Fantastic. I recently automated a bunch of operations across ~50 domains with an agent, an API key, and a bunch of HTTP requests. I kept thinking that surely cloudflare had to be working on better ergonomics for this -- glad to see they were :D
Over the years, I've tried several of these dock replacement apps. The one that stuck the longest was uBar (which I used with a setup similar to what you have here, emulating a "windows taskbar".
I've hit issues with most of them that forced me to move back to the normal Dock, but the number one issue has always been around notification badges: they always seemed to break in strange ways.
For example, can your dock show badges for iMessage if the app isn't open? Does it get the updated badge count without me opening it? Say I receive a SMS/iMessage, does it instantly show a counter next to the unopened pinned messages app? None of the other apps successfully did this when I tried them...
I don't know if there are other apps like this, but iMessage was by far the biggest offender. Perhaps system settings too?
P.S.: Congrats on the launch :)
P.P.S.: As others have said, I think a subscription for this will rub many people the wrong way (I am one of them). If I'm paying for a subscription, I expect this to be pretty bug-free and have at least monthly updates. I wouldn't ask this of other subscription-based apps, but for one that replaces a system-level component and wants me to keep paying, you bet I am holding it to a high standard! I've wasted too much money on other replacements and gotten very little value out of that.
Hi there - I ran into the same issue myself, but sadly I still haven't found a way to show the badge count without opening the app. I'm still experimenting with it.
I expected some pushback on subscriptions, but after trying uBar and running into quite a few issues with it I wanted to build something that feels reliable and polished. I’m pretty much all-in on the Apple ecosystem now, even though I only switched ~6 months ago. My intention is to keep supporting boringBar regularly, as I use it every day myself.
Surely the regular Dock uses some hidden API. Could you try to trace it?
Having failed that, I'd look into trying to inspect (if possible, even we have to disable SIP) the dock itself. Have it do the work for us and read out its badges.
(Throwing random ideas out there, I'm sure you've thought of this)
Just spitballing here, but I know notifications are stored in a sqlite3 database. You might be able to query the count based on application type and use that?
However, that is the one that feeds the Notification Center itself. If ones dismisses a notification from Messages via the Notification Center, but does not open the message itself, then the count would be off between what remains in the Notification Center database and the actual number of the Messages' alert badge.
For example, one could have 3 notifications in the Notification Center belonging to Messages, but one could still have 20 unchecked text messaged. Thus, my suggestion wouldn't actually solve the problem.
Though, there may be another database one could check that I am unaware of.
Anthropic's website is always completely broken for me on Zen (a firefox derivative). I used to think it was an extension, but even without extensions it often just shows blank pages.
I could understand opposing it on an ethical basis. I could even understand it if they claimed that it will dull us out or it just isn't good for the brain, sort of like we can say that tiktok/instagram reels are probably not good for our brains.
But to claim that it has no value? Surely my definition of value is just different, and I'm playing semantics.
The least-funny of clowns has value if they make someone laugh.
The most mind-destroying tiktok/reels have value if they entertain someone for a little while.
I'm not saying these are necessarily good things, but they certainly hold value. And AI art, like memes, like instagram reels, like watching paint dry, has value if consumers enjoy it. It has much more value than watching paint dry because many more people clearly enjoy it (and I don't think their brains will rot because of it).
Personally, I think AI art enables such a low barrier to entry that obviously we have a big problem with mass production of slop. Things that entertain (again, like tiktok/reels), but are probably not a net-positive for society.
However, while I recognize that problem, I know several people who are creating INCREDIBLE art with AI which they would never be able to do. Things that bring tears to my eyes and that are definitely not slop. Even if they are produced in a day, it takes a special mind to conjure up the right things to produce. Faster does not always mean worse (and what even is "good" or "bad" in art??). Tale as old as time.
There is an ethical debate to be had about this art being built on the stolen assets that previous artists, using traditional tools, created. I think it's a serious debate and I don't really know how we'll solve it.
So if I:
1. Ignore the ethical debate around attribution and, as an exercise, assume that there's "fair compensation to everyone involved" (not so sure if this will happen)
2. Assume we do find a system to properly curate content (which I do actually think will happen -- we will find ways of weeding out the best)
Then I absolutely want AI art to succeed. It has enabled so many around me to produce so many incredible things, I can't wait for more chapters in this beautiful history of humanity. Where more people can create more.
"1." is a tough ask. We need to figure it out. "2." I think we'll manage, and I guess even if we don't get "1.", then cat's out of the bag and these tools are too world-changing to keep them from being used. I want to see what these amazing creative geniuses do with them.
I'm reminded of something I've read somewhere "Nothing is more boring than listening about someone else's dreams".
I think it tells a lot about AI-generated art. People prompting the AI find it fascinating because they look at it with in the context of their internal thoughts and moods that led them to it. But the generated artwork itself doesn't communicate that context at all. A complete stranger will find it derivative and boring.
I'm guessing that looking at AI art prompted by your friend and family may be a middle road somewhere. So maybe the fact that you have such a positive opinion on AI art is because it's the people you know closely that are doing it.
While I agree we don't have any methodologies for this, it's also true that we can just "fail" more often.
Code is effectively becoming cheap, which means even bad design decisions can be overturned without prohibitive costs.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple of years we see several projects that approach the problem of tech debt like this:
1. Instruct AI to write tens of thousands of tests by using available information, documentation, requirements, meeting transcripts, etc. These tests MUST include performance AND availability related tests (along with other "quality attribute" concerns)
2. Have humans verify (to the best of their ability) that the tests are correct -- step likely optional
3. Ask another AI to re-implement the project while matching the tests
It sounds insane, but...not so insane if you think we will soon have models better than Opus 4.6. And given the things I've personally done with it, I find it less insane as the days go by.
I do agree with the original poster who said that software is moving in this direction, where super fast iteration happens and non-developers can get features to at least be a demo in front of them fast. I think it clearly is and am working internally to make this a reality. You submit a feature request and eventually a live demo is ready for you, deployed in isolation at some internal server, proxied appropriately if you need a URL, and ready for you to give feedback and have the AI iterate on it. Works for the kind of projects we have, and, though I get it might be trickier for much larger systems, I'm sure everyone will find a way.
For now, we still need engineers to help drive many decisions, and I think that'll still be the case.These days all I do when "coding" is talking (via TTS) with Opus 4.6 and iterating on several plans until we get the right one, and I can't wait to see how much better this workflow will be with smarter and faster models.
I'm personally trying to adapt everything in our company to have agents work with our code in the most frictionless way we can think of.
Nonetheless, I do think engineers with a product inclination are better off than those who are mostly all about coding and building systems. To me, it has never felt so magical to build a product, and I'm loving it.
> Code is effectively becoming cheap, which means even bad design decisions can be overturned without prohibitive costs.
I'm sorry, but only someone who never maintained software long-term would say something like this. The further along you are in development, the magnitude of costs related to changing that increases, maybe even exponentially.
Correct the design before you even wrote code, might be 100x cheaper (or even 1000x) than changing that design 2 years later, after you've stored TBs of data in some format because of that decision, and lots of other parts of the company/product/project depends on those choices you made earlier.
You can't just pile on code on top of code, say "code is cheap" and hope for the best, it's just not feasible to run a project long-term that way, and I think if you had the experience of maintaining something long-term, you'd realize how this sounds.
The easiest part of "software engineering" is "writing code", and today "writing code" is even easier. But the hardest parts, actually designing, thinking and maintaining, remains the same as before, although some parts are easier, others are harder.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on the "agentic coding" train as much as everyone else, probably haven't written/edited a code by myself for a year at this point, but it's important to be realistic about what it actually takes to produce "worthwhile software", not just slop out patchy and hacky code.
I've never maintained software long-term so i could be wrong, but I interpret "code is cheap" to mean that you can have coding agents refactor or rewrite the project from scratch around the design correction. I don't think 'code is cheap' ever should be interpreted to mean ship hacky code.
I think using agents to prototype code and design will be a big thing. Have the agent write out what you want, come back with what works and what doesn't, write a new spec, toss out the old code and and have a fresh agent start again. Spec-driven development is the new hotness, but we know that the best spec is code, have the agent write the spec in code, rewrite the spec in natural language, then iterate.
I am 100% with you. I didn't ever _use_ Sora, but some of it trickled down to me (mostly through Instagram reels). I think it's amazing that we have such great new tools to express ourselves, and that we are trying out new platforms, paradigms, and approaches.
Is there money involved? Absolutely, but I don't fault companies for trying to earn their keep.
It 100% takes work to use these tools in the right way to make something funny. Ask an LLM to make them on their own and they'll hardly evoke laughs (I'm sure that'll change too, though).
Note that, while it is a rewrite, it was done so through disassembling the original game, not via a clean room implementation. I find this particularly relevant given that the original was written (mostly) in assembly too.
Eh, that's a bit of bullshit; I've seen floss Mario/Puzzle Bubble/Pang and such since forever and no one was sued.
Heck, back in the day Rogue was propietary and commercial (and thanks to that we got both the roguelike genre and the Curses library) and yet Hack was born as a libre clone and from Hack we got the now uber known Nethack and forks like Slashem.
Cloning commercial games it's older than Windows 95 itself and probably as old as the NES.
The https://osgameclones.com has so many examples that you whole point gets invalidated since the first Hack release for Unix. And Tetris for Terminals, MSDOS and the like.
Hell, in the 90's everyone in Europe (children of blue collar workers) got a Russian Tetris clone -oh the irony- called Brick Game with often several micro low-res commercial game clones such as for Frogger and Battle Tank. No one sued that company ever, even if the Tetris concept itself was for sure patented and copyrighted.
And that game was probably sold by millions, maybe even more than the Game Boy if we count every clone sold with different plastic cases, because you could get one for the price of a book and today for less than a fast food ration.
The maker movement died partly because the gap between "cool prototype" and "actual product people use" was too big. Vibe coding has the same risk but the gap is smaller. The biggest friction point right now isnt building, its deployment. Thats why I built vibmy.com where you paste code and its live in 5 seconds. If we can keep shrinking that gap between idea and live product, vibe coding has a real shot at sticking around unlike 3d printing did
This list might just be survivor bias though - it only includes the projects where they didn’t get sued and taken down (either because the developer was ok with them, or because they strayed far enough into fair use).
There are clear counter examples - see Tengen vs Nintendo, Nintendo vs Palworld, Microsoft vs halo inspired games, Microsoft vs Minecraft clones. Most are settled out court. Examples that go to court tend to be from companies with budgets to fight, lots of projects will just get DMCA’d and won’t fight, or will back down after a legal letter.
Ultimately copyright and IP infringement is decided in the courts, and the rules aren’t entirely black and white.
The actual list at https://osgameclones.com it's so huge that literally invalidates any point stated by HN commenters ignoring that, yes, Giana Sisters for the C64 was taken down but after that several Mario shareware clones existed for PC and a few years later we even got Supertux and, in the 2000's, Secret Maryo Chronicles which got renamed in order to avoid any issues with "Mario" as a TM, but the gameplay was 99% the same of Super Mario World.
On software recreating something propietary:
- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD... vs AT&T Unix.
- GNU+Linux or GNU+Hurd against propietary Unix kernels.
- Coreutils+Findutils+Sharutils... every tool reimplemented being propietary.
- Bash, GAWK, GCC, binutils, Clisp, SBCL, GNU GCJ+Classpath,
Red, FreePascal+Lazarus, GNUStep+WMaker, LessTif, EMWM+Motif vs Irix' Maxx Desktop (still propietary, and from the 90's) Gaim, AMSN, 7zip,
Haxima+Nahzgul (and Ultima it's still being sold at GOG), Supertux2, Supertuxkart, ReTux (very Wario like), Hexoshi (Metroid), SMC (Super Mario World), Pingus (Lemmings), XMMS/Xine cloning WinAmp and maybe PowerDVD (Xine with skins), WordTsar for Wordstar, Nano for propietary Pico (and Alpine for propietary Pine), BSD vi and Amiga vim for maybe propietary vi under AT&T/commercial Unix, Lincity and Lincity-NG for Simcity, FreeCiv against Civilization (it can use both the OG Civ rules and their custom ones), Frozen Bubble (I think the level set it's from the Neo Geo release), KGoldrunner and such for Lode Runner, Kapman for Pacman, every BSD shipping Tetris and Boggle, GNU Octave for Matlab....
The list example for both software and games being just reimplementation/clones of propietary tools goes on an on. Even DOS had propietary clones which had to reimplement the same interface as MSDOS because if not the tools written for it would just crash. Same commands, same output, same formating tools, same memory layout, they ran the same DOS binaries and drivers...
Giving a list of examples doesn’t mean this example is legal or would stand up in court.
Other than the fact that most of these are very different situations, but even if they were the same it is like saying “snorting coccaine is legal because I can give a list of celebrities that have done it and have not been arrested”
The examples that are similar - eg FreeCiv, imo probably survive because of the decisions and polices of the original publisher rather than some magical legal protection which allows you to make 1:1 copies without being sued.
TuxRacer isn’t really a copy of anything, and an OS or computer utility will likely be treated in a materially different way to a computer game by a court of law.
No, your example can't stand out a simple analysis since both GNU and BSD reimplemented propietary UNIX without the original code, as the OpenTTD rewrite is. How come OpenTTD works on a G4 PowerPC arch if the original code was written in x86 assembly?
GNU AWK it's literally copycat of Unix AWK having all of the functionality of the original AWK without being bound to the original source. So is GCC vs any vendored Unix 'cc', 'ld' and 'as', where GNU GAS was the alternative.
Again, there's GNU Bash against Unix SH, with the same exact flags for interoperativity. Ditto with Alpine against Pine, or GNU Nano against Pico with the literal same interface, commands and layout. And these are older than TTD itself.
Should I go in? Lesstif against Motif. If you installed Lesstif tons of Motif stuff would work straightly as is, as XPDF did. Another one? XMMS. Once you skinned both the were the same.
Different types of media get treated differently by courts. If you repaint a painting 1:1 then you are liable to copyright. If you make a song that is too substantially similar you are liable to penalties. If your branding is too similar to the Oscar’s or Starbucks you are liable for infringement.
On the other hand if you reimplement Java the courts have decided that’s OK.
Different media are treated differently. A game and an OS kernel have different attributes in reality (even if technically they are both bundles of code - courts don’t always decide things on technical literalism, they often apply the spirit of the law, understanding if the application meets the original intent and precedents).
Both OpenTTD and FreeDoom have identical gameplay to the originals but different assets. Also, the level layouts are different in both games as the scenarios are copyrighted, not the concept of the game themselves.
If anyone wrote custom cities, textures, scripts and so on with the OpenMW engine you are totally free to do so even if the result looks eerily similar to Morrowing but not being the same game at all, if any sharing a fantasy RPG setting and that's it.
Ditto with OpenArena being a total clone of the Quake3 Arena concept but with different levels and assets, and virtually it's the same game at a 99%. You can totally sell OpenArena or any new game reusing these assets if you comply with both the GPL and the CC license from the media.
Dave Gnukem it's an obvious Duke Nukem (pre-3D) clone and even if it can't play the original game, it can be trivially adapted to reuse the original textures and level sets in order to get a very close gameplay to the original. And yet no one sued them.
We are going around in circles. Of all the examples, Dave Gnukem quite obviously infringes the trademark. Again, just because no one sued them doesn't mean it's not succeptible to a trademark infringement claim if the IP owners wanted to sue.
While I am aware they claim parody law exempts them, see the enforcement of other brands (e.g. Starbucks) and see how far that goes once it gets to court.
But I don't think I'm going to convince you, and I don't think you are going to convince me, so I'll just disagree agreeably and this will be my last message.
False. Look at https://osgameclones.com and projects like FreeDoom. You must be young and it shows how disconnected are the new generations on libre reimplementations.
The fact that these exist does not mean that they're immune from legal challenge. If the original creators wanted to sue, there are all kinds of claims that would have a decent shot in court (e.g. trademark, trade dress, design patents) besides "you copied our copyrighted source code." The clones exist more because people are being cool about it, and because there's not a strong economic incentive to challenge them. Those things can change at any time.
Out of the two claims, the only one that made it to appeals court was about whether it was fair use for Bleem to use screenshots of PS1 games to advertise its emulator (which was compatible with those games). The Ninth Circuit decided it was. But that's not relevant here.
The other claim was more relevant, as it was an unfair competition claim that apparently had something to do with Bleem's reimplementation of the PS1 BIOS. But the district court's record of the case doesn't seem to be available online, and the information I was able to find online was vague, so I don't know what exactly the facts or legal arguments were on that claim. Without an appeal it also doesn't set precedent.
If there were a lawsuit over OpenTTD, it would probably be for copyright infringement rather than unfair competition, and it would probably focus more on fair use and copyrightability. For fair use, it matters how much something is functional versus creative. The PS1 BIOS is relatively functional, but a game design and implementation are highly creative. On the other hand, despite being creative, game mechanics by themselves are not copyrightable. So it might come down to the extent to which OpenTTD's code was based on the reverse-engineered original code, as opposed to being a truly from-scratch reimplementation of the same mechanics. Visual appearance would also be relevant. Oracle v. Google would be an important precedent.
FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD at first when every BSD OS was just part of 386BSD it used to have AT&T code. That code was rewritten replacing every propietary part and after that (and noticing BSD 4.4 was incomplete) we got clean FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD from a NetBSD fork.
Another similar case with exact grounds was GNU which with Linux it completed an OS albeit in a hacky way, because the original OS would have been GNU+Hurd, but both are reimplementing Unix. Same SH derived shell, but extended. Kinda like OpenTTD. We have GNU Coreutils, Findutils, GNU AWK reimplementing and extending AWK (even when AWK was propietary), GNU Zip, Tar... the list goes on and on.
Oh, another one: Lesstif vs Motif. Same UI, if not very, very close to Motif 1.2 in order to be interoperable. Today it doesn't matter because nearly a decade a go Motif was relicensed into the GPL, but tons of libre software depending on propietary Motif was just seamlessly running with LessTIF libraries except for some rough edges/bugs. One of the most known example was DDD, a GUI for GDB.
I like GPT models in Codex, for a fully vibecoded experience (I don't look at code) for my side-projects. In there, they really get the job done: you plan, they say what they'll do, and it shows up done. It's rare I need to push back and point out bugs. I really can't fault them for this very specific use-case.
For anything else, I can't stand them, and it genuinely feels like I am interacting with different models outside of codex:
- They act like terribly arrogant agents. It's just in the way they talk: self-assured, assertive. They don't say they think something, they say it is so. They don't really propose something, they say they're going to do it because it's right.
- If you counter them, their thinking traces are filled with what is virtually identical to: "I must control myself and speak plainly, this human is out of his fucking mind"
- They are slow. Measurably slow. Sonnet is so much faster. With Sonnet models, I can read every token as it comes, but it takes some focusing. With GPT, I can read the whole trace in real-time without any effort. It genuinely gives off this "dumb machine that can't follow me" vibe.
- Paradoxically, even though they are so full of themselves, they insist upon checking things which are obvious. They will say "The fix is to move this bit of code over there [it isn't]" and then immediately start looking at sort of random files to check...what exactly?
- I feel they make perhaps as many mistakes as Sonnet, but they are much less predictable mistakes. The kind that leaves me baffled. This doesn't have to be bad for code quality: Sonnet makes mistakes which _might_ at points even be _harder_ to catch, so might be easier to let slip by. Yet, it just imprints this feeling of distrust in the model which is counter-productive to make me want to come back to it
I didn't compare either with Gemini because Gemini is a joke that "does", and never says what it is "doing", except when it does so by leaving thinking traces in the middle of python code comments. Love my codebase to have "But wait, ..." in the middle of it. A useless model.
I've recently started saying this:
- Anthropic models feel like someone of that level of intelligence thinking through problems and solving them. Sonnet is not Opus -- it is sonnet-level intelligence, and shows it. It approaches problems from a sensible, reasonably predictable way.
- Gemini models feel like a cover for a bunch of inferior developers all cluelessly throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks -- yet, ultimately, they only show the final decision. Almost like you're paying a fraudulent agency that doesn't reveal its methods. The thinking is nonsensical and all over the place, and it does eventually achieve some of its goals, but you can't understand what little it shows other than "Running command X" and "Doing Y".
On a final note: when building agentic applications, I used to prefer GPT (a year ago), but I can't stand it now. Robotic, mechanic, constantly mis-using tools. I reach for Sonnet/Opus if I want competence and adherence to prompt, coupled with an impeccable use of tools. I reach for Gemini (mostly flash models) if I want an acceptable experience at a fraction of the price and latency.
Oh I feel that. I sometimes ask ChatGPT for "a review, pull no punches" of something I'm writing, and my god, the answers really get on my nerves! (They do make some useful points sometimes, though.)
> On a final note: when building agentic applications, I used to prefer GPT (a year ago), but I can't stand it now. Robotic, mechanic, constantly mis-using tools. I reach for Sonnet/Opus if I want competence and adherence to prompt, coupled with an impeccable use of tools. I reach for Gemini (mostly flash models) if I want an acceptable experience at a fraction of the price and latency.
Yeah, this has been almost exactly my experience as well.
A bit off topic, but reading your post I suddenly realized that if I read it three years ago I’d assume you’re either insane or joking. The world moved fast looking back.
Do you feel yourself losing interest, curiosity, "spark"? If so, then maybe worrying is right.
If you're just (hyper?)focused on something else, then, congrats! Our amazing new tools are letting us focus on even more things -- I, for one, am loving it.
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