few "keep forever" shows, the cost of hardware is not going to be much "cheaper".

I have a friend who calculated up their hardware costs (before ram/ssd/hdd-ageddon) and paying for all the streaming services costs came in lower over the span of something like 10+ years. That said, they have the best UI/UX experience I've seen and don't see ads so I'd still count it as a win.

Oh sure, you can use an old laptop (or seedbox-type thing), an external drive, and get pretty far but if you want to replicate streaming services for all the shows you care about, it's not cheap.

joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
That is worse than cable if you had something like TiVo. Back with a cable subscription you were "locked in" but it was cheaper than buying all the subscriptions. We have taken a massive step backwards in UI/UX when it comes to TV, piracy is the only thing that beats TiVO but TiVo (old TiVo, before Cable Card was killed) beats pretty much everything else today.
joshstrange··on Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
We are worse than cable pricing at this point from what I can see.

It's absurd that piracy is the _best_ user experience. 1 app, 1 place for your content, no licensing deals to worry about, no outrage pulling old episodes, local streaming, the list goes on.

You literally cannot pay (legally) for a better experience, and that makes me sad.

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