sivers

.. and even then there are other solutions like "GoT" - https://gameoftrees.org/ - which is interoperable with Git but written in that lovely OpenBSD C.

Yes! FUTO keyboard, then go into VOICE INPUT → MODELS → Explore Voice Input Models → English-244: “Best for the most accurate results, but more demanding.”

The voice recognition is built on Whisper, and is amazing. You can speak conversationally for a long time and it gets everything right, with smart decisions based on context.

My stupid thumbs text no more.

Ha! Me too! Exact same. Bought a Pixel 10. Intended to do the default Android for a while. But it was filled with ads for “Wicked” which had me looking at my phone with a sneer on my face I couldn't erase - as if someone had smeared feces all over it and threw it on my bed.

So I jumped straight to GrapheneOS, which was way easier and less extreme than I had been warned. So beautifully minimal, with no crap. Now my phone feels like a simple Linux (Void/Arch) PC. So wonderful.

I started cdbaby.com in my bedroom, just me, fulfilling orders myself.

It got an immediate great reception from a few people, very thankful, happy to pay for the service, and telling all their friends. So that's how I knew it was worth sticking with.

But still, it was very VERY slow going, like even after 9 months I was only getting a few orders a week. After a year it was a few orders a day. That's when I hired my first employee.

It didn't really take off until FOUR YEARS later, of this continuous slow growth.

In hindsight, looking at the numbers, it doubled in size every year for 10 years. But that didn't look like success until year 4.

So when people say, “I started my business but it's been a few months and it's not a success yet!” I have to tell this tale.

Here's a newer post from a German who previously was a fan of the Estonian e-business, saying things changed for the worse in 2025:

https://denationalize.me/emigrate/goodbye-estonia-how-a-popu...

Thanks for this very important point. It often gets lost in the discussion.

The big idea with Linux/BSD/fully-open-source is that you can fix whatever you don't like.

That was the breaking point for me with Tahoe. I never loved MacOS before that, but it never got in the way. Then with Tahoe, it got in the way, so I went to fix it, and found out that fixing it is actually impossible! That was the breakup moment.

Sophisticated LLMs make it even easier to fix or tweak any Linux/BSD/fully-open-source software to our liking.

None. Way easier than expected.

Even GrapheneOS on an Android phone, which I’d heard was hard to install, was dead easy and so worth it.

For Mac to Linux, you can just rsync your /Users/{me} to /home/{me} and enjoy updating some old habits.

No, the difference is trajectory and trust.

We all predict the future, consciously or not. We invest our time and effort into a system that we think has a good future.

Tahoe made me lose trust in Apple's software, and see its trajectory as a bad one that I didn't want to invest any more time into.

“I don't feel like we own them.” ← Well-put!

I was 100% Apple: Mac Mini on the desktop, Macbook Air laptop, iPhone, and two iPads.

Then came Tahoe.

I hated it so badly and it wouldn't let me change the things I hated.

I noticed a subtle sneer as I worked, having to use this stupid computer that wouldn't let me adjust it to my liking anymore.

Then I noticed I wasn't working as much as I used to because I just viscerally hated having to work in that Tahoe environment.

At first I did the thing of erasing the entire computer and doing a USB install just go back to the previous.

But then like you said: “I don't feel like we own them.” I didn't trust Apple to not keep making it worse.

So I switched. Got a Linux desktop, and a Framework laptop. Sooooo nice!! Snappy-fast Linux just the way I want it.

While I was at it, got my first Android phone and installed GrapheneOS on Google Pixel. Sooooo nice! So quiet, doing only what I want.

Even got my first Android tablet to replace the iPad. (OnePlus Pad 3.) It's great too. I'm loving the whole Android ecosystem, when made nerdy like Linux.

So yeah I'm 100% off Apple now and will never go back.

That's how bad Tahoe is.

OFFPUNK sounds like a good name for a punk-like movement to rebel against the entire internet and live offline.

Yeah my first thought on seeing the headline was “Uh-oh. Time to replace Anki.”

But finding out there are no VCs, no investors, I’ll stay with Anki for now.

But still, these HN comments - after an announcement like this - are usually a good place to find out about replacements.

And don't miss the Qweremin:

https://linusakesson.net/qweremin/

Brilliant.

Yes HUGE props to Void Linux. https://voidlinux.org/

Wonderfully under-rated. Robust as anything and SO FAST. It was my sole desktop OS for years, and while I’m dabbling with Debian right now, I miss Void the most. So lean and snappy.

Coming from OpenBSD and FreeBSD, Void Linux feels almost the same. Same rc init scripts and such.

This post describes the problem. Also see the follow-up that describes a solution:

https://jsteuernagel.de/posts/using-freebsd-to-make-self-hos...

Ah, sorry. I misunderstood. The parser for Mustache templates - https://mustache.github.io/ - is in the PostgreSQL functions.

See it in practice here in the unit tests:

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/omni/test/templ...

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/omni/test/must_...

It comes from these three functions, but really only using the top-level "o.template" function:

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/omni/template.s...

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/omni/must_templ...

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/omni/must_secti...

I'm using it for https://nownownow.com/ and https://my.nownownow.com/ already. Example test:

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/nnn/test/mynow-...

Thanks! Robert Kaye - founder of MusicBrainz : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz

He is a friend and much smarter than me. He told me to switch from MySQL to PostgreSQL. I'm so glad he did.

I edit my HTML templates in the templates/ directory.

Then I use this little Ruby script to sync them into the database, which is where they're actually used:

https://github.com/sivers/sivers/blob/master/scripts/templat...

I haven't done HTMX fragments yet. This repository is quite new, and only like 5% done.

Thanks! I do often get "YOU IDIOT!" type comments from people that did too many Oracle stored procedures in the 90s, and were burned by it.

But PostgreSQL is not Oracle and doing things this way has been working wonderfully for me for 9 years so far.

Thanks! And yeah the other inspiration is that in the last 27 years of making web apps, I've gone from PHP to Ruby to JavaScript back to Ruby, considered switching to Go or Elixir, but my PostgreSQL database was at the center of it all, throughout.

So it makes sense to notice what's constant, what's ever-changing, and organize accordingly.

Whoa. How weird to see this on the HN front page. It's so not ready yet. I'll write up more about it some day soon.

For the big idea, see https://sive.rs/pg

I really took Rich Hickey's "Simplicity Matters" talk to heart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI8tNMsozo0

I've been making PostgreSQL-centered web apps for 9 years that way, by having PostgreSQL just return JSON. Then the "controller" (Ruby or whatever) parses the Mustache or ERB template with the JSON and returns HTML to the browser.

What I'm doing differently now is having PostgreSQL parse Mustache templates directly!

So now the controller just has to pass in the HTTP params, give it to the PostgreSQL function, and it returns HTML ready to return in the HTTP response.

I had my Parker Fly with me at a gig in NYC, when back stage I met Les Paul. He had never seen one, and he admired its radical choices.

So we found a nice big permanent sharpie, and Les Paul signed my Parker Fly.

It's also a wonderful metaphor for how the opposite can also be true.

Japanese addresses that name the blocks, not the streets: https://sive.rs/jadr

West African music that uses the "1" as the end of the phrase instead of the start: https://sive.rs/fela

“Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true”, Joan Robinson

https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_differe...

I love Sinatra, but wanted to see if simple Scheme compiled to C could do the same thing in an equally eloquent way. I thought the answer was no, but this Schematra looks great, so maybe.

Wow. Last year I hired Peter Bex - a lead Chicken Scheme dev - to help me do the same thing! (Sinatra in Chicken Scheme.)

It passed the tests but I didn't put it on my Github because I realized I wasn't going to continue using it.

If anyone's interested, I could add it on Github I guess. sive.rs/contact

to save you a lookup:

The Arabic text "رجمة نانسي قنقر" translates to English as: "Nancy Qanqar's translation" or "Translation by Nancy Qanqar"

"رجمة" means "translation" and "نانسي قنقر" is the name "Nancy Qanqar"

If you don't mind audiobooks, here's one way (well, two ways) to listen to Ulysses:

https://sive.rs/ulysses

I’d always wanted to go to Korea. I was so excited. I set out to explore and forgot my phone in the hotel.

I walked around Seoul for twelve hours that day and experienced so many wonderful things. I remember them all vividly now, years later, but I have no photos of it.

It was a relief to not document everything. I appreciated everything as a one-step process instead of a two-step process. I could just feel amazed, instead of feel amazed and hold up my camera to record it. Besides, how often do I look at those photos later, anyway? I find it more useful to refer to my journal of how I felt, instead of what I saw.

A few times, GPS could have helped, but because I didn’t have it, I had to go ask strangers for directions. Getting lost led me down some great little back roads I never would have found if I was following the map.

So now I intentionally travel without a phone.

I feel free and untethered. A break from connection.

Where you are is partially defined by where you are not. When you’re somewhere, you’re not somewhere else. But when you use your phone, you’re everywhere. You keep in touch with friends. You hear what’s going on at home. You see the screen exactly as you do anywhere else.

It’s wonderful to be cut off from everywhere else — to be more fully only there.

And it’s so nice to not know the time or where I am. Clocks and maps are useful inventions, but I see a moment better without them.

I appreciate a moment more when I know I’ll never see it again. I remember that day in Seoul better than I remember most photo-filled travels.

Just the rats. Mice can't help themselves. To keep them in your pocket, you'd want to keep a little towel in your pocket, and a couple little alcohol wipes handy for when they pee on someone's hand.

Consider two pet mice instead. They're more portable. Kess could carry them in her pocket when going out to the playground and the mice are happy to stay in there. Get two girls because girl mice smell better and don't fight. My boy had three pet mice from age 6-9 and absolutely adored them. Took them everywhere out to play. To the beach, to friends' houses, to the playground, etc. And they're such a magnet for conversation. Everyone wants to come see and hold a pet mouse. They're so cute. Our mice lived to the old age of 3, and were very adored.

Rats have more personality than mice but are less portable, so better to have in the house instead of out in the playground. Kind of like guinea pigs. (A common pet where I grew up.) And their little claws can unintentionally scratch and hurt. Clipping their nails would help but that's hard. If you get rats, get two boys, and have them castrated ASAP. I have two boy rats now and love them.

To answer my biggest concern when I got them: they never ever bite. (Neither rats nor mice.)

My pet rats are here next to me as I type this.

I used to live in a basement apartment, next to the trash room. Rats were often blocking my door, and I could hear them walking in the ceiling right above me as I slept. I hated them so much that I happily killed as many as I could, with no remorse.

Last year, my boy (age 12) asked for a pet rat. I thought he was kidding, but he showed me YouTube videos of pet rats being adorable. So I said OK.

We adopted two twin brothers, which he named Cricket and Clover. They look almost identical but I can tell them apart by their personality. Full of energy and wants to climb to my shoulder? That’s Cricket. Mellow and wants to cuddle in my armpit? That’s Clover.

Rats, like cats, use a litter box. They’re very trainable, so they can come when called. They’re attached and affectionate. They have personality, which then makes us more attached and affectionate, too. Go search for videos of pet rats, and you'll see.

Many times a day, I go cuddle them and kiss their bellies, and they lick my nose. They’re wonderful.

As much as I love these rats, my deepest joy is that I'm loving what I used to hate. Cuddling what I used to kill.