keybits

Isolated machines was release recently: https://docs.orbstack.dev/machines/isolated - various recent improvements in the release notes: https://docs.orbstack.dev/release-notes

Nothing specific for Docker yet, but I find the Linux machines are lightweight enough that I just run Docker inside them.

Can you clarify how this relates to Tachyons - do all Tachyons features work? Or is it a subset of Tachyons?

Tailscale have a great FAQ about IPv4 vs IPv6: https://tailscale.com/docs/reference/faq/ipv6

If you're not an expert in this area it's worth a read - I certainly learned a few things!

atproto has an active IETF Working Group: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/atp/about/

Runbox are a good option - company and servers in Norway: https://runbox.com/

Been around since 2000. They're also working on JMAP support and are the top financial contributor to the Stalwart mail server (https://opencollective.com/stalwart) so I think they'll have a more compelling offering soon.

Also worth keeping an eye on Thunderbird pro which will also use Stalwart: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/

atproto feels like a move in the right direction for personal publishing that makes content discovery easier withtout the need to post to multiple channels / platforms. https://standard.site/ is one initiative working towards making this a reality.

I enjoyed about your blog post, but I was curious about the claim in point 2 above. I asked Claude and it seems the claim is false:

# Fact-Checking This Climate Impact Claim

Let me break down this claim with actual data:

## The Numbers

*US Air Conditioning:* - US A/C uses approximately *220-240 TWh/year* (2020 EIA data) - This represents about 6% of total US electricity consumption

*Global Data Centers:* - Estimated *240-340 TWh/year globally* (IEA 2022 reports) - Some estimates go to 460 TWh including cryptocurrency

*AI's Share:* - AI represents roughly *10-15%* of data center energy (IEA estimates this is growing rapidly)

## Verdict: *The claim is FALSE*

The math doesn't support a 4:1 ratio. US A/C and global data centers use *roughly comparable* amounts of energy—somewhere between 1:1 and 1:1.5, not 4:1.

The "40 times AI" conclusion would only work if the 4x premise were true.

## Important Caveats

1. *Measurement uncertainty*: Data center energy use is notoriously difficult to measure accurately 2. *Rapid growth*: AI energy use is growing much faster than A/C 3. *Geographic variation*: This compares one country's A/C to global data centers (apples to oranges)

## Reliable Sources - US EIA (Energy Information Administration) for A/C data - IEA (International Energy Agency) for data center estimates - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studies

The quote significantly overstates the disparity, though both are indeed major energy consumers.

see Nominative Determinism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

TIL you can still buy fax machines!

The aha moment for me was to type a space after the characters I'm searching for - then hit tab. You then get the list of options ranked (and a nice view showing the contents of each folder).

Release blog post with more details: https://swinsian.com/blog/2025/08/19/swinsian-3/

The best macOS music player. Highly recommended - I use it every day for a huge collection of music and it's fabulous.

Obsidian recently introduced a native 'Download attachments for current file' which you can invoke with cmd / ctrl + p.

I like this as I don't always want all the images for something I've clipped from the web. This gives me the choice.

For people who have tried the new agent panel in Zed, how does it compare to something like Cursor or Windsurf?

(I've yet to dive deep into AI coding tools and currently use Zed as an 'open source Sublime Text alternative' because I like the low latency editing.)

Claude created an SVG as an artifact for me - it's pretty good: https://claude.site/artifacts/b6d146cc-bed8-4c76-a8cd-5f8c34...

The hour hand is pointing directly at 9 when it should be between 9 and 10.

It got it wrong the first time (the minute hand was pointing at 5). I told it that and it apologised and fixed it.

I can recommend Wipr 2 - excellent blocker from a great developer. I've now switched to Safari for all my YouTube watching. Universal purchase works on macOS, ipadOS and iOS.

I really started to enjoy my iPad Pro M1 messing around making music.

There are hundreds of fantastic apps out there from mixers, sequencers to excellent synthesizers, effects and samplers. For an idea of what this can look like, here's a video: https://youtu.be/ft8erjlzg4A?si=lCg77DZAUYNa1SEf

Add a midi controller and you can make pretty much any kind of music you want.

A great benefit over mac / pc computer based music making is that the apps are very affordable.

I use and like Enpass: https://www.enpass.io/

https://modernfontstacks.com/ is a great resource for more detail on this and useful suggestions for font stacks that have a similar style across platforms.

I find Apple's 'Hide My Email' service invaluable for avoiding the first part of this problem: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078

Very easy to deactivate an address when I decide I don't want to hear from them anymore.

The Zed editor team collaborated with Anthropic on this, so you can try features of this in Zed as of today: https://zed.dev/blog/mcp

I might have implied the wrong thing. I wasn't implying Mitchell should change his use of NixOS. I was relating to the desire for 'best of macOS and best of Linux'. If I was using NixOS I would do that from an Orbstack machine Linux cli, with Zed as my editor, rather than virtualisaing a full X GUI. Everyone will have their own choices of course.

Zed with SSH Remoting and Orbstack is pretty much my dream setup for programming on a Mac.

I can now spin up a Linux machine in Orbstack[0] in a few seconds and then SSH into it from Zed for a fast Linux development environment with a fast macOS native editor. It feels a bit like the macOS version of WSL and VSCode. Just a whole lot nicer (subjective of course)!

A couple of years ago I was inspired by what Mitchell Hashimoto was doing[1]. He was running a GUI VM via VMware on macOS so that he could have the best of both worlds - macOS apps and ecosystem and a Linux dev environment with his preferred package managers and a more reliable NixOS. That route still felt a bit heavy to me, but I related to the desire for the best of macOS and the best of Linux.

I tried with VMware and Docker Desktop with VSCode but it always felt like a lot of overhead and a bit clunky to achieve a smooth fast dev environment.

With Zed and Orbstack it finally feels like the fast elegant system I'll stick with. Thank you to the developers for these excellent tools!

[0] https://docs.orbstack.dev/architecture#linux-machines [1] https://x.com/mitchellh/status/1346136404682625024

That config Mac Studio costs 5,800 Euros (minimum). Where do you get it for 3,000 USD?

People reading this might be interested in Redka - Redis re-implemented with SQLite in Go: https://github.com/nalgeon/redka

Over the years, my blog has become a surprisingly complex application. It’s over 100,000 lines of code, not counting the content.

When I read this my reaction was "that's ridiculous!" But the author is a skilled and experienced web developer. The rich educational interactivity on their site shows that achieving that level of presentational finesse doesn't come easily.

Includes a fascinating story of how teletext images can be recovered from VHS recordings using a TV capture card.

Uv's latest release was discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41302475

The linked post is the author of Rye's take on that.

I'm in the same situation. The upgrade price for Sublime Text and Sublime Merge is $152 whereas the full license is $168. As you say, it feels more like a subscription model. I'd renew if the discount was bigger. I can of course continue to use the versions released while my license was valid, but it would be nice to get bug fixes and new feature while still supporting the developers.

To save people a few clicks, there's a wonderful visualisation of the generated music at https://ambient.garden/