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podlp

Re:Commodore Releases Flip Phone on Tuesday June 16, 2026 @10:09AM (#48555590)
I’ve worked with flip phones for years, and I think this is the first one I’ve seen with Sailfish! I didn’t see the specs, but it’s got to be comparable to a budget Android phone to run that well. I’m curious to see more of the UX, performance, and security. How does it come to an RTOS phone running Mocor, or a smart feature phone running KaiOS?
What happened to kit homes and plan books? Rather that bring down the cost of custom design, can we bring down the cost of partially pre-fabricated, modern code-compliant homes that still resemble something traditional (not a shipping container home)?

That said, I think this is neat because I’m buying a condo and knowing what’s even possible (physically, allowed by code, etc) seems more art than science. Getting answers usually involves bringing someone on-site, and almost nothing can be DIY’d anymore (either due to permits, HOA, complexity, etc)

The work of a true masochist, but in all seriousness, it’s a solid article explaining aarch64 assembly in plain language.

Show HN: iClaw is part OpenClaw, part Siri, powered by Apple Intelligence

https://barrasso.me/posts/2026-04-27-iclaw-ai-agent-using-apple-intelligence/

Hi HN,Last month at a SundAI hackathon, my team built a prototype for an app called iClaw. The goal was to develop an AI agent using Apple Intelligence. I've since continued hacking away at this idea when I had time, and now I'm releasing it on https://geticlaw.com with code on GitHub.Apple Intelligence is a really poor model choice for an AI agent. It's not great at extracting information (it...

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Show HN: ShellTalk brings deterministic text-to-bash

https://barrasso.me/posts/2026-04-22-text-to-bash-with-shell-talk/

Hi HN! I built a CLI tool called ShellTalk for macOS, Linux, and web (WebAssembly) that maps English text to the corresponding Bash commands.ShellTalk is written in Swift and available under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub. I was inspired a few weeks ago after reading the Meta-Harness paper and seeing a tool called Hunch that did something similar using the Apple Foundation model. I often...

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Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026) on Sunday April 12, 2026 @09:38PM (#47746555)
A local, safe AI agent for macOS that uses Apple Intelligence and lives in the app sandbox

https://github.com/lastbytellc/iclaw

I love SQLite and have ran it even on networked drives with queued writes for read-heavy applications. It’s an incredibly robust piece of software that’s often cost me pennies per month to serve 100k+ monthly users. But there’s definitely a time and place for solid, dedicated database servers like Postgres.

Show HN: I built a local coding agent using Apple Intelligence

https://barrasso.me/posts/2026-04-09-on-device-coding-with-apple-intelligence/

Hi HN! I built an on-device coding agent called Junco, designed to explore what's possible using the AI (Apple Intelligence) you already have on your Mac.Junco is a ~9MB Mach-O binary written entirely in Swift using the LanguageModelSession API. It's primarily an exploration and learning exercise for me, but it's also exciting to see what's possible. A clear pattern emerged: deterministic...

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Re:Ollama is now powered by MLX on Apple Silicon in preview on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @10:13AM (#47601191)
Subjectively, AFM isn’t even close to Qwen. It’s one of the weakest models I’ve used. I’m not even sure how many people have Apple Intelligence enabled. But I agree, there must be a huge onboarding win long-term using (and adapting) a model that’s already optimized for your machine. I’ve learned how to navigate most of its shortcomings, but it’s not the most pleasant to work with.
Sent a LinkedIn request. I’m building a language-specific coding agent using Apple Intelligence with custom adapters. It’s more a proof-of-concept at this point, but basic functionality actually works! The 4K context window is brutal, but there’s a variety of techniques to work around it. Tighter feedback loops, linters, LSPs, and other tools to vet generated code. Plus mechanisms for on-device or web-based API discovery. My hypothesis is if all this can work “well enough” for one language/ runtime, it could be adapted for N languages/ runtimes.
Rig sounds cool, I just joined the waitlist! I’m building something similar although with a much narrower purpose. Excited to learn more
That’s awesome! I’ve got a similar project for macOS/ iOS using the Apple Intelligence models and on-device STT Transcriber APIs. Do you think it the models you’re using could be quantized more that they could be downloaded on first run using Background Assets? Maybe we’re not there yet, but I’m interested in a better, local Siri like this with some sort of “agentic lite” capabilities.
Neat! I’ve actually been building with AFM, including training some LoRA adapters to help steer the model. With the right feedback mechanisms and guardrails, you can even use it for code generation! Hopefully I’ll have a few apps and tools out soon using AFM. I think embedded AI is the future, and in the next few years more platforms will come around to AI as a local API call, not an authorized HTTP request. That said, AFM is still incredibly premature and I’m experimenting with newer models that perform much better.
Re:Building a coding agent in Swift from scratch on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @06:54PM (#47524376)
I’m also working on agents in Swift with the AFM, just having it locally already installed is a huge selling point. I think narrowly-focused agents with good tooling and architecture could accomplish quite a bit, with tradeoffs in speed and cost. But I’m under the assumption that local models (like frontier models) will only get better with time
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2026) on Thursday March 05, 2026 @12:45PM (#47264770)
Location: Boston, MA

Remote: true

Willing to relocate: Seattle

Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, AWS, Docker, Android, React, Svelte, CSS, Etc

Résumé/CV: https://resume.barrasso.me

Email: [email protected]

Pretty nice to have menu bar integration. For macOS 26+, why not use the already-installed on-device speech transcription models?
Re:Run Pebble OS in Browser via WASM on Saturday February 14, 2026 @06:51AM (#47013806)
Love the idea, would be great to see a modes to switch to circular interface for the Time Round 2. Definitely lots of potential for rapid iteration on new watch faces and apps!
Re:Why Elixir is the best language for AI – Dashbit Blog on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:50AM (#46912199)
I tried Elixir a few months back with several different models (GPT, Claude, and Gemini). I’m not an Elixir or BEAM developer, but the results were quite poor. I rarely got it to generate syntactically correct Elixir (let alone idiomatic). It often hallucinated standard library functions that didn’t exist. Since I had very little prior experience, steering the models didn’t go well. I’ve since been using them for JS/ TS, Kotlin/ Java, and a few other tasks where I’m much more familiar.

My takeaway was that these models excel at popular languages where there’s ample training material, but struggle where the languages change rapidly or are relatively “niche.” I’m sure they’ve since gotten better, so perhaps my perception is already out of date.

Re:Extension to Fix YT Background Play on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:04AM (#46911824)
How do sites stop background playback? I’m guessing there’s more than just FocusEvent on the window.
Re:Show HN: Microwave, native iOS app for videos on ATproto on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @09:05AM (#46616204)
Cool app! It’s quite polished and scrolling is smooth on a 13 Mini. Some quick thoughts:

- I didn’t see any loading indicator, and some videos took multiple seconds to load - When I scroll up then back down, I get a white gradient at the bottom of the screen that goes away after a few seconds - I’d like to be able to expand the description text, but clicking it didn’t do anything - Without signing in, my initial feed was almost entirely ICE videos

Re:Intricuit: A touchscreen add-on for Mac laptops on Thursday January 08, 2026 @01:43PM (#46544782)
Kind of like the Axiotron Modbook from 2008 but cheaper and as an accessory, not a full mod

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modbook

I run a podcast app for flip phones called PodLP. Revenue hasn’t always been $500/month, but averaged over the past 5 years it’s been over $500. It’s been primarily from sponsorships (podcasts get featured on the homepage to get more listeners), although next year looks more uncertain so I’m looking at other avenues.

https://podlp.com

Re:This is not the future on Tuesday December 16, 2025 @09:47AM (#46289167)
As a counterpoint, consider reading Kevin Kelly’s “The Inevitable.” I also avoid most social media and have an aversion to all things “smart,” but these may actually be “inevitable.” In a capitalist society, these forces feel inevitable because there’s no Anubis balancing the scales. Only local decisions, often short-sighted. When demand is being created in a market, people will compete to capture it any way possible. Some of those ideas will last, and others will be a flash in the pan. It’s not clear to me that if you reran the tapes of history again, you’d get a significantly different outcome that didn’t include things like short-form video to exploit attention.

https://kk.org/books/the-inevitable

Re:Leaked Apple M5 9 core Geekbench scores on Wednesday October 01, 2025 @08:46AM (#45437049)
Are there viable options? I run Asahi on my M1 Air and it performs quite well, but certain software like Android Studio has issues and hiccups. I’d love a decent ultrabook to replace my Air, but I hate Windows and got overwhelmed with reading Reddit forums to know which PCs will and won’t work with Linux. I don’t mind doing some setup, but I’d rather not be disappointed by non-functional or missing drivers for WiFi, Bluetooth, display, etc.
Re:Pico CSS – Minimal CSS Framework for Semantic HTML on Sunday September 07, 2025 @11:39PM (#45164438)
I’m using Pico for a hackathon project. It’s a good way to prototype, especially the class-less version. You don’t need to pay attention to every detail to get the concept in a good enough state, nor do you need an LLM to remind you of Tailwind’s library of classes
Re:LLM Inevitabilism on Tuesday July 15, 2025 @06:06AM (#44569627)
Well many have come true, a few have not. As someone who gets vertigo from headsets, I’m a VR skeptic. But his AI predictions are pretty much spot on
Re:LLM Inevitabilism on Tuesday July 15, 2025 @01:29AM (#44568092)
The book I’m currently reading-Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable-feels pretty ironic given this post
Re:X-Clacks-Overhead on Saturday July 05, 2025 @10:23AM (#44473007)
I saw this header recently while profiling headers from feature phones. I think Opera Mini or another browser might’ve injected this header, which is odd because it’s meant to reduce bandwidth and sending it with each request goes against that
Re:The flip phone web: browsing with the original Opera Mini on Wednesday June 04, 2025 @01:40AM (#44177554)
TLDR-Cloud Phone is actively developed and newer, while Opera Mini is outdated and hasn’t received a major update in many years

There are two components to a remote browser like Cloud Phone or Opera Mini: the thin client that runs on device, and the server that performs remote transcoding and rendering

Opera Mini uses servers with the Presto rendering engine that hasn’t been updated in over 10 years. It’s officially discontinued, and not used by any modern Opera browser for desktop. Opera Mini is also intentionally limited to reduce potential for abuse, since it’s a general purpose web browser. Abuse often looks like websites taking advantage of servers to perform expensive computation, like crypto mining. The Opera Mini Native client also hasn’t been updated in 5 years. It doesn’t support media playback (audio or video streaming), or asynchronous JavaScript execution

Cloud Phone is much newer, actively developed, and only allows published “widgets” to be accessed. Because widgets must be approved, the potential for abuse is much lower. It uses Chromium (currently v128), and supports many more modern Web APIs and asynchronous execution. SPAs and JS-heavy websites will work well on Cloud Phone, but probably don’t work at all on Opera Mini. Finally, the Cloud Phone client offers more capabilities including multimedia playback, access to the camera/ microphone, and other Web APIs like vibration and soon notifications and badging

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