This smells heavily of astroturfing. Particularly because Headroom is a paid product, and that fact is not mentioned here or in the GitHub README.
Here was my experience…
I download and run the Mac application, which starts installing a bunch of things. Then the following happens without advance notice:
- Adds background item(s) from "Idiosyncratocracy BV"
- Downloads over 2 GB of files
- Pollutes home with ~/.headroom directory
- Adds hook(s) to ~/.claude/hooks/
- Modifies your ~/.claude/settings.json to add above hook(s)
… and then I see something in the settings that talks about creating an account. That's when I realized that this is a paid product, after all of the above has happened.
Headroom seems to use https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk under the hood. What does Headroom offer over the actually-free RTK? Who knows.
At this point I have had it with this subterfuge — I immediately trash the app and every related file and folder I can find, of which there are many. Hopefully I got them all, but who knows. There should have been an easy way to uninstall this mess, but of course there isn't.
The lack of transparency here is really concerning.
What I said is an utterly factual statement: I found the experience to be user-hostile. You might have a different experience, and I will not deny you your experience even in the face of your clearly-stated intention to deny me mine.
Moreover, I already conveyed my understanding of and appreciation for the work open-source maintainers do, and I outright said above that I intend no disrespect.
On the subject of installing Ollama, I found it to be a frustrating and user-hostile experience. I instead recommend the much more user-friendly LLM[0] by Simon Willison.
* Ollama spawns at least four processes, some persistently in the background: 1 x Ollama application, 1 x `ollama` server component, 2 x Ollama Helper
* Ollama provides no information at install time about what directories will be created or where models will be downloaded.
* Ollama prompts users to install the `ollama` CLI tool, with admin access required, with no way to cancel, and with no way to even quit the application at that point. Ollama provides no clarity that about what is actually happening during this step: all it is doing is symlinking `/Applications/Ollama.app/Contents/Resources/ollama` to `/usr/local/bin/`
The worst part is that not only is none of this explained at install time, but the project README doesn’t tell you any of this information either. Potential users deserve to know what will happen on first launch, but when a PR arrived to at least provide that clarification in the README, Ollama maintainers summarily closed that PR and still have not rectified the aforementioned UX problems.
As an open source maintainer myself, I understand and appreciate that Ollama developers volunteer their time and energy into the project, and they can run it as they see fit. So I intend no disrespect. But these problems, and a seeming unwillingness to prioritize their resolution, caused me to delete Ollama from my system entirely.
As I said above, I think LLM[0] by Simon Willison is an excellent and user-friendly alternative.
We seek experienced Django engineers to add new features to our product, which allows people to replace expensive SaaS tools with tap-to-install open-source applications. Lower costs, better privacy!
Tools/technologies:
* Django + PostgreSQL (required)
* HTMX and/or JS (preferred)
* Tailwind CSS (preferred)
We are looking for folks with about 20 hours/week of availability.
For more information, reach out to: entroP at gmail
We seek experienced Django engineers to add new features to our product, which allows people to replace expensive SaaS tools with tap-to-install open-source applications. Lower costs, better privacy!
Tools/technologies:
* Django + PostgreSQL (required)
* HTMX and/or JS (preferred)
* Tailwind CSS (preferred)
We are looking for folks with about 20 hours/week of availability.
For more information, reach out to: entroP at gmail
The comparisons to PyPy would be much more meaningful if they weren't based on a version of PyPy that's over two years old: PyPy 1.9 was released in 2012.
I've never had any trouble using chsh to make fish the default shell. Bash scripts in crontabs still run under bash -- not sure why anyone would think otherwise. Plus, changing the shell command for iTerm/Terminal won't help with remote servers, so using chsh everywhere means you always get a consistent shell experience, no matter whether you're using your terminal locally or remotely.
Homebrewed Python includes the latest versions of pip and setuptools, making the command you suggested only necessary if you plan on sticking with the bundled system Python (which isn't recommended for reasons discussed in other comments here).
Less-technical users don't need to know how to cmd/ctrl-click on links because even less-technical users know how to use the Back button. If they don't want to use the Back button and instead want to open links in new tabs, there are multiple mechanisms available to them (whether they know about them or not).
The reverse is not true: if you don't want to open a link in a new tab, but that behavior is being forced on you, there is no way to avoid it.
Regardless of the motive, this behavior is not a UX improvement.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. My unsolicited two cents is that forcing this behavior on site visitors isn't worth whatever value you get from the analytics data.
Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I find this behavior to be offensive enough that I immediately stop reading and move on. Trading user experience for analytics data is not a good trade.
I'm aware that the malodorous motive you mentioned is often the reason behind this user-hostile behavior. I was hoping that wasn't the case here, and instead perhaps some cog in the publishing process was spuriously doing this automatically. Naïve of me, perhaps.
"Feel free to open an issue or submit pull request on Github."
Why does the link to the project on GitHub open in a new browser tab? Is there some reason this behavior is foisted on folks who would rather have the content open in the same tab? (Spoiler alert: I'm one of those folks.)
And, now that I take a closer look, it seems that every non-internal link on the page behaves the same way, spawning new tabs willy-nilly.
Looks like a useful project. I'm just legitimately curious why people do this.
We do our best to make Pelican as user-friendly as we can, but of course there are areas we'd like to improve upon. Community contributions to that end are most welcome. (^_^)
Another centralized service, sadly. I've decided that whenever possible, I will seek out decentralized solutions instead.
Looking for a decentralized, peer-to-peer file sharing and synchronization solution? I've been using BitTorrent Sync as a replacement for Dropbox, and so far I've been very pleased with it. Unlimited storage, no 3rd-party servers involved, and less CPU usage and UI lag than Dropbox. Did I mention that it's free? Check it out: http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html
This news makes me very disappointed in the company's handling of their KickStarter campaign.
I backed their KickStarter campaign and ordered a white Pebble in May of last year, and I still haven't received it. So if I understand correctly, someone who walks into Best Buy next week will get a Pebble before I do?
While I understand the desire to stay out in front of Apple, Sony, and any other companies who may enter the smartwatch market, as one of the people who funded and helped make the Pebble possible, I am disappointed at how this was handled. The whole experience will make me think twice about backing KS campaigns in the future.
Here was my experience…
I download and run the Mac application, which starts installing a bunch of things. Then the following happens without advance notice:
- Adds background item(s) from "Idiosyncratocracy BV"
- Downloads over 2 GB of files
- Pollutes home with ~/.headroom directory
- Adds hook(s) to ~/.claude/hooks/
- Modifies your ~/.claude/settings.json to add above hook(s)
… and then I see something in the settings that talks about creating an account. That's when I realized that this is a paid product, after all of the above has happened.
Headroom seems to use https://github.com/rtk-ai/rtk under the hood. What does Headroom offer over the actually-free RTK? Who knows.
At this point I have had it with this subterfuge — I immediately trash the app and every related file and folder I can find, of which there are many. Hopefully I got them all, but who knows. There should have been an easy way to uninstall this mess, but of course there isn't.
The lack of transparency here is really concerning.