HN user
Full-stack engineer (North America, Pacific time) with deep production experience in RabbitMQ and Kafka at scale.
When not writing code, I'm either breadboarding electronics or hiking in the mountains.
Email: ntemail (at) protonmail.com
I think the problem is concentration. AI now absorbs almost all of the oxygen from every category. A story about new chips becomes an AI story. Cloud pricing becomes an AI story. Even personal projects get pulled into the same orbit.
I need this but for dentists.
If I am archiving PBs of data for 10+ years, I don't want to rely on a WASM interpreter being available and performant in the future just to read a file. I want a dead-simple, heavily documented byte specification like Parquet.
Additionally, putting the decoding logic inside an WASM binary introduces an active execution layer into what should be a cold storage.
It's a selection bias issue. The categories you have listed are essentially web services wrapped in an app shell. Of course they need the internet. Consider these examples:
- Photo/Video editors - Snapsheed, Lightroom, Video trimmers etc.
- Document readers & scanners - PDF viewers, e-readers, OCR scanners
- Note taking - Obsidian
- File/Password managers - Authenticators etc.
- Single player games - Chess, puzzles etc.
- Audio/Video players - VLC players
We've just become conditioned to accept that every app needs to phone home for tracking and ad-delivery.
This is excellent. Seeing this makes me appreciate how much visual awareness tools like this are needed.
I built something similar, for the web. https://neberej.github.io/exposedbydefault/
We (software engineers) get better outcomes from the same algorithms by improving data flow, constraints, instrumentation etc. (Better) prompting, retrieval, context engineering etc seem like the LLM equivalents.
The model weights haven't changed but the system is making more use of the capabilities already present in the model.
I've been spending my time away from screens, on woodworking, mostly small projects like plant pot holders.
One thing I've learned is how hard it is to get things perfectly aligned.
I've accumulated a bunch of old website archives over the years. The funny thing is the ugly HTML dumps have been more useful than the "perfect" archive.
It's one of the reasons I've become a bigger fan of RSS over time. A feed from 10-ish years ago is often more usable today than a carefully preserved (application) website.
I've shifted to a "slow code" approach with AI, treating it more like a design partner than a code generator.
I mostly do TDD with TypeScript. I write the test, write the code myself (sometimes with the help of LLM), and then hand it to the LLM. Instead of asking it to write things for me, I use it to find edge cases, check if it's leak-proof, and verify efficiency.
For architecture questions, I debate with it for a while. I almost never ask for code without conversing 4-5 times first to push back on its assumptions. It's the best rubber-ducking partner I've had.
Personal plug: I wrote more about why/how I use AI to write slow, better code on my blog: https://nabraj.com/blog/ai-write-slow-better-code
Me: Senior Full-Stack Engineer with 10+ years of experience building high-traffic web applications and scalable backend systems. I've worked exclusively with US-based companies.
My blog: nabraj(dot)com
Looking for: Senior full-stack, backend, or platform engineering roles.
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada. Open to remote US opportunities.
Tech: TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, React, Next.js, Node.js, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Kafka, RabbitMQ.
Email: ntemail@protonmail.com
That pelican looks like it lost 100k on NFTs and now runs a paid stock-trading group.
This is the reason. I have just been vibe-coding my way for a few months now, got almost all the tools (except Browser and Mail) that I use daily, designed by me (with the help of LLM).
For me, its those Who's hiring or Who wants to get hired posts. I used a throwaway email once and got emails about SEO and AI projects.
I don’t engage. I mark as spam, block the sender/domain, and move on.
I built a tiny Notepad clone in ~5 minutes using an LLM: open/save, plain text, no surprises.
Lately I've been doing the same for other small utilities. Roughly half the little tools I use are ones I generated and kept because they’re predictable and easy to audit.
The point isn't replacing built-ins; it's reducing dependence on shifting defaults. I want to care less about what the software/os vendor changes this time.
Slightly related, I have been writing all my local tools with the help of AIs.
Why not install just the Messenger app? I never install Facebook app, but I keep Messenger app to chat with my college peeps.
I am a fan of https://blogs.hn/. It is mostly HN-like content, but I visit it daily. I wish there was a "new" view though.
Agree on that. HN is a good example of resisting that pull. It hasn’t optimized for engagement loops.
Credit to @dang and the moderation team for keeping it that way.
It's been fantastic. The mouse puts my hand in a natural "handshake" position, which has cut down on the wrist strain I used to get after long hours of work or browsing.
I'd highly recommend giving it a shot.
For work: Vertical Ergonomic Optical Mouse, Anti fatigue mat
For home: Bidet
For personal: Kindle
I am a big fan of https://blogs.hn/ (I visit it daily), your directory looks similar.
You should automate this, maybe drive all of these content from a json file and accept PRs.
---
My blog: https://nabraj.com/
Most popular: Why is boarding a plane still a mess? (https://nabraj.com/blog/boarding-methods)
This suggests HN is functioning as designed. Votes signal agreement while comments surface disagreement.
Negative posts outperform because they create unfinished cognitive work. A clean, agreeable story closes the loop, a contested claim or engagement opens and follows the open loop.
Nice, Linear is a perfect target for this mindset.
The REST client went surprisingly smoothly once I committed to keeping it boring.
I'm building Mac apps in Xcode, and I keep multiple small apps in a single Xcode project with a few shared libraries (basic UI components, buttons, layout helpers, etc. to keep all my apps similar).
The REST client is literally just another target + essentially one extra file on top of that. No workspaces, no collections, no sync, no plugins. Just method, URL, headers, body, hit send, show response. Requests are saved and loaded as plain local JSON.
What surprised me is how little code is actually required once you strip away "product features".
I’ve been vibe-coding replacements for the tools I actually use every day. So far: a Notepad, a REST client, a snipping tool, a local gallery and lightweight notes for iPhone.
The motivation isn't novelty. It's control. I don't need ads, onboarding flows and popups, AI sidebars, bloated menus, unnecessary network calls , etc. A notepad should never touch the network. A REST client shouldn’t ship analytics or auto update itself mid-request.
No plugin system. No extensibility story. Just plain/simple software.
As I build these, I have been realizing how much cognitive overhead we’ve normalized in exchange for very little utility.
I feel like being in a time loop. Every time a big company releases a model, we debate the definition of open source instead of asking what actually matters. Apple clearly wants the upside of academic credibility without giving away commercial optionality, which isn't unsurprising.
Additionally, we might need better categories. With software, flow is clear (source, build and binary) but with AI/ML, the actual source is an unshippable mix of data, infra and time, and weights can be both product and artifacts.
My prediction: 2026 looks normal.
AI stays the top story but in a boring way as novelty wears off and models get cheaper and faster (maybe even more embedded). No AGI moment. LLMs start feeling like databases or cloud compute.
No SpaceX or OpenAI IPO moment. Capital markets quietly reward the boring winners instead. S&P 500 grinds out another double digit year, mostly because earnings keep up and alternatives still look worse. Tech discourse stays apocalyptic, but balance sheets don't.
If you mute politics and social media noise, 2026 probably looks like one of those years that we later remember as "stable" in retrospect.
Bonus: Bitcoin sees both 50k and 150k.
I've realized over time that I personally cannot learn from video at all. Even "great" lectures don't stick. Text does!
Being able to skim, jump around, re-read a paragraph or pause on a single sentence is how understanding actually forms for me.
What’s interesting is that LLMs lean hard into this strength of text, they make it interactive, searchable, and contextual.
To me, most of these platforms have optimized video for engagement. Its essentially "press play and hope it sticks".
Charging by minute might push people toward shorter, noisier and more fragmented pipelines. It feels more like a lever to discourage selfhosting over time.
It's not outrageous money today, but it's a clear signal about where they want CI to live.
Us software engineers assume value comes from serving more people, faster, with less friction. But many of the things that actually make life feel coherent such as learning a craft, maintaining friendships and building tools for one person, only work because they’re slow and specific.
Tech doesn't give us the wrong desires but the easier versions of the right ones, and those end up hollow.
I have an Apple TV and I’ve been running iSponsorBlockTV [1] on my Synology box for a while. It auto-skips the sponsored segments and with Youtube premium, it gives me a clean, ad-free setup.
I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.