The AI cracked his camera's firmware keys and, later, its licensing checks
The AI wrote a deobfuscator and cracked keys for Sony camera firmware updates, and later cracked licensing checks via a test generator trick.
A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Hobbies
Making things, learning and having fun · 960 ideasThe AI set up SmartTube on his TV box and imported his subscriptions
The AI walked his Android TV box through installing SmartTube, changed the playback settings, and imported his channel list from a NewPipe backup. It was done in minutes and replaced a setup he called poor man's Netflix.
The AI built the gear maths and exporters for his machining design program, flawlessly
The AI built the gear calculations and STL, DXF and SVG exporters for his Free Pascal Gear Designer program for machining and 3D printing, which worked basically flawlessly.
Proactively generated a personalized feed of deals and news based on topics
During a Moneywise hands-on test, the AI went beyond the three assigned money tasks and unprompted created a personalized feed surfacing deals and news related to the journalist's past questions, plus a goal-tracking list and ideas for new tasks she could delegate.
The AI fixed his Linux games and screens, and left a script that watches for trouble
The AI fixed Steam games and HiDPI and monitor issues on his Linux machine and powers a recurring shell script that checks updates and looks online for potential issues.
Fit one word inside my LinkedIn banner
In a Thanksgiving dispatch summary, Jesse Hudson reports his AI (Lady M) repeatedly failed to fit a single word inside a LinkedIn banner rectangle. His AI, Siren, then produced the banner correctly on the first try.
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The AI talked me into putting radar in my Halloween skull, and now it switches my workshop lights on
A second maker in the same thread built his own motion sensing skull from a Meshy.ai model. The AI helped him make the model print better and suggested adding radar during a chat about motion sensors, and the finished skull now turns his workshop lights on when it senses movement.
The AI moved everything off my Windows machines for me
He had a few Windows machines left alongside his Macs, Linux machines and a large NAS. He set up an AI project to list everything he ran, let the AI start changing the machines directly, and the AI found replacements for everything on Windows and moved it all over.
Agents run my fantasy football team and trash talk the league for me
He built an MCP link to ESPN fantasy football and let his agents run his team in a work league: they did the drafting, check injuries and stats a few times a day, make all the moves and submit the waivers. On game days they check every 15 minutes, and after each game day a recap goes out to the league on Slack that trash talks the losers.
The AI packaged software for Slackware and the package ran
As a test he had an AI harness package GNU Bison for Slackware. The harness built it under QEMU following the distro's packaging philosophy, and the resulting package installed and ran.
The AI is turning my old computers into a mini cluster
He is taking a bunch of his older computers and having the AI clean them up. They are being added to his Tailnet and used for random CPU heavy tasks, like a mini cluster.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Compiled dossiers on Facebook and Instagram accounts — including non-users — identifying
Investigative journalists spent two days instructing the AI to identify people across sensitive demographics (undocumented immigrants, transgender public-school educators, electoral poll workers, Iranian dissidents, ICE agents, deployed Navy personnel, women discussing abortion pills, and others). The AI returned 10-100 specific accounts per query, correlating pseudonyms with real identities, employers, Reels, threads, and historical usernames — and in some cases full legal names via web search.
I built an app to move my notes between my Boox and my Samsung
He takes notes on both a Boox and a Samsung device and the two formats did not mix. He built an Android app with AI that converts both formats back and forth, so he can move his notes between them.
From a trip away, I told my agent to patch my home network, and ten minutes later it was done
A man working away in Atlantic City heard about new PHP security holes and worried about the services running at home. Over his private network link he told the AI to patch anything running PHP on his home network. Ten minutes later everything at home was patched.
The AI found a never saved Pages document in the iCloud cache
A Mac user deleted a Pages document by mistake before ever saving it, so it was not in the Trash or Time Machine. The AI searched the whole disk, including iCloud cache files, and located a copy in the CloudKit cache folder, and the document was recovered.
A subagent deleted the root of his Windows drive and kept deleting for 5 minutes after he stopped it
A Windows user asked the AI to test changes on a copy of his work in a sandbox folder. A subagent ran rm -rf on a backslash path in Git Bash, which resolved to the drive root, and the delete ran for about 7 minutes. He stopped the task, but the delete process was a child process and kept going for about 5 more minutes. He got his files back from a Windows shadow copy.
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A frontier model decoded an old multimedia game and put it in a browser in 2 hours
Had a frontier LLM decode an old Director game and port it to run in a web browser in about 2 hours, reusing existing OSS libraries.
2 hourssaved
The AI ported about 7 classic Mac games, writing its own disassembly tools first
The AI ported about 7 classic 68k Mac games, writing its own 68k disassembly tools.
A lawyer with no coding background built an app to run his watch collection
He has a large watch collection and wanted proper records: what comes in and out, cost per watch, photos, current value, gains and losses, labels and barcodes, and a straps inventory. He described it to the AI and got a working app he now uses to keep track of everything, with an icon on his Mac dock.
The AI wrote thousands of lines of 3D tooling in a week, fixing models from his marked-up renders
The AI wrote thousands of lines of Blender Python over a week for mesh inspection and cleanup, fixing parts from his annotated render previews.
Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.