Entries for May 25, 2026

@onusoz · /2026/05/25· 04:11 PM View on

Since last december, this dev setup is more and more viable: buffed workstation (mac studio, dgx spark, etc.) $3k~5k + weak laptop (macbook air, neo) $600~1.5k + phone (ssh/mosh, foldable?) you will want to parallelize a lot of work, hence you will need a lot more RAM compared to before (ideal 128) you will also not want to carry it everywhere if you can and keep it always running---you'll regret if something happens to it, and you'll want it to always be on independent of lid/battery --> workstation at home you will want to connect to the workstation through your phone, or a relatively weaker laptop bad news for digital nomads without a permanent home. renting something as strong as an nvidia gb10 workstation costs minimum a few hundred bucks per month, which yearly is at least the cost of the workstation, roughly. bad deal for renting compute on the other hand, if you are OK with not having a GPU, renting a workstation with 128 GB RAM on Hetzner currently still costs at least $120/mo, looking at https://t.co/1TyzO90K3h --- but you will not be able to run any models on that it seems that the dominant strategy is to just cash in $3~5k and buy a workstation, before they get even more expensive. I did that back in february when asus was giving out a deal then just work on your workstation, and close the lid on your laptop without ever being afraid of setting your backpack on fire!

@ChadNauseam· May 24, 2026

"just use tmux" is the new way to prove you're smarter than the VCs and poseurs hopping on the AI bandwagon. Unfortunately, the VCs and poseurs are correct and all of you are wrong. ![HJHa2poa4AExp3L.jpg](media/2058682090674323917/HJHa2poa4AExp3L.jpg) ![HJHb4xRbgAAbnQS.jpg](media/2058682090674323917/HJHb4xRbgAAbnQS.jpg) ![HJHbvYibIAELy_4.jpg](media/2058682090674323917/HJHbvYibIAELy_4.jpg) ![HJHiWG8bwAA5XM5.jpg](media/2058682090674323917/HJHiWG8bwAA5XM5.jpg) Or this one: ![HJHih4gbsAAROcv.jpg](media/2058682090674323917/HJHih4gbsAAROcv.jpg) Or this one: ![HJHirUebcAAut-a.jpg](media/2058682090674323917/HJHirUebcAAut-a.jpg) Sorry, but EVERY single one of those options is worse than just leaving your laptop lid open. ## Process persistence Tmux, screen, and nohup do absolutely nothing to solve the problem if the agent process is on your macbook. Your macbook does not start killing processes when you close the lid. ## Keeping your macbook awake People say "go in macbook settings and disable sleep on lid closed and unplugged". Ok, own me by posting a screenshot of this settings page on the latest macos. As far as I can tell, it does not exist. Even if it did, what about when I want to bike home and leave my macbook in my backpack? I probably want it to sleep. Actually, I basically always want sleep on lid close, except when I'm trying not to interrupt my agent. So even if this suggestion referred to a real setting, which it does not, it would require an annoying amount of manual oversight. To prevent my macbook from sleeping with the lid open, I do use `caffeinate`. This is a program that comes with your macbook that disables idle sleep while it's running. Despite common statements to the contrary, `caffeinate` does not prevent lid-closed sleep when unplugged, regardless of what flags you pass. For this reason, it is not a replacement for leaving your lid open. The actual replacement is the command `sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1`, or using a program like amphetamine that does it for you. ## Using a VPS I'm just confused by this. What about the large majority of development work that is inconvenient to do on a VPS? Am I really supposed to pay $5/mo to do something on a shitty computer far away when I could use the $3000 macbook right in front of me? I'd guess probably 90% of development outside of FAANG is done locally, so switching to remote development would be a pretty major workflow adjustment at the very least, and for some development tasks (e.g. game dev, ios dev) it is simply impossible. ## Leaving the lid open This option is free, requires zero setup, requires zero effort, and is impossible to leave in the wrong state by accident. Leave it open → agent runs. Close it → agent stops. It is the simple choice, the pragmatic choice, the effective choice, and in this judgemental era, I would even say it's the courageous choice. ---------- ## 📜 Certificate of authenticity 📜 This post was written by me. No AI of any kind influenced the wording, argument, or structure of this post. AI may have been used to check for typos and factual errors.