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nicpottier

5,043 karma · joined December 9, 2009

Adventurous software geek and entrepreneur. I run Nyaruka, a little software company currently based in Ecuador.

http://nyaruka.com/

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/nicpottier; my proof: https://keybase.io/nicpottier/sigs/k9YknvWY-4MvN_KM8m2ZclJCNc75v7VLpRpq0HUhIkI ]

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nicpottier··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
His UI demos are pretty interesting. I particularly like the idea of his warped desktop and agree that that deserves exploration.

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-7-are_we_really_going_to_use_...

nicpottier··on Htmx 4.0, the first JavaScript library to release exclusively on the Game Boy
Are any of these open source? I've gone down the go/htmx/pg path lightly a few times and I haven't loved the feel of it, but maybe I'm doing it wrong. I think just server side templating just starts feeling icky in go so maybe I'm just missing a good pattern or library.
nicpottier··on Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
Weird comments on this. I found the writing to be excellent. The animations are a bit small and associated text even smaller on mobile but this doesn't read as AI slop to me at all. Anything that makes technology more accessible and understandable is a win in my book so kudos for doing it.
nicpottier··on GnuCash is right. It's also why I built my own finance app
Did you write the blog post entirely on your own? It reads like AI slop to me but maybe I'm just getting more sensitive. I can't decide whether we are all starting to mimic the same turns of phrase that LLMs like to use or whether just nobody writes anymore. I suspect the latter.
nicpottier··on All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027
I think phone manufacturers will figure it out once it is a requirement. Was switching everyone to USB-C annoying for Apple? Sure. Are we in a better place because the EU forced it. You betcha. That's the point.

I don't love everything the EU does (cookie banners!?) but this is one where I have confidence that the consumer will ultimately benefit.

As others have noted, most people do not replace their phones every two years anymore, there just isn't any big reason to.

nicpottier··on Code Is Cheap Now, and That Changes Everything
One is made for humans to consume, the other for a compiler or interpreter. Good code is supposed to look like other code and follow common patterns. The best writing is original and novel.
nicpottier··on Code Is Cheap Now, and That Changes Everything
> This isn’t a minor detail, it’s the core constraint that shaped virtually every habit and institution in our industry.

I am so so tired of this turn of phrase in LLM created content. I guess I don't know for sure whether this article was LLM written but I suspect so. Or, scarier still we are changing our own writing to match this slop.

nicpottier··on Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB
Try training a model on piper, you will need to record a lot of utterances but the results are pretty great and the output is a fast TTS model.
nicpottier··on GPT‑5.4 Mini and Nano
I will confess that I have not had time to play with those. Will give them a try, thanks for the recommendation.
nicpottier··on GPT‑5.4 Mini and Nano
I've been struggling on finding a reasonably priced model to use with my toy openclaw instance. Opus 4.6 felt kinda magical but that's just too expensive and I'm not risking my max subscription for it.

GPT 5.4 mini is the first alternative that is both affordable and decent. Pretty impressed. On a $20 codex plan I think I'm pretty set and the value is there for me.

nicpottier··on WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate
Maybe that's a good thing? I miss the Seattle of the 2000s that was less overflowing with tech and more a mix of incomes.

I for one support the tax. The dichotomy of being a liberal state with a regressive tax structure needs to stop. Slippery slope argument aside this tax is a good first step. Income tax while imperfect seems to be the best system we have to tax the rich and not the poor.

nicpottier··on Microgpt
Ya, this reads verbatim on how my OpenClaw bot blogs.
nicpottier··on Anthropic is Down
This made me laugh only because I imagine there could possibly be some truth to it. This is the world we are in. Maybe they all loaded codex to fix their deploy? ;)
nicpottier··on White House Posts Altered Photo Showing Arrested Minnesota Protester Crying
This photo did not scream AI to me but I'm not deep into internet trolling culture.

I would love to be able to take photos that our government posts at face value.

I find any defense of this kind of wild. These are the people in power? Even if it is a joke is this how we want the powerful treating us?

nicpottier··on White House Posts Altered Photo Showing Arrested Minnesota Protester Crying
Yes, it was good this was caught and reported on. But this will become normalized and we seem to be sprinting full speed towards not being able to know what to believe. That the State is engaging in this is concerning to say the least.
nicpottier··on We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports
Pretty sure the right move as soon as he said "I didn't write that" was to just say. "It isn't important who wrote it, we all make mistakes, let's see together how we could have done better."
nicpottier··on Show HN: No more writing shitty regexes to police usernames
Congrats on the launch!

Do you expect / want this to be a business? This feels like the kind of thing where anybody big enough to pay for it will build it in house. And your pricing seems so cheap that even if you do win some it won't be enough.

Genuine curiosity but 300ms seems slow? Am I missing something? How big is the blacklist?

nicpottier··on GPT Image 1.5
Love this benchmark, always the first place I look. Also seems like it is time to move the goalposts, not sure we are getting enough resolution between models anymore.

Out of curiosity why does gemini get gold for the poker example but gpt-image 1.5 does not? I couldn't see a difference between the two.

nicpottier··on A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition
I once was chatting with an author of books (very much an amateur) and he said he enjoyed writing because he liked discovering where the story goes. IE, he starts and builds characters and creates scenarios for them and at some point the story kind of takes over, there is only one way a character can act based on what was previously written, but it wasn't preordained. That's why he liked it, it was a discovery to him.

I'm not saying this is the right way to write a book but it is a way some people write at least! And one LLMs seem capable of doing. (though isn't a book outline pretty much the same as a coding plan and well within their wheelhouse?)

nicpottier··on Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo
Stripe supported Bitcoin for a while as a payment method.. so..

I actually view that as a plus though, they have experience and have seen what works and what doesn't.

nicpottier··on A community-led fork of Organic Maps
I've contributed a few trivial fixes to OrganicMaps and I found them to be pretty responsive and reasonable in their opinions. That doesn't mean I agreed with all the decisions or priorities they make but that's to be expected. Their leadership seemed sane enough to me. It certainly felt like close enough to a BDFL situation to me.

In the research I did, OrganicMaps was the only viable open alternative to something like Gaia and it wasn't particularly close. It does a pretty good job of that, though their map styles leave some things to be desired and meter only topo lines is a bummer.

My limited experience playing around with the codebase made me appreciate that this isn't a small or simple project. It is a huge mixed codebase of C/Java/etc to share rendering across platforms and even just the map file generation is no small thing.

Color me skeptical that a fork will get off the ground, this seems more likely to me that both projects will struggle for a good while longer. Announcing a fork is easy, delivering something with enough value beyond rhetoric that will draw users over is another.

nicpottier··on Google Is Winning on Every AI Front
It was really bad at first for this type of thing. I just tried a few of them because I too had given up on them and they seem to work perfectly now. It even cancelled the alarm I had previously set when I simply said "cancel the last alarm".
nicpottier··on What if we made advertising pay the user?
See Maniac on Netflix. They call them "AdBuddies" and they are people reading you ads in exchange for payment.
nicpottier··on An 'administrative error' sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison
I understand the idea here of course. I have been posting and commenting on HN for the better part of two decades. I don't want to see HN descend into a complete chaos of political news, I agree with that. But it also feels not so right to have absolutely zero response or reflection on current events within this community given how close this democracy seems to be teetering on the edge.

This community DOES generally have a higher level of discourse than other parts of the internet and I don't believe that is wholly because we avoid contentious topics. (thus my vim vs emacs example)

nicpottier··on An 'administrative error' sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison
But vim vs emacs is fine?
nicpottier··on An 'administrative error' sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison
It is terrifying is what it is. That HN seems to be pretending that everything is going just fine and allowing these discussions to be buried is more than a little bit concerning. Have a fucking spine!
nicpottier··on An 'administrative error' sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison
Except the administration is paying for these people to be in the El Salvadoran prison. Also, since when is the administration that uses threats of giant tariffs to accomplish its goals powerless to right these wrongs?
nicpottier··on An 'administrative error' sent a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison
Also the administration claims to be "powerless" to free him now. Does anybody believe this? Terrifying.

This isn't the only case, how many others are out there? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/its-a-tradit...

nicpottier··on Low-Cost Drone Add-Ons from China Let Anyone Turn Toys into Weapons of War
Fiber optic cabling is definitely a bigger lift but the idea that the mount to drop something from a drone is something that is difficult for anybody with even a bit of knowledge seems like fear mongering. I mean it's a 3D print and servo away for any appropriately sized drone.

As someone who just picked up flying FPV drones (very fun) I do fear these may turn illegal before long.

nicpottier··on Launch HN: Bild AI (YC W25) – Understand Construction Blueprints Using AI
Who is your market? In my area takeoffs are done by lumber yards, it's just a service they provide in order to win the business. So you are going to be selling B2B into a market that is very slow and resistant to change. I imagine many are using some software for their process but I've never seen it.

On the other side, architects are using Revit more and more and takeoffs like square footage of flooring are accurate and take no time at all. That's another industry slow to change and that used to take more effort so many architects aren't providing that information to their clients, but technically there's nothing preventing it. There's a bit more hand waving when it comes to calculating number of studs etc, but that is pretty straightforward as well.

Source: I'm funemployed as a drafter for a local architect after 25 years in software.

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