jetsnoc

For me, it's mostly because I want whatever I'm running to stay on my own home network, with access to Home Assistant, my homelab, and so on. Beyond that, old laptops are hard to beat for this: I already have a few, plus spares, they sip power, the battery is a built-in UPS, and the screen and keyboard mean I have a console when something goes wrong — no hunting for a monitor. There are plenty of use cases for a cheap cloud VM or VPS too, of course.

In my case, most of my VMs live on a proxmox cluster of HP EliteDesk minis, with the laptop sitting outside that as the thing that manages the cluster and a few other odds and ends.

Very cool. You built it, shipped it, and sold it.

At first I thought this might be a Nano SaaS, but without a clear definition, I’m now guessing that would be something like one tenth of the numbers you mentioned. So “micro” seems right.

If the term or threshold does not exist, let’s define it as such.

Sixteen years here, and the half-life decay of this community has been slower than anywhere else. That takes real, consistent work, and we have been lucky to have it. Through good times and rough ones, including the loss of Aaron Swartz (who I only knew of through HN), this has stayed a place for real conversation.

The grit, curiosity, and people building things have always been inspiring.

Thanks for all the discussions over the years.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Model performance summary:

  **openai/gpt-oss-120b** — MLX (MXFP4), ~66 tokens/sec @ Hugging Face: `lmstudio-community/gpt-oss-120b-MLX-8bit`

  **google/gemma-3-27b** — MLX (4-bit), ~27 tokens/sec @ Hugging Face: `mlx-community/gemma-3-27b-it-qat-4bit`

  **qwen/qwen3-coder-30b** — MLX (8-bit), ~78 tokens/sec @ Hugging Face: `Qwen/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct`

It’s a Claude agent prompt. I don’t recall who originally shared it, so I can’t yet attribute the source, but I’ll track that down shortly and add proper attribution here.

Here’s the Claude agent markdown:

https://github.com/lst97/claude-code-sub-agents/blob/main/ag...

Edit: Updated from the old Pastebin link to the GitHub version. Attribution found: lst97 on GitHub

  Models
    gpt-oss-120b, Meta Llama 3.2, or Gemma
    (just depends on what I’m doing)

  Hardware
    - Apple M4 Max (128 GB RAM)
      paired with a GPD Win 4 running Ubuntu 24.04 over USB-C networking

  Software
    - Claude Code
    - RA.Aid
    - llama.cpp

  For CUDA computing, I use an older NVIDIA RTX 2080 in an old System76 workstation.

  Process

    I create a good INSTRUCTIONS.md for Claude/Raid that specifies a task & production process with a task list it maintains. I use Claude Agents with an Agent Organizer that helps determine which agents to use. It creates the architecture, prd and security design, writes the code, and then lints, tests and does a code review.

I'll admit it. I've done this, but only a few times and only when someone sent me truly egregious AI slop—the kind where it's obvious no human that respects my time ever looked at it.

My reaction is usually, "Oh, we're doing this? Fine." I'll even prompt my LLM with something like, "Make it sound as corporate and AI-generated as possible." Or, if I'm feeling especially petty, "Write this like you're trying to win the 2025 award for Most Corporate Nonsense, and you're a committee at a Fortune 500 company competing to generate the most boilerplate possible." It's petty, sure, but there's something oddly cathartic about responding to slop with slop.

I wasn’t aware of this, it’s extremely shortsighted. My employees’ chats are my company’s data, and I should be able to use them as I see fit. Restricting API access to our own data moves them quickly in to the 'too difficult to continue doing business with' category.

The reality is that Slack isn’t that sticky. The only reason I fended off the other business units who've demanded Microsoft Teams through the years is my software-engineering teams QoL. Slack has polish and is convenient but now that Slack is becoming inconvenient and not allowing me to do what I want, I can't justify fending off the detractors. I’ll gladly invest the time to swap them out for a platform that respects our ownership and lets us use our data however we need to. We left some money on the table but I am glad we didn’t bundle and upgrade to Slack Grid and lock ourselves into a three-year enterprise agreement...

Thanks for the perspective—makes sense from a financial reporting lens. Curious how you'd balance that with the reality that modern software is rarely a finished asset, and startups often don’t have revenue yet when these costs hit.

Unlike a building—where you might find one for sale and simply buy it—most companies don’t "buy one software" from a vendor and amortize it like a purchased asset. Instead, they hire full-time teams to build, maintain, and evolve software as a core, continuous function of the business. And most companies don’t "sell one software" either—they lease it to others, as software-as-a-service.

In your analogy, when a company constructs and sells a building, labor costs are deductible as part of the cost of goods sold. Only the profit—when the finished product is sold—is taxable. But under the new Section 174 rules, software R&D labor is treated like the purchase of a capital asset, even though the company is leasing a service, not selling a final, tangible product.

The flaw? Software isn’t a static, finished asset you walk away from. It’s a living system. One update might fix a bug, introduce a feature, and improve long-term architecture all at once. Is it maintenance? Innovation? Infrastructure? The answer is usually “all of the above.” So how does anyone report that cleanly on a tax form? What’s the IRS’s standard test for sorting that out?

Before TCJA, some companies may have stretched R&D definitions to claim Section 41 credits. But after the TCJA change, the incentive flipped. Now, companies are penalized for doing real R&D—the very thing we should be encouraging. Startups are now paying painfully high tax bills simply for building something they cannot lease out en masse yet.

We should want to incentivize invention, not suppress it. We need more startups, not fewer. Software—especially with generative AI—is one of the few options for us left that can create new markets, expand GDP, and drive compounding national growth. The upside is limitless. This is hammering our economy and it’s strangling startups at the exact moment we need them most.

Congress, do the right thing; restore the rules we had pre-TCJA.

Timeline:

- 1981: Section 41 introduced — provides tax credits for qualified R&D activities.

- Pre-2018: Under Section 174, R&D expenses (including software) were fully deductible; Section 41 credits could be claimed.

- 2017 (Dec): TCJA passed by the 115th Congress and signed by President Trump; Section 174 expenses to be amortized over 5 years starting in 2022.

- 2022: Amortization rule takes effect. Companies must now capitalize and amortize R&D expenses.

- 2025: Section 174 amortization remains in effect; Section 41 credits still exist but now come with a steep tradeoff.

We chose Tailscale as our mesh zero-trust platform primarily for its 4via6 subnet routing. Many of our interfacing networks reuse CIDR ranges, and we had no interest in maintaining a custom WireGuard implementation to handle subnet overlaps. The hidden operational cost of bespoke networking solutions is never trivial. Tailscale’s combination of 4via6, fine-grained ACLs, lightweight agents, and a customer-friendly licensing model made it an easy decision for us—especially given their flexibility around node licensing, which erred in favor of the customer and our custom use cases that would have otherwise inflated our COGS.

They need to implement secondary and tertiary domains—with diverse registrars and hosting infrastructure—for the Zoom client’s calling home. Maybe even a fallback anycast ip address for service discovery. Given how much companies like mine pay for service, it’s reasonable to expect that level of engineering foresight. But hindsight will do—let’s get it fixed. #HugOps to all employees working overtime and taking care of this.

I interpreted the message sas aying the fault lies with those who transmitted the top-secret through Signal and not a fault of the Signal company/app.

Bruce came into the world and made it a better place. Bruce was smart, kind, thoughtful, and generous. I have never met him personally, but early in my life, his story had a significant positive impact on my life. Like him, I too grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho. It’s a conservative state in an LDS Religious stronghold. My high school technology teacher (Mike) was married to his sister at the time and spoke fondly of him but more importantly, spoke specifically about who Bruce was. In hindsight, he knew I needed to hear it.

I wasn’t out as gay yet, maybe only 15 years old. Of course, it would have been a death sentence for a teenager in Southern Idaho to come out as gay. One day though, Mike told me “You know, you can grow up here and you can be /different/ in many different kinds of ways, you can be a band nerd, a guy who writes software, you can be gay, you can be /yourself/ and no matter what some adults might tell you right now, you will be okay. Not only okay, but you can live a fulfilled and successful life while being authentic and true to yourself. You are never the person that these adults claim you are. They don’t know anything.“ He then went on to tell me Bruce’s story and how in his opinion, of course, Bruce wasn’t “evil” or “wrong” for being gay.

In 2005, I wrote my technology teacher a personal thank you letter. I wrote one to Bruce as well and I asked if it could be shared with him.

Bruce took the time to respond:

  Dear Brian,
  Thank you for taking the time to write your letter.  I was very moved by your story.  There were parts that really reminded me of some of my own experiences in life.
  The beautiful thing about life, at least as I have seen it, is that if you keep trying and never doubt yourself, you really can make amazing things happen both in yourself and in the world around you.  I am sure you too have already touched many people around you and have been a positive influence for them. That's so very important.  You may never realize the good you are doing, but it is happening.
  Being gay is becoming more and more accepted as "normal" and one day maybe it just won't matter.  As for being a geek, I don't consider that a bad term.  The world needs geeks.  But then they need gays too!
  Thanks again,
  Bruce Bastian

Oh, I see. Thanks for your perspective. I can understand trying to use contacts and calendar for this and the need to keep it simple. I had a really hard time keeping those organized and the data entered but as apps like Messages get smarter and recognize when I say Happy Birthday to someone that it needs to put a birthdate on that contact, it’s getting a lot easier for me to stay organized.

Might you consider for just a moment, if you will, people who do have a larger problem. People who are neurodivergent who may be challenged with object permanence. Apps like this help greatly. It's not that we don't care or we're stuck with a device in our face, it's that the person doesn't exist unless brought to the front and center.

This isn't a stressor, just an observation. Another thing I would share is that most of the people on the road are twice my age. This can be a pleasure when you meet unique people who like you because you remind them of their grandkids which means they spoil you with meals and stories. This can also be a nightmare where they are retired, have nothing to do but complain and there is a major generational difference in how they understand and respect your same-sex marriage.

I don't full-time or even part-time RV. I own a class-a 36' diesel pusher. During the summer, I spend one month on the Oregon coast, and during the winter, I go to Twenty-Nine Palms or Palm Springs for one or two months. This allows me to fully immerse myself in an area and explore national parks and new places for an extended period.

I wish I would have known how stressful it can be. For me, It feels like there is always a drag of stress - maybe a 30% overhead of stress. If you suddenly don't have hot water, it is on you to fix it because when you are "living" in it for that period, someone won't be able to come to help you repair it for several weeks. You can't even throw money at it, they just are too busy and can't come out.

Driving can be stressful too. You get experienced to it after a while but driving at night down a two-lane highway with diesel trucks behind you, in front of you (another lane), and directly to your left where the vortex pulls you in all while you're trying to keep it in the lane can be stressful. Pulling into a truck stop to fuel can be stressful.

I like to stick to around < 300 miles per day. I prefer to arrive before it's dark. This means a 12-hour drive I would make in my car can end up taking 2-3 days in the RV. I don't mind taking the time now. I relax, unplug and enjoy it. It now relaxes me. I would rather it take time than to worry about driving at night or pulling into a spot at night.

The last few times we went we had two older dogs. One was having seizures. We didn't know it yet but she had kidney failure and had quit eating as much. We didn't notice her feeding habits at home since the other dog was a jerk, eating her portions without us knowing. The trip was fortunate because we got to see everything up close and in person. I have a slight deficiency in object permanence and for them to be right there in my face, we were able to see it. The other dog -- nicknamed Pigbert now -- was having serious issues with his arthritis. He would randomly screech due to pain. A steroid for two weeks solved it quickly.

If you combine those things with the 30% constant drag of stress it can be very unpleasant. No hot water, caring for dogs in crisis, and stressful drives all lead to something that is quite unmanageable.

My advice is to just be aware of managing stressors and ensuring you have as few as possible on travel days. My other advice is - if it sounds like it is for you - DO IT. I have backpacked Europe and traveled to very nice resorts. None of them top the amazing experiences I have had on the road. I won't personally live in that small of a space full-time or part-time but I admire those that do it.

That works fine if the use-case allows for high-latency and doesn't need TCP. To your point, I would imagine most all home use-cases are fine in this regard.

In Rural areas some people need longer range wifi. IoT devices in different buildings or data service for things on a farm.

If the costs were lower, I deploy something in my neighborhood. For whatever reason, my neighborhood has terrible LTE service. I don't know the exact reasons why but I suspect I have poor service either due to geography like we're using another counties cell tower on a butte 5 miles away due to line of sight issues or maybe there are metallic properties of the land here on our canyon rim (mostly lava flows.)

As my spouse and I bike, take walks or drive to work I would love to have data service in that few mile radius around my house. If my phone could have an eSIM with my provider but a SIM with my own private LTE and a meeting call can fail over between data services, I would have a lot more flexibility.

I would have a lot of other use-cases with IoT and maybe quadrupeds as things like that become more generally available but data within a few mile radius would be the first thing.

I suppose I could get four 90 degree antennas at a higher db power output and blast my neighborhood with wifi but that has a lot of downsides.

In the United States regulated by the FCC CBRS Tier 3 is available to "general authorized users." You can operate a private lte-network so long as you authorize and follow the spectrum rules. From the FCC Website

The GAA tier is licensed-by-rule to permit open, flexible access to the band for the widest possible group of potential users. GAA users can operate throughout the 3550-3700 MHz band. GAA users must not cause harmful interference to Incumbent Access users or Priority Access Licensees and must accept interference from these users. GAA users also have no expectation of interference protection from other GAA users. Technical rules for GAA users can be found in Subpart E of Part 96.

Intuition is another cognitive process honed by training and reinforcement of neurons through all sorts of sensories and feedback to our brain. I think parallel models not unlike additional cognitive processes in our brain assisting the NLG will eventually make it more similar to how our cognitive processes actually work.

Disclaimer: Uneducated opinion on my behalf, I'm a hobbyist only.

One might argue that intuition and understanding are simply complex cognitive processes that occur within the brain. In a similar vein, I think ChatGPT will evolve to understand and intuit through integrating with additional advanced machine learning models. Think of ChatGPT having side-car machine-learning models guiding it and having it edit the outputs as it writes. Similar to how we correct ourselves or rephrase something. I don't know what these look like but maybe they would be models for cultural norms (select your 'culture'), social norms, math, sciences and morality. Weighted decisions are made based on "values."

Cognitive processes as we think and speak are constantly refining our thoughts and understanding. Refining our outputs. I believe that is what comes next to advance ML. There might be a lot of hype right now but ChatGPT is a reminder in how far we have come and a small preview of what the future looks like.

Disclaimer:

  - I don't know anything about anything. 
  - I already find ChatGPT useful. 
  - I might be biased, I was a Loopt user as far back as 2007. I will buy about anything sama sells.

Donald Trump was very much the head of the executive branch in the United States for four years. He may not have written laws but he certainly signed many into law. But, it was broken before he came in and I honestly don't know much about the bills he signed into law.

I would agree with the greater point that might be getting made here is that it's all of Washington, DC gaming the laws and using their democratically elected "for the people" powers for personal inurement.

I will never judge private citizens for using any law to their advantage. After all, a private citizen is just leveraging what everyone else can.

Unfortunately, we know who writes the laws but the voters in states rarely replace their senators and representatives. I wish this was less of a "team sport" where my guy who is "conservative" or "liberal" has to win and people would be willing to fire a senator or a representative for just one term so our elected officials are reminded who they work for and that we may vote them out at any time. We don't have term limits for these seats but through voting we effectively /could/ replace them every cycle if we wanted.

I have a friend who owns businesses. His business is part of a larger non-profit association and this association lobbies capital hill every year. He personally goes up there and has conversations with them once a year for our state. He like to share a story where he was waiting to meet with a member of the house. The representative came out of his office, his assistant was helping him put on his jacket and he asked his assistant "What is this vote for?" .. He gets his answer and then he asks -- "How are we voting?" ... presumably asking how his party is voting or how his majority whip wants him to vote.

I like this verbiage from a specific website (pragmaticvoters.com):

  A pragmatic voter understands that a politician who is afraid of losing their position is a politician that is willing to govern for the better interest of the people. Politicians should always fear losing their jobs. Through voting, we remind them who they work for.

The part you would like to skip over - the static typing benefits - is exactly where it provides the most value and that makes it worth it for /me./ Warts and all. I'm new to TypeScript so take it with a grain of salt. I agree with some of your thoughts but I see a lot of these same issues in a lot of languages and frameworks. I'm really enjoying typescript. I'll probably be a little more jaded here in a few more thousand hours of working in it.

I am always willing to correct an error or omission. Could you share more? I was curious if my statement was bias (on my part) or fact so I did a little research and came across the Edmunds quote below. They are basically the consumer reports for vehicle shopping.

  "The Tesla Model S Plaid is a high-performance luxury electric car that Tesla says pumps out 1,020 horsepower and does 0-60 mph in 1.99 seconds. If all of that sounds impressive, that's because it is."

Tesla stocks have always been overvalued. The reason why is that people believe in him, his vision and the future sales of Tesla based on him and his vision. It is a luxury brand. A lifestyle. I am proposing the theory that maybe he's lost a little bit of that magic in people believing in him. I could have it all wrong since it is anecdotal evidence of the worst kind - my own.

I recently considered purchasing a Tesla Plaid, but ultimately decided against it because I did not want to indirectly support Elon Musk. Instead, I purchased a Porsche. I was in the market for a Luxury car - not necessarily an EV.

I used to be a big fan of Musk so much so that I wore the t-shirt ("Occupy Mars.") But, his opinions have become too personally problematic for me to feel comfortable supporting him. I mean it and want that to be absorbed, so I will say it again. His /personal opinions/ have become /too personally problematic/ for me as a consumer to feel comfortable supporting him. I have a personal boycott against him, if you will. I will do away with my Starlink just as soon as Amazon gets Kuiper online.

I am concerned that others may feel the same way, which could make it difficult for him to attract and hire talented people. It is unfortunate because I could always see the ~potential~ of Twitter under a visionary capitalist. You see, I am/was also Twitter's biggest fan, I am user-id 11,647 from 2006. I don't know that he can hire the right people, now, to meet that potential. I envision a platform that serves as a forum, creators' storefront, and a place for fans to subscribe and tip content creators. Twitter could grow a lot of these barely tapped markets. With the right moves on the chess-board, I have no doubt in my mind Twitter could rapidly become one of the top three mobile wallets if the cards were played correctly. There are so many ways for Twitter to become an old-fashioned business that takes cash from it's customers which would allow it to diversify out of the advertisement revenue. This would meet his goal of Twitter being a public square for its users not one that is required to appease it's advertisers. It would also ensure the continuity of Twitter. But, I am not convinced he can get THERE from HERE if others feel the same way I do.

Merry Christmas, my incredibly brilliant HN family! HN has been a home now for 13 years and I can't wait to see what engaging discussions we have in 2023. Life is never hopeless. If any of you need a friend -- my personal email is in my profile.

[..] people quit if they aren't promoted quick enough. Titles are free, and smaller companies have zero problems handing them out like candy to keep people happy.

My experience is that those same people quit once they are promoted. They are playing a game of ladders. It might be your corporate ladder they are trying to climb but most likely it is someone else's. They want that Senior Engineering title so that they can hop to the next organization without putting in the work to achieve that title at that company. And, it works. Some of my former coworkers have been hired for jobs far above their skillsets and it's on those hiring companies for not being able to assess competence. I have had employees from my company with only four years of experience leave for a VPE title. I wouldn't trust them as an engineering manager or senior engineer reviewing code let alone a VPE but companies are desperate and they were charismatic enough to BS their way through interviews. I always smile when that happens because I know which company will likely go out of business since they can't assess skillsets without titles. These companies are willing to pay way more money for far less talent and well that's the stupidity tax these companies get to pay.

If recruiters are going to farm talent from smaller companies, as they do, I will ensure from here on out that externally all of my duds have Senior, Principle, or Distinguished engineering titles. I will hand them a grenade with the pin removed... Electrons to bits they hire them without evaluating skills or experience. ;) I'll give my exceptional talent titles like Level 1-M.U. (Level 1 being our highest most prestigious rank, the title being master of the universe, or whatever.)

This is the game companies they have created since they can't assess competence and corporate recruiters only know how to search LinkedIn for titles. They made that bed, now they can sleep in it :)

Jokes aside, I was only burnt a few times by employees wanting titles in order to jump ship quickly. I now recognize my coworkers with accolades, great pay, flexibility, and treating them like the intelligent adults that they are. Collaborating with them. Being transparent. If they still want to quit because I won't give them a title too soon and their ego simply cannot get past that, it's just not a great fit and I don't want to keep them from fulfilling the needs of their ego at their next job. That being said, the right people get the right titles at the right time, and in between then, there are a lot of ways I promote people culturally without giving them a title too soon.

Most people just want meaningful work, paid well, and only after those two have been addressed, then do they want recognition. Don't get me wrong, they want recognition too but a lot of poorly managed companies don't understand what meaningful work and paying employees well means so they hand out titles as quickly as they can. Heck, they don't understand what recognition is either if the best they can do is hand out a title.

PS; I am definitely not saying that is what is happening at your company or with your higher ups. I am just over here hyperbolically weaving fantastical yarns of fanciful prose to amuse and illuminate at 0530AM MST.

I stream at a pretty high bandwidth a remote system for gaming. I noticed this immediately. I disabled location sharing and it got a little better. I noticed that everytime my spouse started using his iPhone or opened his M2 Air to do something that my game stream seized. I guessed at something like this being the issue and disabled Airdrop. The problem immediately went away. I cursed about software quality in 2022 but also had a "HugOps" moment where, ... I get it. This stuff is hard stuff and most of the time I don't experience serious defects like this after upgrading OS X.

I still have an issue every now again and for whatever reason a reboot addresses it. I will ifconfig down the interface next time. I suspect that will resolve it.