Thread

1. fnordpiglet · 1790014340 · focus · HN ↗

   I ask this in every thread on muse / OpenClaw / whatever platform. I’ve never gotten a clear answer beyond “yeah me too”:

   Does anyone have any meaningful use cases that have actually improved your life in some measurable way?

   I’ve tried hard and beyond filling out some tedious forms in about the same time and energy as just doing it myself, I’ve not personally. I’ve tried hard. So I figure it’s probably my lack of creativity given the prevalence of fans. But every time I ask, I get no meaningful responses. So it makes me wonder if all the fans are just product managers on those products?

   1. brookst · 1790018821 · focus · HN ↗

      In the past few days:

      - Dusted off a 3d printer that wasn't being used enough, largely because of the tax of setting up profiles for materials and each print. That was fun once, I'm too busy now. Was able to get claude to use MCP and configure the slicer just right for the job and filaments.

      - Needed to get IPTV/etc set up for football season. If you've done this you know what a pain it is, how EPG's don't always work right, finding the 50 channels you care about out of 80k channels is a nightmare, etc. Pointed claude at my utility server, it got Dispatcharr configured, wrote scripts to parse channel guides from sources not covered in the EPG, scheduled to update daily, deployed.

      - I'm considering getting back to 3D printed clay, which is fun but challenging. Based on a thread here on HN, had claude go investigate using FPGAs (which it would program) for a realtime flow modulation system that would remove the variability from slight changes in viscosity within a batch of clay. Not sure I'll pull the trigger but I have a much deeper understanding of the solution.

      - Realized I was paying like $30/mo to RocketMoney and Copilot (finance, not MS), for rare usage and basically just occasional "find subscriptions I forgot about" usage. Got claude connected to plaid via MCP, found more than those other two ever did, got it to set up cron to send me email weekly with current subscriptions and any price changes.

      That's literally in the past 4-5 days. I find great value there, YMMV of course.

      1. fnordpiglet · 1790036717 · focus · HN ↗

         I do all these things but use codex, which lets me use git for settings etc and I end up building software I can re-use. Am I wrong?

         1. brookst · 1790049903 · focus · HN ↗

            Why wrong? Seems reasonable.

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