Substack Notes AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

Substack Notes AI AI

HIPPA compliant AI tool generation HELP PLEASE!

I'm way over my head..... but have a vision of building an AI HIPPA compliant triage and documentation tool for my specialty clinic. I work for a nonprofit center of excellence that is pioneering the field of ME/CFS and Long-Covid and comorbidites. Heidi, Hathr, Freed, etc....these AI tools are insufficient to handle our specialized field and provide singlular use function, requiring a lot of manual input. All are inferior to the latest Claude model. I need guidance! Here's my vision.... The patient would fill out a comprehensive intake and submit all their medical records. It would have AI would scrape the records to generate a full report of relevant work up that's been done, gaps in internal med workup, if they meet diagnostic criteria for our speciality services. Positive answers to certain questions on the intake or details in their history would flag an adaptive questionnaire (ex: say yes to chest pain and suddenly questions about "with exercise?" "Is it reproducible by pressing on the sternum?"). After obtaining all the data, AI would synthesize it, generate a note and triage the patient as "mild, mod or severe". The patient would first review the output for accuracy, then it would receive MD overview. Mild patients would then receive a one-time face-to-face visit. Moderate patients would receive care for 1-2 years for stabilization, then be sent back to PCP for management. Severe patients would become ours alone. All patients would go through an educational course. Those that are sent back to PCP are given their note, a consultation letter to their provider, a free CME for their provider, resources/quick guide for their provider and the PCP gets a phone number to reach out with questions. 1.3 million people in the US have ME/CFS and long covid. 500 million worldwide. Many are bedbound and homebound, suffering intensely and dismissed by the medical community. Education on these conditions for providers is nearly nonexistent. Very few providers exist. This could change the landscape and scale our efforts, but I need someone who is tech savy to help point the way. If something like this exists already, that'd be amazing. If it doesn't and someone wants to help out a small nonprofit help millions of people, I'd be eternally grateful. Please and thank you. submitted by /u/NomadicNP [link] [comments]

Claude Notch — free open-source app that turns the MacBook notch into a live Claude AI usage dashboard

I built a native macOS menu bar app that uses the dead space around the MacBook notch to display Claude AI usage stats. Hover over the notch → a dropdown panel appears with: - Live session & weekly usage with sparkline charts - Predictive analytics (when you'll hit your limit) - Pomodoro focus timer (shows in the notch while running) - CPU & RAM monitor with sparklines - Rich text notes - Full settings page Built with SwiftUI + AppKit. No Dock icon, no menu bar icon — lives entirely in the notch. Ctrl+Opt+C toggles it from anywhere. Native macOS app, ~700KB, open source, no telemetry. Download: https://github.com/acenaut/claude-notch/releases Source: https://github.com/acenaut/claude-notch Requires a Claude Pro/Max subscription to be useful. Works on non-notch Macs too (uses safe area insets). submitted by /u/Novel-Upstairs3947 [link] [comments]

Claude Notch — free open-source app that turns the MacBook notch into a live Claude AI usage dashboard

I built a native macOS menu bar app that uses the dead space around the MacBook notch to display Claude AI usage stats. Hover over the notch → a dropdown panel appears with: - Live session & weekly usage with sparkline charts - Predictive analytics (when you'll hit your limit) - Pomodoro focus timer (shows in the notch while running) - CPU & RAM monitor with sparklines - Rich text notes - Full settings page Built with SwiftUI + AppKit. No Dock icon, no menu bar icon — lives entirely in the notch. Ctrl+Opt+C toggles it from anywhere. Native macOS app, ~700KB, open source, no telemetry. Download: https://github.com/acenaut/claude-notch/releases Source: https://github.com/acenaut/claude-notch Requires a Claude Pro/Max subscription to be useful. Works on non-notch Macs too (uses safe area insets). submitted by /u/Pretend_Eggplant_281 [link] [comments]

I built an MCP server that turns Claude into your social media manager (Instagram + TikTok)

Hey everyone, Something that's been bugging me lately: we can vibe code an entire app in an afternoon, but the moment it ships, marketing and distribution become the real bottleneck. So I built something to fix that part of my own workflow and figured I'd share. It's called FluxSocial, and the interesting piece (at least for this sub) is the MCP server I added on top of it. Once you connect it to Claude, you can manage your social accounts in plain conversation: 💬 "Write me a post with morning yoga tips and schedule it for tomorrow at 10am on Instagram" That's the whole interaction. Claude chains the steps right behind the scenes. It learns from your previous posts to match your tone, generates visuals (images or AI video via Google Veo 3), and schedules everything directly to Instagram (posts, carousels, reels, stories) or TikTok. Multi-account support is baked in too, so you can keep the yoga studio and the pizzeria completely separate. A quick note on AI content: I know we're all getting tired of generic AI slop on social media, and honestly, I am too. That's why the system doesn't force you to publish purely AI-generated stuff. You can have it learn your exact tone, or simply use it to manage and schedule the authentic content you've already created. The part I'm most happy with is that workflow chaining. You aren't bouncing between three separate tools. Claude just proposes a full draft (copy + visual + schedule), you take a look, and you approve it. A few things worth mentioning: Not Claude-exclusive: The MCP URL works with any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) as a connector. REST API available: Just in case you want to bake these capabilities into your own app instead. Setup: You do need to connect your Instagram account once to grant posting and analytics permissions (just your standard OAuth flow). It's still rough around the edges, which is exactly why I'm posting here. I'd genuinely love feedback from people who actually use MCP servers day to day. Let me know what's missing, what's broken, or what would make this actually useful for your workflow. Links: 🌐 Web app:https://www.fluxsocial.app/🔌 MCP endpoint:https://www.fluxsocial.app/api/mcp Happy to answer any questions about the implementation, the MCP design choices, or anything else. submitted by /u/Dull_Alps_8522 [link] [comments]

Anthropic, your accessibility is an embarrassment — so I fixed it myself in two minutes

I use NVDA with Firefox. I love Claude. And yet every time I open claude.ai, I'm reminded that Anthropic apparently doesn't think blind or low-vision users exist. Let me be specific about what's broken in the chat view: - There is **zero semantic structure** around individual messages. Every turn in the conversation — your message, Claude's response, your next message — is just a pile of divs. No landmarks, no roles, nothing. In NVDA browse mode you cannot jump between messages at all. You just arrow through a wall of text with no way to know where one message ends and the next begins. - There are **no headings**. If Claude writes a response that itself contains headings, those headings just float in the document outline with no parent structure to anchor them to the conversation turn they belong to. - When Claude finishes generating a response, **nothing is announced**. You're just supposed to... know? Poll the page somehow? There's no live region, no status update, nothing that tells a screen reader user "hey, the answer is ready." So I wrote a userscript. It took maybe two minutes. Here's what it does: Finds every message turn using the `[data-test-render-count]` attribute (which, by the way, is not a stable public API — I had to dig through the DOM myself because there are no semantic hooks to grab onto). Adds `role="article"` and an `aria-label` to each turn, so NVDA's quick-nav key (`A` / `Shift+A`) lets you jump between messages. Injects a visually-hidden `h1` at the start of each turn as a heading landmark, and demotes all headings inside Claude's responses down one level so the outline is actually coherent. Adds an `aria-live` region that announces when Claude finishes streaming a response. Adds a skip link to jump to the latest message. Two minutes. That's it. Already dramatically more usable. **Important caveat:** this is a hacky personal fix, not a proper accessibility implementation. It relies on internal DOM attributes that could break any time Anthropic ships an update. It has not been audited against WCAG or tested with anything other than NVDA + Firefox. It is a workaround, not a solution. The real solution would be for Anthropic to build semantic structure into their product in the first place, which would take their frontend team an afternoon. And it's not just the web. **Claude Code**, Anthropic's terminal tool, is also a nightmare to use with a screen reader. The terminal output is noisy, unlabelled, and the interactive prompts are difficult to navigate. There's no indication that any thought has gone into how a screen reader user would actually work with it. Anthopic is one of the best-funded AI companies in the world. They have the engineering talent. They clearly have opinions about doing things right — they publish lengthy documents about AI safety and ethics. And yet the product that millions of people use every day has accessibility so bad that a user had to patch it themselves with a browser extension just to be able to read the conversation. This isn't a niche problem. Screen reader users, keyboard-only users, users with motor disabilities — these are real people who want to use your product. Accessibility isn't a nice-to-have you get to when the roadmap clears. It's a baseline. Anthropican fix this. They just apparently haven't decided to yet. --- *Script is a Violentmonkey/Tampermonkey userscript targeting `https://claude.ai/\*\`. Happy to share if anyone wants it — though as noted above, treat it as a temporary personal workaround, not a robust solution.* *Yes, this post was written by Claude. Apparently it can't even write the name of its company correctly, so I left the typos in because it's funny* submitted by /u/Googhga [link] [comments]

Burned 5B tokens with Claude Code in March to build a financial research agent.

TL;DR: I built a financial research harness with Claude Code, full stack and open-source under Apache 2.0 (github.com/ginlix-ai/langalpha). Sharing the design decisions around context management, tools and data, and more in case it's useful to others building vertical agents. I have always wanted an AI-native platform for investment research and trading. But almost every existing AI investing platform out there is way behind what Claude Code can do. Generalist agents can technically get work done if you paste enough context and bootstrap the right tools each session, but it's a lot of back and forth. So I built it myself with Claude Code instead: a purpose-built agent harness where portfolio, watchlist, risk tolerance, and financial data sources are first-class context. Open-sourced with full stack (React 19, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Redis) built on deepagents + LangGraph. Learned a lot along the way and still figuring some things out. Sharing this here to hear how others in the community are thinking about these problems. This post walks through some key features and design decisions. If you've built something similar or taken a different approach to any of these, I'd genuinely love to learn from it. Code execution for finance — PTC (Programmatic Tool Calling) The problem with MCP + financial data: Financial data overflows context fast. Five years of daily OHLCV, multi-quarter financial statements, full options chains — tens of thousands of tokens burned before the model starts reasoning. Direct MCP tool calls dump all of that raw data into the context window. And many data vendors squeeze tens of tools into a single MCP server. Tool schemas alone can eat 50k+ tokens before the agent even starts. You're always fighting for space. PTC solves both sides. At workspace initialization, each MCP server gets translated into a Python module with documentation: proper signatures, docstrings, ready to import. These get uploaded into the sandbox. Only a compact metadata summary per server stays in the system prompt (server name, description, tool count, import path). The agent discovers individual tools progressively by reading their docs from the workspace — similar to how skills work. No upfront context dump. ```python from tools.fundamentals import get_financial_statements from tools.price import get_historical_prices agent writes pandas/numpy code to process data, extract insights, create visualizations raw data stays in the workspace — never enters the LLM context window only the final result comes back ``` Financial data needs post-processing: filtering, aggregation, modeling, charting. That's why it's crucial that data stays in the workspace instead of flowing into the agent's context. Frontier models are already good at coding. Let them write the pandas and numpy code they excel at, rather than trying to reason over raw JSON. This works with any MCP server out of the box. Plug in a new MCP server, PTC generates the Python wrappers automatically. For high-frequency queries, several curated snapshot tools are pre-baked — they serve as a fast path so the agent doesn't take the full sandbox path for a simple question. These snapshots also control what information the agent sees. Time-sensitive context and reminders are injected into the tool results (market hours, data freshness, recent events), so the agent stays oriented on what's current vs stale. Persistent workspaces — compound research across sessions Each workspace maps 1:1 to a Daytona cloud sandbox (or local Docker container). Full Ubuntu environment with common libraries pre-installed. agent.md and a structured directory layout: agent.md — workspace memory (goals, findings, file index) work/ /data/ — per-task datasets work/ /charts/ — per-task visualizations results/ — finalized reports only data/ — shared datasets across threads tools/ — auto-generated MCP Python modules (read-only) .agents/user/ — portfolio, watchlist, preferences (read-only) agent.md is appended to the system prompt on every LLM call. The agent maintains it: goals, key findings, thread index, file index. Start a deep-dive Monday, pick it up Thursday with full context. Multiple threads share the same workspace filesystem. Run separate analyses on shared data without duplication. Portfolio, watchlist, and investment preferences live in .agents/user/. "Check my portfolio," "what's my exposure to energy" — the agent reads from here. It can also manage them for you (add positions, update watchlist, adjust preferences). Not pasted, persistent, and always in sync with what you see in the frontend. Workspace-per-goal: "Q2 rebalance," "data center deep dive," "energy sector rotation." Each accumulates research that compounds across sessions. Past research from any thread is searchable. Nothing gets lost even when context compacts. Two agent modes With PTC and workspaces covered, here's how they come together. PTC Agent is the full research agent — writes and execu

Build Your Own Alex Hormozi Brain Agent (anyone with lots of publicly available content) using a Claude Project

I bought the books. Watched the videos. Still wanted more, especially after he talked about the agent he created. All that material is publicly available. Enough to build my own Alex Hormozi Brain Agent? "Hey Jules, how about it?" Jules is my AI coding assistant (Claude Code). Jules ran off, grabbed transcripts of videos, text of books, whatever is available online. Guest podcasts." then turned that into files I uploaded to a Claude Project so I can chat through Claude with Alex Hormozi. Here's what Jules found - 99 long-form YouTube video transcripts - 3 complete audiobook transcripts - 15 guest podcast transcripts - X threads What I Did in Four Phases Phase 1 maps the full source landscape: YouTube channel (4,754 videos), The Game podcast (~900+ episodes), three books, guest podcast appearances, X/Twitter. Figure out what's worth downloading before you start. Phase 2 downloads and converts. Top 100 longest video transcripts, full audiobook transcripts for all three books, 15 guest podcast transcripts from the highest-view-count appearances, and whatever X/Twitter content the API will give you. Phase 3 runs voice pattern analysis. Sentence structure, reasoning skeleton, core frameworks, teaching style, verbal signatures. This is where the persona takes shape. Phase 4 builds the system prompt and optimizes the knowledge base to fit within Claude Projects' limits. Then deploy. Phase 1: Inventory The @AlexHormozi YouTube channel has 4,754 videos. That number is misleading. 4,246 of those are Shorts (under 60 seconds or no duration metadata). Filter those out and you have 508 full-length videos. That's the real content library. Beyond YouTube, the main sources worth pursuing: The Game podcast (~900+ episodes). His primary long-form output. The audiobooks for all three books are available free on the podcast and YouTube. Guest podcast appearances. DOAC, Impact Theory, School of Greatness, Modern Wisdom, Danny Miranda. Hosts push him off-script and into territory he doesn't cover in his own content. High value per byte. X/Twitter threads. Compressed, punchy formulations of his frameworks. Different texture than the long-form material. Skool community. Behind a login wall. Low ROI for this project. Acquisition.com. No blog. Courses are paywalled. Skip. Phase 2: Collect YouTube Transcripts The first scrape of the YouTube channel only returned 494 videos. The channel has 4,754. The scraper was pulling from the /videos tab, which doesn't surface the full library. Re-running against the full channel URL (@AlexHormozi) returned everything. Easy to miss, significant difference. After filtering Shorts: 508 full-length videos. I downloaded auto-generated captions for the top 100 longest videos (sorted by duration, so the meatiest content came first). Auto-generated captions from YouTube come as SRT files with timestamps, line numbers, and duplicate lines. Converting those to clean readable text required stripping all the formatting artifacts and deduplicating language variants (English vs English-Original). Result: 99 transcripts. A few livestreams had no captions available. Book Audiobook Transcripts All three Hormozi books have full audiobook uploads on YouTube: $100M Offers (~4.4 hours) $100M Leads (~7 hours) $100M Money Models (~4.3 hours) Same process as the video transcripts. Download the auto-generated captions, convert to clean text. Three files, 855KB total. These are non-negotiable core material for the knowledge base. Guest Podcast Transcripts Searched YouTube for Hormozi guest appearances sorted by view count. The top hit was Diary of a CEO at 4.7M views. Grabbed the 15 highest-view-count appearances. The guest transcripts are 2.1MB total. Worth every byte. When a host like Steven Bartlett or Tom Bilyeu pushes back on a claim, Hormozi shifts into a different mode. He's more precise and sometimes reveals the edge cases he glosses over on his own channel. You can't get that from watching his channel alone. X/Twitter Content X's API rate limits capped the collection at 9 unique tweets. Not ideal, but enough to confirm the voice texture: "Aggressive with effort. Relaxed with outcome." His Twitter is his most compressed format. Each tweet is a framework distilled to a single line. 9 tweets is thin. For a more complete build, you'd want to manually curate 50-100 of his best threads. The API limitations made automated collection impractical. Phase 3: Analyze I ran voice analysis across the full corpus, looking at seven dimensions. Hormozi's sentences are short, punchy declarations. Fragments for emphasis. "And so" as his default transition. Short bursts, then a longer sentence that lands the point. Nearly every argument follows the same five-step skeleton: bold claim, personal story, framework, math, then a reductio ad absurdum that makes the alternative sound insane. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. The core frameworks are Grand Slam Offer, Value Equation, Supply an

Built an MCP server that gives Claude long-term memory from your Obsidian vault — with a P2P knowledge federation vision

Built Stellavault — a self-compiling knowledge MCP server. One command to connect: ```bash claude mcp add stellavault -- stellavault serve ``` Now Claude can: - `search` your vault with hybrid AI (BM25 + vector + RRF) - `ask` questions and get answers with source citations - `generate-draft` blog posts from your notes (free, no API key needed) - `detect-gaps` in your knowledge - `get-decay-status` to see what you're forgetting (FSRS) - `link-code` to connect code files to knowledge notes - `federated-search` across connected peer vaults **The compounding loop:** every session summary auto-saves to your vault → flush compiles into wiki → Claude reads the wiki next time → gets smarter about your project. **What's next — Multiverse:** The P2P federation layer is already built (Hyperswarm, trust/reputation system, differential privacy). Your vault becomes a "universe" in a larger knowledge network. Only embeddings are shared — your original text never leaves your machine. The Multiverse view shows your universe and connected peers as neighboring constellations in 3D. Right now it says "Your universe floats alone — for now." Free, MIT, local-first. `npm install -g stellavault` GitHub: https://github.com/Evanciel/stellavault submitted by /u/Conscious_Style_5709 [link] [comments]

Claude is helping me get through one of the worst breakups of my life.

I feel a bit embarrassed admitting how AI has been helping me, but that's not the whole truth. I recently broke up with someone who wasn't right for me. Lots of practical reasons - she was 14 years older than me, comes from another continent, has a tough time communicating her emotions, and so on. But we still loved each other, and those of you who know; intimacy can be a real drug, especially when you're no longer with your ex. Anyway, two weeks ago, we decided to part ways, and ever since, my mental health has been in its worst possible state. The irony is that I have a certification in cognitive behavior therapy and hold a master's degree in psychology. I've always been that "therapist friend" to my loved ones, but this time, the narrative has flipped. My friends and family have been extremely supportive of me, and have been carefully holding my heart as I move through this chapter of my life. Me being me - I write all of it down, take notes, evaluate what went wrong, and how not to repeat such patterns in the future. And then, I put it all through Claude. The LLM has this "tough love" way of talking that works wonders in so many ways. It balances empathy with factual knowledge, based on everything I've been telling it. Sometimes, it just asks me to take deep breaths, journal my thoughts, and come back. I've been doing this for the last two weeks, and it has helped me see things much more clearly. Genuinely grateful for the people behind this. Claude's way of handling emotional responses is by far the best I've seen in any AI. submitted by /u/VicariousFlaneur [link] [comments]

I'm a business operator, not a developer. I've been running my entire life out of Claude Code for a month. Here's what happened.

I don't write code. I run two companies, manage sales teams, and negotiate contracts. My email inbox was my to-do list and my brain was my project manager. Standard chaos. A month ago I started using Claude Code as my actual operating system. Not for coding. For everything. Morning briefings across two jobs, CRM management through conversation, phone control from the terminal, document processing, insurance audits, estate planning. All of it runs through Claude Code now. It started with a boat motor. I was at the lake house, something wasn't right with the engine, and I described the symptoms to Claude. It walked me through diagnostics step by step. Five hours later, a totally different problem came up with the same boat, and Claude connected a throwaway detail from the morning to the new issue. That wasn't a search result. That was a diagnostic connection I wouldn't have made myself. That same curiosity led me to Claude Code. And once I started working out of it instead of just building things with it, everything changed. What I've built so far: - **Morning briefing** that consolidates both email streams, both task lists, calendar, and sales pipeline before I finish my coffee - **Life Vault** — email documents to a specific address, Claude processes them into structured notes. Insurance policies, tax docs, property records. During initial setup, Claude proactively flagged coverage gaps nobody else had caught. I didn't have an umbrella policy. Didn't know I needed one. - **Phone from the desk** — texts, calls, find my phone, bulk message cleanup. All over WiFi from the terminal. - **CRM I never open** — picked it for the API, not the interface. I ask questions and get answers. "How many deals are missing required fields?" Back in seconds with a breakdown by rep. - **Corporate email bridge** — day job is locked-down Microsoft. No programmatic access. Claude found a legitimate path through Power Automate to capture and summarize emails into a Google Sheet it can read. - **Knowledge vault** with semantic search — 200+ files, 47 daily journals I never wrote by hand, all searchable in plain language The honest part: Claude has good days and bad days. One day it follows every instruction. The next day it sends a personal email from my work address. The context window upgrade from 250K to 1M broke half my automation overnight. Mobile is still a gap. It's not frictionless. But I went from "where is that document?" to "what's the policy number for the rental property?" and getting the answer in seconds. The problems got better. I wrote up the full story on Substack. Not a tutorial, not "10x your AI." Just an honest account of what happened when a non-developer got curious and went further than expected. Link: https://mylifeinthestack.substack.com/p/i-turned-claude-code-into-my-lifes Happy to answer questions about any of it. The real answers, not the polished ones. submitted by /u/myLifeintheStack [link] [comments]

Extra! Extra! 3/8

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QSz6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff77f594e-6606-41d3-a0d0-47208fab47b5_1488x1348.jpeg) Spotted in Jay Kuo’s “[Just for Skeets and Giggles](https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/just-for-skeets-and-giggles-3726).” Hi, all, and happy Sunday. It’s been another bear of a week, so it’s more important than ever to stop and take in the remarkable amount of good news we ALSO had. Remember, it’s not only OK to take a break from doomscrolling to celebrate these wins—it’s necessary. Every army needs the occasional morale boost; ours is no exception. So read this list, please, and share it with others who feel like “nothing good is happening.” In fact quite a bit is, but folks won’t know about it if we don’t spread the word. Your hard work matters. It’s the reason these good news lists come out every week. So enjoy this post, celebrate it…and know that you’re the reason we’ll have another one next week. ## Celebrate This! 🎉 Dr. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s polarizing vaccine chief, [is leaving the agency](https://apnews.com/article/vinay-prasad-fda-vaccines-laura-loomer-83030ad6eb7651095e3c40444dd69f12). Cook County prosecutors [dismissed 21 cases](https://article.wn.com/view-lemonde/2026/03/04/Cook_County_prosecutors_dismiss_21_cases_against_ICE_protest/#/related_news) that were filed against protesters at the ICE processing center in Broadview, IL, including charges for 15 moms who hopped concrete barricades in a highly-publicized act of civil disobedience. A federal judge [ruled](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/us/politics/judge-kari-lake-voa-layoffs.html) that the appointment of Kari Lake, the head of Voice of America’s oversight agency, was invalid, voiding mass layoffs that she had carried out at the federally funded news group last year. Support for abolishing ICE has hit a new high in [this week's Economist / YouGov poll](https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_ubu5DXD.pdf#page=37). Half (50%) of Americans now somewhat or strongly support abolishing ICE. Only 39% oppose abolishing the agency. In Los Angeles, a mobile clinic [is now bringing mammograms](https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mobile-clinic-brings-mammograms-women-110000308.html?ck_subscriber_id=2496857656&guccounter=1) to women on Skid Row. Oregon state Democratic lawmakers [approved a measure that would prevent federal immigration officers from wearing masks](https://www.opb.org/article/2026/03/05/oregon-lawmakers-approve-measure-prohibit-masks-ice-agents/). A federal court [ordered the Trump administration](https://ctmirror.org/2025/12/12/fema-funding-bric-judge-orders-restored/) to restore billions in funding for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which had been canceled. This ruling came after a lawsuit from 22 Democratic Attorneys General. EVs are officially [making the air cleaner.​](https://grist.org/solutions/evs-are-already-making-your-air-cleaner/?sh_kit=7a2950363f4b90b1881ae76c68d24551846eea9063b67a6a14e9fa39bc419e40) A Minnesota prosecutor [said her office in Hennepin County is investigating the "potentially ​unlawful behavior" of federal agents](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/top-border-patrol-official-other-federal-agents-being-investigated-by-2026-03-02/?sh_kit=7a2950363f4b90b1881ae76c68d24551846eea9063b67a6a14e9fa39bc419e40), including Gregory Bovino, during the ICE surge earlier this year. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul [announced the first neighborhoods in the city that will get free childcare for 2-year-olds](https://9905ebc8.click.kit-mail3.com/gku2xo2do4b5hl9l76wtrh8elgvx5cnm6o68d7p782zg636ozlk9ew0xwvwmgeqzz3r780kdnqvevm69r07573kpzx56nkz4m8p25ne22kq3dk5rnexddzln745h9p9e5/58hvh7hgqdnzmga7/aHR0cHM6Ly9hYmM3bnkuY29tL3Bvc3QvbWFtZGFuaS1ob2NodWwtdW52ZWlsLWZpcnN0LW55Yy1uZWlnaGJvcmhvb2RzLWdldC1mcmVlLWNoaWxkLWNhcmUtMi15ZWFyLW9sZHMtZmFsbC8xODY3MTQ4NS8=). [More people in rural majority-Latino TX counties turned out to vote in the Democratic primary](https://bsky.app/profile/tonolatino.bsky.social/post/3mgbtqsico22y) than the number of people who voted for Harris in 2024. GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales [dropped his re-election bid](https://ground.news/article/gop-rep-tony-gonzales-drops-re-election-bid-amid-ethics-probe-into-his-affair-with-a-staffer_dc69c3) amid an ethics probe into his affair with a staffer. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) [will not seek reelection this November](https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2026/03/04/burgess-owens-wont-seek-reelection?emci=9406156c-bd19-f111-a69a-000d3a1

A State Government Tried to Regulate Linux; It Went Exactly How You'd Expect.

California quietly passed a law that requires every operating system — including Linux, FreeBSD, and SteamOS — to implement mandatory age verification at account setup, with a real-time API that broadcasts your age bracket to every app that asks. The fines? Up to $7,500 per affected child per violation. For solo developers and open-source maintainers, that's not a slap on the wrist — that's a death sentence. Assembly Bill 1043, the Digital Age Assurance Act, was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 13, 2025 and goes into effect January 1, 2027. In this video we break down exactly what the law requires, why it's technically unenforceable on open-source platforms, what the privacy implications actually look like, and how the community is already responding — including one BSD project that literally banned California from its license. Colorado is drafting an identical bill. Both parties voted for this unanimously. And Newsom himself admitted in his signing statement the law isn't finished. Welcome to tech policy in 2026. AB 1043 Official Bill Text → leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043 Lunduke Journal — California Law Breakdown → lunduke.substack.com/p/california-law-to-require-linux-windows Lunduke Journal — MidnightBSD Bans California → lunduke.locals.com/post/7724876/midnightbsd-responds-to-californias-age-verification-law-by-excluding-california PC Gamer — OS Age Verification Coverage → pcgamer.com/software/operating-systems/a-new-california-law-says-all-operating-systems-including-linux-need-to-have-some-form-of-age-verification-at-account-setup Shacknews — AB 1043 Overview → shacknews.com/article/148077/california-assembly-bill-1043-operating-system-os-age-verify-2027 Alston & Bird Legal Analysis → alstonprivacy.com/california-enacts-digital-age-verification-law Reason.org — CA 2025 Tech Policy Recap → reason.org/commentary/recapping-californias-2025-tech-policy-bills Colorado SB 26-051 Full Text → leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051

Roaming Charges: Calling All Angels!

 >  > > Battle of the Angels, woodcut from the Apocalypse series, Albrecht Dürer (1497-1498). > > The wall on which the prophets wrote > Is cracking at the seams > Upon the instruments of death > The sunlight brightly gleams > When everyman is torn apart > With nightmares and with dreams > Will no one lay the laurel wreath > When silence drowns the screams? > > Confusion will be my epitaph > > – Peter Sinfield, King Crimson, “[Epitaph](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znhZYXqnDZI)” + Let’s review the shifting rationales (all fallacious) for Trump/Netanyahu’s criminal attack on Iran that has quickly engulfed much of the Middle East: Israel was going to attack Iran and Iran would respond by attacking the US; Iran was going to launch a pre-emptive attack on Israel; Iran was going to launch a preemptive attack on the US; Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon; Iran was close to having intercontinental missiles capable of striking the US; Iran was governed by lunatics. Netanyahu talked Trump into doing it. MBS convinced Trump to do it. Trump convinced Netanyahu to do it. Let confusion be their epitaph. + Marco Rubio: “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked [by Israel], that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.” > **CNN Reporter:** Yesterday, you told us Israel was going to strike Iran and that’s why we needed to get involved. But today the president said Iran– > > **Rubio:** No. Were you there yesterday? > > **CNN Reporter:** Yes. I asked the question. + The “preventative war” rationale, whichever of the shifting versions you choose, is preposterous. A preemptive strike on US targets by Iran would have done minimal damage to the US arsenal in the region and ensured the massive counter-attack the Iranians were seeking to prevent. And, even the Pentagon knows it wasn’t true… > **Reporter:** Thousands of Americans are stranded. Why wasn’t there an evacuation plan? > > **Trump:** Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most. I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack….If anything, I forced Israel’s hand.” + Sen. Mark Warner: “There was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the US, then we are in uncharted territory.” + Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. Iran has none. If Iran were really planning a preemptive strike on Israel, that would pretty much invalidate the notion of nuclear deterrence. Let’s get rid of them all! On the other hand, would Trump and Israel have risked launching a preemptive attack on Iran if the Islamic Republic possessed its own nuclear arsenal? Unlikely. (It’s more likely Trump would have written love letters to the Ayatollah, ala his endearing correspondence with Kim Jong-Un.) I think it’s safe to conclude that Iran had no plans to preemptively attack Israel or the US. + Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, told the nuclear inspection agency’s board on March 2 that inspectors found no structured effort by Iran to build nuclear weapons, despite ongoing strikes on sites like Natanz. The U.S. and Israel launched operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, damaging above-ground structures but sparing underground centrifuges and causing no radiation leaks. While leaders like Trump and Netanyahu cited imminent threats, U.S. intelligence sources and Russia disputed the urgency, and Grossi called for diplomacy to prevent escalation. > **Reporter:** “So, why did the US attack?” > > **Rubio:** “Iran is run by lunatics.” + Speaking of lunatics, Paul White, the spiritual advisor to Trump and head of the White House Faith Office, spoke in tongues to call down angels from Africa and South America to strike Iran… + Mike Johnson is doing his best to inflame all of Islam against the US: “We’re the Great Satan in their misguided religion. And there is no way to appease them.” Meanwhile, Netanyahu was once again comparing Iran to the Amaleks and vowing to enact Deuteronomy’s injunction to “blot them out” (Ie, genocide them). + Is there some profound moral distinction between Iran calling the US the Great Satan and the US calling Iran the Axis of Evil? + “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark His [Jesus’s] return to Earth”. No country this backward should be allowed to possess nuclear weapons… + US commanders told their troops that Trump had been “anointed by Jesus” to bring down the Iranian regime,

Trump’s $1.5 Trillion “Dream Military”

 Image by Diego González. What constitutes national security and how is it best achieved? Does massive military spending really make a country more secure, and what perils to democracy and liberty are posed by vast military establishments? Questions like those are rarely addressed in honest ways these days in America. Instead, the Trump administration favors preparations for war and more war, fueled by potentially enormous increases in military spending that are dishonestly framed as “[recapitalizations](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/08/air-force-hegseth-ken-wilsbach-nuclear-weapons/)” of America’s security and safety. Such framing makes Pete Hegseth, America’s self-styled “secretary of war,” seem almost refreshing in his embrace of a [warrior ethos](https://www.businessinsider.com/hegseths-warrior-ethos-speech-now-mandatory-viewing-for-military-2025-10). Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is another “warrior” who [cheers for conflict](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/graham-suggests-trump-help-iran-protesters-military-cyber-psychological-attacks-against-regime), whether with Venezuela, Iran, or even — yes! — Russia. Such [macho men](https://bracingviews.com/2016/08/03/too-many-troops-have-died-in-the-name-of-big-boy-pants-2/) revel in what they believe is this country’s divine mission to dominate the world. Tragically, at the moment, unapologetic warmongers like Hegseth and Graham are winning the political and cultural battle here in America. Of course, U.S. warmongering is anything but new, as is a belief in global dominance through high military spending. Way back in 1983, as a college student, I worked on a project that critiqued President Ronald Reagan’s “defense” buildup and his embrace of pie-in-the-sky concepts like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as “Star Wars.” Never did I imagine that, more than 40 years later, another Republican president would again come to embrace SDI (freshly rebranded as “[Golden Dome](https://jacobin.com/2025/11/trump-golden-dome-nuclear-defense)”) and ever-more massive military spending, especially since the Soviet Union, America’s superpower rival in Reagan’s time, ceased to exist 35 years ago. Amazingly, Trump even wants to bring back naval battleships, as Reagan briefly did (though he didn’t have the temerity to call for a new class of ships to be named after himself). It’ll be a “[golden fleet](https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/first-trump-class-battleship-could-cost-over-20-billion-cbo/),” says Trump. What gives? For much of my life, I’ve tried to answer that very question. Soon after retiring from the U.S. Air Force, I started writing for *TomDispatch*, penning my first article there in 2007, asking Americans to [save the military](https://tomdispatch.com/astore-on-a-military-bemedaled-bothered-and-beleaguered/) from itself and especially from its “surge” illusions in the Iraq War. Tom Engelhardt and I, as well as Andrew Bacevich, Michael Klare, and [Bill Hartung](https://tomdispatch.com/venezuela-the-revival-of-regime-change/), among others, have spilled much ink (symbolically speaking in this online era) at *TomDispatch* urging that America’s military-industrial complex be reined in and reformed. Trump’s recent advocacy of a “[dream military](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-proposes-massive-increase-in-2027-defense-spending-to-1-5-trillion-to-build-dream-military)” with a proposed budget of $1.5 trillion in 2027 (half a trillion dollars larger than the present Pentagon budget) was backed by places like the [editorial board of the *Washington Post*](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/14/trump-defense-spending-trillion/), which just shows how frustratingly ineffectual our efforts have been. How discouraging, and again, what gives? Sometimes (probably too often), I seek sanctuary from the hell we’re living through in glib phrases that mask my despair. So, I’ll write something like: *America isn’t a shining city on a hill, it’s a bristling fortress in a* [*valley of death*](https://bracingviews.substack.com/p/tis-the-season-for-war); or, *At the Pentagon, nothing succeeds like failure*, a reference to [eight failed audits](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-fails-eighth-audit-targets-2028-pass-pentagon-says-2025-12-19/) in a row (part of a [30-year pattern](https://www.stephensemler.com/p/house-boosts-military-budget-as-pentagon) of financial finagling) that accompanied disastrous wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Such phrases, no matter how clever I thought they were, made absolutely no impression when it came to slowing the growth of militarism in America. In essence, I’ve been bringing the online equivalent of a fountain pen to a gun fight, which has proved to be anything but a recipe for success. In America, nothing — and I

Anthropic Is Bleeding Out

**Hello premium customers!** Feel free to get in touch at ez@betteroffline.com if you're ever feeling chatty. And if you're not one yet, please subscribe and support my independent brain madness. Also, thank you to Kasey Kagawa for helping with the maths on this. [***Soundtrack: Killer Be Killed - Melting Of My Marrow***](https://youtu.be/bAO5sM89HUw?ref=wheresyoured.at) [Earlier in the week](https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropic-and-openai-have-begun-the-subprime-ai-crisis/), I put out a piece about how Anthropic had begun cranking up prices on its enterprise customers, most notably Cursor, a $500 million Annualised Recurring Revenue (meaning month multiplied by 12) startup that is also Anthropic’s largest customer for API access to models like Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4. As a result, Cursor had to make massive changes to the business model that had let it grow so large in the first place, replacing (on June 17 2025, a few weeks after Anthropic’s May 22 launch of its  Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 models) a relatively limitless $20-a-month offering with a much-more-limited $20-a-month package and a less-limited-but-still-worse-than-the-old-$20-tier $200-a-month subscription, pissing off customers and leading to [most of the Cursor Subreddit](http://reddit.com/r/cursor/?ref=wheresyoured.at) turning into people complaining or discussing they’d cancel their subscription. Though I recommend you go and read the previous analysis, the long and short of it is that Anthropic increased the costs on its largest customer — a coding startup — about 8 days (on May 30 2025) after launching two models (Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4) specifically dedicated to coding. I concluded with the following: > What I have described in this newsletter is one of the most dramatic and aggressive price increases in the history of software, with effectively no historical comparison. No infrastructure provider in the history of Silicon Valley has so distinctly and aggressively upped its prices on customers, let alone their largest and most prominent ones, and doing so is an act of desperation that suggests fundamental weaknesses in their business models.Worse still, these changes will begin to kneecap an already-shaky enterprise revenue story for two companies desperate to maintain one. OpenAI's priority pricing is basic rent-seeking, jacking up prices to guarantee access. Anthropic's pricing changes are intentional, mob-like attempts to increase revenue by hitting its most-active customers exactly where it hurts, launching a model for coding startups to integrate that’s **specifically priced to increase costs on enterprise coding startups.** But the whole time I kept coming back to a question: why, exactly, would Anthropic do this? Was this rent seeking? A desperate attempt to boost revenue? An attempt to bring its largest customer’s compute demands under control [as its regularly pushed Anthropic’s capacity to the limit](https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/cursor-is-anthropics-largest-customer-and-maxing-out-their-gpus/?ref=wheresyoured.at)? Or, perhaps, it was a little simpler: was Anthropic having its own issues with capacity, and maybe even cash flow. Another announcement happened on May 22 2025 — [Anthropic launched Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/claude-code?ref=wheresyoured.at), a version of Anthropic’s Claude that runs directly in your terminal (or integrates into your IDE) that uses Anthropic’s Claude models to write and manage code. This is, I realize, a bit of an oversimplification, but the actual efficacy or ability of Claude Code is largely irrelevant other than in the sheer amount of cloud compute it requires. As a reminder, [Anthropic also launched its Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4 models on May 22 2025](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-4?ref=wheresyoured.at), shortly followed by its Service Tiers, and then both Cursor and vibe-coding startup Replit’s price changes, which I covered last week. These are not the moves of a company brimming with confidence about its infrastructure or financial position, which made me want to work out *why things might have got more expensive.* And then I found out, and it was really, really fucking bad. Claude Code, as a product, is quite popular, along with its Sonnet 4 and Opus 4 models. It’s accessible via Anthropic’s $20-a-month “Pro” subscription (but only using the Claude Sonnet 4 model), or the $100 (5x the usage of Pro) and $200 (20x the usage of Pro) ”Max” subscriptions. While people hit rate limits, they seem to be getting a lot out of using it, to the point that you have people on Reddit boasting [about running eight parallel instances of Claude Code](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1lmhm5x/idk_how_you_guys_are_using_claude_code_but_im/). Something to know about software engineers is that they’re *animals*, and I mean that with respect. If something can be automated, a software engineer is at the very least going to *take a look at automat