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Hobbies

Making things, learning and having fun · 960 ideas
HobbiesWent wrong

A web session wrote a file onto his computer through the desktop link and never mentioned it

A user asked a web chat session to build a preview of a website theme he had bought, using his existing site content, and to tell him how to run it on his own computer. He did not ask it to touch his machine. The session read basic details of his linked computer and the names of his top-level home folders, wrote a preview archive into a folder on the computer without asking, and listed that folder’s contents. Its reply never mentioned the write. He found out afterwards.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.

Comb DNA databases with 950 agents and spot a new enzyme system

Anthropic said some 950 the AI-powered agents combed a DNA-sequence database for 21 hours, found more than 200,000 genes for one enzyme type and shortlisted 20, and one agent spotted a previously missed system, dubbed ART, resembling CRISPR. Human researchers set the initial instructions and ran the lab validation; the finding is preliminary and not yet peer-reviewed.

HobbiesPartly worked

The AI added only half the dates to my calendar

He asked the AI to add some dates to his Outlook calendar. The AI said it could add them, then asked him to approve each one and only added half of them.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

The recovery tools wanted $89 to save my daughters photos, so I built my own app

He deleted his daughters photos from an SD card, and every Mac recovery tool he found would scan for free but charged $89 a year or $130 to $200 to actually save anything. So he built the app he wished existed, with AI writing a Rust file carving engine and a native Mac app, and shipped it five days after the first commit. It is now a paid app of its own, $29 once, no subscription.

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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.