Just because the ReadMe is slop, doesn’t mean the code is slop. People are starting to make apps for themselves now and open-sourcing them so they’re not putting much thought into the ReadMe or distribution.

This just means ReadMe’s are less important now. I just have my terminal agent dig into the code and tell me what features are there. If the app is actually useful.

Even before AI, there were so many projects with subpar ReadMes, no screenshots, etc. But once you use the software, you realize how good it is.

Source: I maintain a massive collection of open-source alternatives and quality of open-source alternatives have increased a lot

If you do not respect your project to write your readme yourself chances are i will not care though.

For many new coders, LLMs are so good at writing the code, asking it to write the ReadMe sounds like a good idea. Clearly it’s the first impression your project makes so handwriting it is important.

Being turned off by the project because of the ReadMe is your prerogative. I’m just suggesting you dig into the code sometimes, the ReadMe is not the be all, end all.

> For many new coders, LLMs are so good at writing the code, asking it to write the ReadMe sounds like a good idea. Clearly it’s the first impression your project makes so handwriting it is important.

The point is that if they looked at the result they'd question themselves. And the fact that they don't is a violation of the social contract: I can hardly be expected to care about your work, if you don't.

But it takes so little effort to wade through an LLM readme and cut out or edit it down to something palatable.

Just the bare minimum effort to do that would be nice.

I apply the same rule to the code, unless it is on the job and I have to follow along with the herd, or else....

Your comment might be sarcastic, but AGENTS.md already exists for the explicit purpose of agents reading and using it.

yeah, my point is just that we agents can have their own docs and we can also have a nice curated experience for humans.

You’re right that a poor quality readme doesn’t mean a poor-quality product, but it seems more likely than not to me.

Slop is an instant tab close for me. If something’s good, it’ll come around again. I’ll catch it when there's some evidence that it’s worth my time.

You can produce good code and good projects with Claude doing all the work. This might even be an example of one, but the description on GitHub makes so little sense that I stopped reading before I figured out what it even does.

If the author is too lazy to even write their own commits, I doubt there would be any effort put into the codebase.

Tailscale is truly a cheat code. I have a web app that I run locally to control terminals on my Mac. I access the website on my phone using the 100.xx IP address and can code on the go. No need for a Mac or iOS app.

You can also use Tailscale serve to get a HTTPS url like Cloudflared but it's only visible to your tailnet. Be careful using Cloudflare tunnels because they are public and bots start poking around immediately.

Alternatively, Netbird has been a dream to use over the last half year or so. I think their server software has had some hiccups on new releases, but I stagger those updates anyways. All self hosted, similar concept to Tailscale, very good management UI baked into the self hosted product.

Netbird's great. I've been using Pangolin (https://pangolin.net/) lately for my homelab. It's very similar in functionality to Netbird, but I like the UX of it better.

Also a very good alternative. I went on a spree and tried out all of the self hostable alternatives and this was definitely a runner up to netbird. The self hosted tailscale is also good, just not as polished as these two projects are.

Switched from Pangolin to Netbird recently and enjoy Netbird more!

Which features do you specifically benefit from?

For those who use Netbird or Pangolin, I'm trying to understand where it would come in handy over my Wireguard-Easy setup with my phone & laptops configured to connect to my Wireguard network externally.

Is this primarily for multi-user scenarios or complex setups?

Both support multi-user setups with SSO or built-in auth.

Beyond that, compared to a typical hub-and-spoke WireGuard setup, the main advantage is peer-to-peer connectivity. Clients connect directly to each other when possible, which lowers latency by bypassing a central relay.

AFAIK, they also have different origins:

Pangolin started as an internet-facing reverse proxy (Traefik) combined with a WireGuard server for backend nodes. It has gradually added VPN-like features, including client device access and an internal HTTPS proxy similar to Tailscale Serve.

NetBird is a self-hostable Tailscale alternative that started as a mesh VPN focused on P2P traffic. It recently added its own reverse proxy features (Traefik-based, coincidentally), also similar to Tailscale Serve.

Pangolin is centered on endpoint and ingress management, while NetBird focuses on mesh networking, though their feature sets are increasingly converging.

I switched from Tailscale to Netbird purely because of Tailscale's bizarre pricing tiers - I wanted just the SSH features, with multiple users, but the paid tier up from free didn't include the SSH features.

I think Tailscale would've fit my needs perfectly fine, but the management makes access control and grouping dead simple in netbird. It also generates a nice little map of your peers, their groups, and connected nodes etc. Quick visual on your topology.

What ssh features? You can have a hundred devices connected for free and they can all just ssh to each other directly

> You can also use Tailscale serve to get a HTTPS url like Cloudflared but it's only visible to your tailnet

For public access, similar to these cloudflare tunnels, there's Tailscale Funnel.

https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tailscale-funnel

Tailscale funnel works well but you can only have 1 per Tailscale instance (1 per machine) at the https endpoint so if you want to have a few apps, the others will go on non-https, custom-port URLs.

You can set up paths that route to different local ports. As long as your apps don't need to live at the root path you can have as many as you like. And you can still have something on the root path as long as it doesn't need the subpath.

Here's `tailscale funnel status` on my machine:

    $ tailscale funnel status
    
    # Funnel on:
    #     - https://my-machine.tailXXXX.ts.net
    
    https://my-machine.tailXXXX.ts.net (Funnel on)
    |-- /            proxy http://localhost:3000
    |-- /foo         proxy http://localhost:3001
    |-- /bar         proxy http://localhost:3002
    |-- /baz         proxy http://localhost:4004

I have multiple funnels running at once. I just put a tailscale container into my compose stack and that way each compose stack gets its own tailscale instance and thus its own funnel. Happy to share the setup if at all interested.

That's why I keep using tsnet directly, where you can have as many virtual machines, doing sharing or funneling, as you want to.

The CLI doesn't let you do as much as the go library does.

Reverse proxy to additional endpoints.

I love TailScale but was getting crazy battery drain on my iPhone with it installed and setup. Still use it, just not from my phone now

I have the same experience and I once found a GitHub issue about it. I don’t think it sounded like they planned to fix it anytime soon. I just added the Tailscale toggle button to my phone’s quick control panel and turn it on whenever I want to check all my syncthing nodes or something. I keep meaning to see if I can script up something with Shortcuts to make it turn back off automatically.

Were you using an exit node? Because that really does hammer the battery, but vanilla TS without a bunch of traffic doesn't seem to do much to mine.

The only always-on TS service on my phone is Immich for photo backup, and I don't take enough photos for that to matter much.

I wasn't, no. I'm not the only one whos hit it either, not sure what the cause is :(

You should compare battery consumption of TS exit node with something like WG app which low

WG gonna punch through NAT for me?

My endpoint is a pretty stable (though technically dynamic) IPv4 on one end, but the other might be a cell phone with CGNAT, some random WiFi, blah blah etc. TS does that. If you don't want to use it, cool. Don't. I'm willing to make the tradeoffs to use TS for now. That could change in the future.

No but hole punching isn't really needed in that scenario. Open a port on the IPv4 side + dyanmic DNS. More than likely that is what tailscale is doing for you. Opening a port on that end w/UPnP. But can't argue with how simple it is with tailscale.

Strange, battery use is negligible on Android, particularly when the tunnel is not in active use.

Fyi you can point a domain/subdomain (eg lan.mysite.com) at that 100.x IP and it will only work for those on your tailnet.

just use wireguard; tailscale is just the SSO enterprise overlay with a pricing tab.

Wireguard is great for a point-to-point or multipoint VPN set up by a competent network administrator between machines with static addresses. But that's the only thing it does. It does not handle authentication or mobility very well.

No, it’s not. It handles the keys, provisioning, DNS, NAT traversal, and a bunch of other stuff. WireGuard is a great technology - Tailscale is like a usability layer on top of it.

I pay Tailscale nothing, why switch?

git : github :: wireguard : tailscale

I think an important feature for homelabs is NAT traversal

I use tailscale on my steam deck to play stardew valley with my son on my laptop, it truly is amazing

Using Tailscale in exactly the same way. It has been such a blessing!

I use both (also Headscale)

There are more way to rearrange a deck of cards than there are stars in the universe

I built a terminal control plane and added an MCP server that runs on my Mac. It lets MCP clients create terminal sessions, send messages, read the contents, etc on my Mac.

The terminal sessions are running Luna on XHigh (on Pi) and GPT 6 Pro on ChatGPT.com is the main orchestrator.

Since ChatGPT and Codex have different limits, I can have 6 Pro orchestrate the Luna sessions. Using voice mode to talk back and forth about the software factory is really nice. Will be open-sourcing soon.

So many bird projects recently and I think it’s all thanks to this project[0]

It seems IP over Avian Carriers is finally within reach!

0. https://github.com/tphakala/birdnet-go

Link missing?

Probably BirdNet, but Google also has an equivalent model now called Perch. https://birdnet.cornell.edu/

Complete guess but I wonder if it's the Merlin project?

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/merlin/

People don’t realize how big of a threat LLMs are to marketplaces like Amazon, because down the line people will just be talking to AI agents to help them find products, check out, do all of these things.

So you’re probably like, why can’t I just use ChatGPT to do that? And you can, but ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you’re just trading one master for another.

It’s why I’m building an open-source, decentralized, interoperable marketplace. It’s powered by agentic commerce and we include a list of vetted stores but you can bring your own.

Amazon is not just the frontend. There is a whole supply chain side of it with warehouses, distributors, couriers, etc. Inventory and stock readiness, shipping, and other things will continue to be bottlenecks for consumerism at scale.

3PLs and warehouse distribution channels have gotten better and are cheaper than using FBA shipping outside Amazon.

Did you know the biggest sellers on Amazon normally have their own website and in fact, orders from Amazon flow directly into their OMS (order management system). Amazon is simply a sales channel. Also Amazon has a stronghold in western countries but much less so in gulf states, South Asia, and Africa.

As someone who ran part of their fulfillment network, I say you are completely off the mark here. Their network is the best in the world bar none. In addition to marketplace, 1P, and FBA, there are many other cooperation models where massive companies that appear to have their own distribution centers actually use Amazon's network (even co-located for some warehouses/sort centers).

There is no 3PL or other warehouse companies (many of which use Amazon's anyway) there are better than Amazon. Maybe Walmart gets close. For the case you mentioned (OMS integrations), this absolutely does NOT mean that they handle shipping. The aggressive majority of those vendors just uses FBA anyway.

If you're building your startup on the principle that Amazon is "a sales channel only", then I wish you well but you will fail.

Amazon's biggest feature is free returns. I would not buy even a quarter of the stuff on Amazon if I was not confident that I could easily return it.

But even that is being enshittified. You have to pay for some returns now. And people have been putting defective to get free shipping returns and Amazon has just started a fee for returning items for the wrong reason.

I only buy the stuff that says free returns (for any reason) up front.

Can you give some more information for buyers who want to route orders directly to sellers instead of via Amazon? Right now the only benefit for using Amazon is a unified shopping interface and free shipping using Prime.

The funny thing to me is that, for years, Shopify has been trying to position their Shop app as an Amazon alternative, but just can't get the traction. Shopify and Amazon are two very different business models - but man, Tobi and Harley want that money!

ChatGPT comes along, and suddenly it has a real shot at the global customer capture that Shopify could never manage, so they jump in bed, and release a series of garbage collaborations, some of which got rolled back (Shop on ChatGPT, but you can only have one item in your cart, lulz), and some of which just keep mutating. Shopify fumbled pretty badly, and it was wild to watch the entire industry go from "You'll be buying through the LLMs this year" to "So, let's talk about AEO, GEO, and discovery..." like nothing happened.

None of the AI companies seem to have their heads screwed on straight about ecommerce, except potentially Google. The payment processors are sniffing around, too, since at the end of all the discovery, that order needs an easy means of processing payment.

I think your open-source, decentralized, interoperable marketplace is a noble effort, but you're up against multi-billion-dollar business interests who are looking to capture revenue from processing, and have dozens, if not hundreds of people on the case not only from a development standpoint, but from a business and marketing standpoint. Maybe you've got a team like that under you, too. Best of luck.

I've thought from the start that the strongest possibilities for ChatGPT to monetize boil down to advertising (so many ethical problems), and becoming a marketplace that finally dislodges Amazon. But that is a VERY tall mountain to climb.

Exactly, Shopify can become a new Amazon with Shop but then you’re just trading Amazon for Shopify. It’s why I’m building open-source SaaS for every vertical and that’s what powers the marketplace.

You can read the ethos to learn more[0]

0. https://marketplace.openship.org/ethos

I've mixed opinions on that. For example, there are products like Google Shopping or Google Travel etc. They show up bunch of stores where you can buy a flight ticket or a particular product from.

However, in the end most people just end up buying it from top 2-3 marketplaces anyway, not because its cheaper, but also because they can trust it, it arrives in 2 days, and you can easily return it if you don't want. So if I'm going to most likely buy something from Amazon anyway, why not just use Amazon web page. They've had one click buy button for ages.

> However, in the end most people just end up buying it from top 2-3 marketplaces anyway, not because its cheaper, but also because they can trust it, it arrives in 2 days, and you can easily return it if you don't want.

I've got enough complaints about the amazon customer and user experience that I'm not going to list them here, but returns are so easy.

I click the button, and then I don't need to print off a shipping label or even package the item back up, I just drop it off at the convenience store by my house, they scan a QR code on my phone, and take the bare item from me.

Yes Amazon’s power is very difficult to overcome. The hope with my marketplace is that stores will offer cheaper prices since we are interfacing with them directly and they are not paying Amazon a cut.

Also, Amazon Prime is affordable now, but it will get more and more expensive. They have a large distribution network but most of their drivers are contractors. Amazon also is not as powerful in non-Western countries. They still rely on many different websites depending on need.

Isn't the value on same day delivery? Returns, warehouses, drivers, customer support all of that? How chatgpt is going to help with that?.

Before I could build this decentralized marketplace, I had to build open-source SaaS that the sellers use. All of that is handled by that platform. The chat simply interfaces with the API just like the built in storefront does.

The marketplace is also built in a way that you can add a Shopify adapter, BigCommerce, custom, etc. It only supports Openfront for now. Even if the store you want to interface with has a custom software, you can write the adapter code and they are added.

I don't want "vetted" stores. I don't care if it's open-source or decentralized or interoperable (though, fine I guess if it is). What I actually want is stores that are scraped, preferably adversarially. When Amazon, Walmart et. al. try to shut you down, I will know you have something worth using.

You can use our vetted stores but add your own, it’s not restricted.

Sounds cool. Needs network effects of lots of highly rated stores to succeed, I think.

Yes but users can build adapters and bring their own stores.

Why it would be a threat? Unless Amazon is manipulating the marketplace for the customer to buy a product different from what they want. In that case such practice surely should attract a look from regulators?

Tricking customers into buying things they otherwise wouldn't is the core concept of adtech.

If you insulate humans from the manipulative dark patterns (though agent intermediaries), it's possible for them to spend less, spend more efficiently, optimize out information-asymmetries that are profit centers for entities like Amazon. Of course Amazon will fight this.

Realistically the agents will inject their own dark patterns. Whoever owns the glass owns the revenue stream, for they have the ultimate power to replace anyone else's revenue stream with their own. Some TVs detect ad spots in video content and overlay ads that pay the TV manufacturer instead.

Right. Agents in the hands of consumers (truly under their control) empowers them; agents in the hands of retailers does quite the opposite.

This is equivalent of Amazon setting up a maze in a physical store and then complaining someone is selling the maps.

> Amazon is manipulating the marketplace for the customer to buy a product different from what they want

There is no expectation or regulation that a store is supposed to only show customers what they want. A retailer is going to sell you the items you're willing to buy based on what they think will help them drive the most profits.

Imagine for a moment you're a store that sells millions of different products. Now, imagine a customer walks into your store, and as per some government regulation "you're expected only to show the customers who walk into your store products that they want". It's a fairly ridiculous expectation.

Also Amazon actively prevent you finding what you want, their search and filter get worse every time I use it.

Amazon has generally been a shadow of itself. Fakes and less than reputable options. An opensource / legit sourced marketplace could be useful.

Amazon still probably make it via AWS, but other websites you may be right.

This was Google's big announcement at their last I/O conference: That Google would become the agent handling all forms of commerce on behalf of the average person worldwide.

It’s because LLMs are a threat to Google Shopping too. But as a consumer, why would I want another middleman?

Nice, have a github repo? This is something I've thought about trying to build, seems like the future.

The new era of ads is this comment right here.

shudders

I legitimately thought the parent comment was satire

Reminds me of a message I got on LinkedIn on Memorial Day weekend.

"Memorial Day is an opportunity to slow down and think about the service of those who gave their lives for America and for our freedom.

We offer you freedom from the hassle of hiring your own internal engineering team by providing you with vetted, experience software engineers in the same time zone as your company."

What about an opensource agentic commerce chat where you have a vetted list of stores but can add your own?

If this is basically an MCP/api with curated data sources, then yes im interested.

I think there is some legit market opportunity to try to provide this to small - medium businesses. The biggest advantage Amazon has over them is visibility, and the tooling that comes with it. If you made a squarespace plugin or otherwise that would index someone's store, then that store owner would be able to get business from the shared platform, while not worrying about having a good search tool. As a potential shopper, I would have value in buying on this network, especially if I had reason to beleive the reviews were legit.

After I typed the above out I checked out your profile... you may already be working on this but I have some other ideas, can I message you?

It’s exactly what it is:

https://github.com/openshiporg/marketplace

We have people using it for B2B distribution as well, opportunities are endless.

You can reach me at junaid[at]openship.org

Once Siri gets MCP support, it’ll be my main orchestrator.

I built an app that lets me run terminals on my MacBook. It’s a Next app so I can go to that website on my phone using Tailscale. It has a built-in MCP server, so I can connect it to ChatGPT and have it create terminal sessions, orchestrate terminal sessions, all that good stuff.

Down the line, I’d like to be able to connect it to Siri and just talk to my phone and it can control terminal sessions and projects that I’m working on on my laptop.

Oh, cool. I used tailscale to provide a private web app for my cross-harness orchestrator, too. (https://github.com/BrokkAi/mjolnir/)

I'd love it if Siri does, but I don't expect big corps to keep supporting MCP since MCP gives so much control to the end user, can't charge for eg. Google integration when someone can just add an MCP to handle it.

Yes even ChatGPT locked MCP support behind plus plans for a while.

There is no evidence of that. What you say is not supporting, but rather "conveniently makes sense".

I don't dispute the utility of psychedelics. But I have observed (and this is anecdotal) that the fanatic devotees of the drugs tend to engage in magical thinking around the power/history/whatever of psychedelic substances, no matter their intelligence or accomplishment, or rigorous critical thinking in other areas.

It’s a controversial theory, but it does exist[0]. As far as I know, there is no prevailing theory about where consciousness came from so speculating based on existing theories isn’t claiming it’s the truth.

Is it such a leap that fungi are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity so maybe our early ancestors took it to get the evolutionary process started.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory

One of the reasons this is such a long bow to draw is that, as you have absurdly reiterated and an earlier commenter posited, this is Lamarckism. If it is true, where are all the sapient reindeer and other animals that have consumed these substances as a species for as long or longer than we have existed?

I see what you did here - you assumed sapient animals HAVE to create technological civilization, didn't you?

Maybe they are sapient - you know, like the dolphins from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy :)

How are these traits inherited by descendants who don’t consume drugs that increase the plasticity of their brain themselves?

This is from the intellectual con artist Terence McKenna. McKenna never let things like this get in the way of his theory. There was a flaw in the math of his ridiculous Time Wave Zero idea that when pointed out to him, didn't change anything. I was super into McKenna as a dumb teenager. I even had the dos program of Time Wave Zero. The idea McKenna would be taken seriously on anything after December 21, 2012 is really an interesting study in the power of the cult of personality. The stoned ape idea has more holes than swiss cheese. None of the least being that the actual study he based this idea on with edge detection didn't even say what he claimed it did. Distorted form perception as opposed improved edge detection, something that makes perfect sense to anyone who has tripped. He is not even a clever fraudster. It is just hard to know as a dumb teenager that James Joyce and Whitehead's Process and Reality are intentional choices in the unintelligible and the obscure so they could mean whatever McKenna needed them to mean.

You'll get more buy in on your ideas if you didn't present them so bitterly. Your comment seems like you were let down after getting highly attached to the theory.

I'm aware of the theory. I'm not aware of any explanation offered by the theory as to how those who first experienced consciousness via psychedelics managed to pass consciousness on to their descendants. It doesn't make any sense. If you cut the tail off a rat, it doesn't have tailless children.

This theory relies on not defining consciousness. My dog certainly appears to be conscious, and I doubt there is any evidence of some canine use of psychedelics.

Reconciling the profound interiority of the experience with a mere external catalyst can be quite challenging.

Consider the question yourself next time you are in the throes of an exoerience and see how hard it is to maintain objectivity...

How are psychedelic chemical compounds “a network”? Are you referring specifically to fungal mycelium? Of course there a tons of non psychedelic mushrooms and tons of non-mushroom psychedelics

Just for clarification. The default mode network is what activates when we are at rest or ”not focused on the outside world”. Ie daydreaming and mind wandering, even if it also can be active during detailed thinking.

It has also been shown to have negative correlation to networks in the brain associated with attention.

There are a number of problems with these statements, but a major one is that psychedelics are associated with reduced activity within the DMN (but increased activity between the DMN and other networks). It is not clear the direction in which this causality runs.

> psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness

This reads like recycled lamarckism.

"This reads like recycled lamarckism."

Recycled Lamarckianism would be Lysenkoism. :)

> I read many years ago that psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness

I have never taken psychedelics but I believe myself to be conscious.

This hypothesis was clearly written by someone who was on psychedelics when they wrote it.

> psychedelics are also a network like the brain is

Sorry to be rude, but what the hell does that mean?

Fungi grow as a vast interconnected network and can communicate to other fungi. Similarly to how the neurons in the brain communicate.

In fact, when you take fungi, it tones down common neural pathways and allows new ones to form between new places.

Ok, but there are plenty of psychedelics that don't come from fungi.

Meth is a crystal, and crystals vibrate in synchronous harmonicity. What does this tell us about meth?

... no, the fact that some hallucinogens are derived from fungi does not give rise to consciousness. I accept that you read that somewhere; that does not make it true. But, really bad ideas do seem like amazing epiphanies if you're under the influence!

Or take DMT as a crystalline, naturally produced substance. As far as I know, there's no Methamphetamine in nature, although I've become very careful with the terms none/all in biology.

Nice strawman you got there. Meth is a man made synthetic compound. Fungi cover this earth and are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity and can cause personality change.

The theory is real and, of course, controversial[0]. The formation of consciousness is still a mystery and I’m simply discussing a theory. If you have another theory you deem right, let’s argue on merit, not personal attacks.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_theory

A theory can be "real" in the sense that people believe it, and also controversial because it has little consistent evidence behind it.

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

Nowhere in my comment did I attack you personally. I made an analogous argument; reductio ad absurdum. LSD is also a man-made synthetic compound, and promotes neuroplacticity. And if you've ever known a meth addict, you'll know that the substance can cause significant and enduring personality change.

You're advancing a pseudoscientific theory, and I'm ripping it on its utter lack of merit. Please don't take that personally.

For the record, the first time LSD was created it was made using lysergic acid derived from ergot, a mold found on rye. It is a semisynthetic drug, and cannot be created without an organic source.

Methamphetamine can be synthesized from the ephedra plant, and a total synthesis of LSD exists.

> really bad ideas do seem like amazing epiphanies if you're under the influence!

Sometimes really bad ideas can actually turn around when taken to irrational extremes. Tons of evidence in history of people who are batshit crazy, somehow figuring out something amazing simply by being impossibly committed to something really, really stupid. But of course, being batshit crazy has other problems, and nearly all of the really stupid stuff does not turn around like that.

Most things can be presented as nodes and edges. It is why graph theory is powerful.

Spider webs and auto traffic also have a relationship in this sense but that doesn't say much about the relationship of cars and spiders.

Maybe you need to read less bullshit from McKenna. He was a con artist, not even a good one at that.