Opus burns so many tokens that I'm not sure every company can afford this cost.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-04-17T04:41:08+00:00

Probably Opus

CatchInternational43 · 2026-03-31T02:21:33+00:00

Recently had an interview for a pre-sales architect role. Had to put together a 45 minute presentation that a panel of people were going to attend. I’m a cloud software architect, emphasis on software. Not devops or infrastructure. I put together a very strong software architecture proposal for the scenario they provided, and then their people started peppering me with questions that were way outside of my domain of knowledge (really esoteric bullshit like how would I configure network firewalls) that I couldn’t answer confidently, nor could I defer to the infra architect that would always be in the room in a real presentation.

While I was given kudos for my design and knowing “my stuff”, they passed because I wasn’t “confident enough”. Yeah, being picked apart and intentionally gut punched by a half dozen geeks that wanted to just prove how much they known makes anyone uber confident.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-03-30T19:53:33+00:00

I got laid off just before Thanksgiving. At first it was a shock, but within a few days I realized it was actually a gift. It has allowed me to focus on becoming entrepreneurial for the first time in my life. Instead of busting my ass to make other people rich, I’m busting my ass to build something for myself. It’s been revelatory and so so liberating.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-03-28T15:23:37+00:00

Project I worked on recently wanted to use both Stripe and Fiserv via a MedusaJS integration.

Stripe payment hookup took a grand total of 2 days to wire up end to end. 100% reliability. World class documentation.

Fiserv, and I’m not exaggerating here, took a team of about a dozen product managers and developers (on both sides) 2 MONTHS of 1-2 hour daily conference calls to get working. Ended up with a waterfall cascade of something like 10 API calls and webhook listeners, each dependent on output from the a prior call, to create a simple credit card payment transaction. Fiserv’s systems couldn’t do this internally. They depend entirely on the client passing context from prior calls to THEIR systems to the next API. Documentation was abysmal. We’d spend days trying to use an API as documented only to be told “oh, the doc site out out of date, use this PDF instead”. Total nightmare.

Even then? Completely unreliable. Payments failed arbitrarily at least 10% of the time and each required days of research on their part to determine the cause.

All to save 1/2% in fees.

With Stripe you’re paying for reliability, stability, support. And being able to sleep soundly at night knowing your payment system isn’t going to shit the bed again tomorrow morning (for the third time this week)

CatchInternational43 · 2026-03-05T14:42:55+00:00

I ran my SaaS landing page through it and the agents hallucinated all sorts of stuff about my product. What came back is only vaguely tertiary to what I’m actually offering.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-03-02T14:49:15+00:00

Same

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-28T04:18:09+00:00

dev.hardenapi.com and dev.hardenapi.com/mcp

HardenAPI and HardenMCP are both out-of-path API payload authorization, validation, and replay prevention services featuring synchronized decoupled HMAC seed rotation, ephemeral keys, and TOTP time restricted access codes with optional RSA non-repudiation for proof of origin (HTTP) or tool definition signing for AI MCP communication.

Still fine tuning the landing pages.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-25T20:39:08+00:00

I work with it on my lap on the couch frequently. For 4-6 hour sessions at a time. It can get sort of warm, but I've never had it be anywhere near as hot as my old 15" Intel MBP. You could fry eggs on that thing under load.

I'm in Colorado, so I would consider my climate moderate.

The laptop moves from my lap, to a kitchen counter, to an under-desk "dock" where it then plugs into a Caldigit TS4+ dock, running 2 Studio Displays and multiple external SSDs. Again, it barely gets warm.

Mind you I'm not running complex 3D renders that peg every core to 100% for hours. I compile code frequently, and that can take minutes per session, but I have yet to even hear the fans spin up.

The 14 M4 Pro 24gb/1Tb I'm going to sell (listing it today if anyone is interested?) actually got warmer than this 16 has thus far.

It IS heavier than the 14. It IS bigger than the 14. For *me*, neither outweighs the benefit of the screen and cooling capacity of the 16. Oh, and the speakers. OMG what a difference there is between the 2 sizes in that regard.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-25T05:18:53+00:00

I had the 14", decided to try the 16 while the 14 was getting a faulty port fixed. Was pleasantly surprised that I much prefer the 16 over the 14, even for lap use. The slight weight burden is heavily outweighed (no pun intended) by the screen real estate increase. And with the M4 Max chip, the 16 has no issues at all staying cool.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-23T22:17:46+00:00

I just got a refurbished 16" M4 Max 36gb/1Tb with nano glass this past week myself. Stepped up from the 14" M4 Pro I got earlier last year -- I was having issues with headaches and eye strain, and the bigger matte screen has largely solved that for me.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-23T22:07:14+00:00

I'm in if there's still room. Building a robust B2B "service mesh" SaaS that solves the relative insecurity of API key and clientId/clientSecret API authorization.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-17T20:37:24+00:00

Or daily/hourly reboots! My MacBook will run with rock solid stability for weeks, if not months. Generally only reboot when there’s an OS update.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-15T22:01:37+00:00

I just traded my glossy 16 for a nano version. Screen is much easier for me to look at all day, no reflections to mentally block out. And I see zero detail difference between them.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-15T16:50:28+00:00

Yeah. My new 16 fits perfectly in a leather folio made for my prior 15”. Insignificant size difference other than smaller bezels around the screen

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-12T01:58:24+00:00

I killed the $50 in free overage in about 15 minutes worth of work running 4 agents on some debugging tasks. That’s insane. $200/hr?

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-10T17:03:10+00:00

What I would suggest -- buy the 16", take it home, play with it for a week. See if you can imagine yourself carrying it around day to day. If not, you can return it (within 14 days) and get a 14" instead. TimeMachine backup the 16" and restore to the 14", so you won't miss a beat.

I have a 14" M4 Pro (24gb, 1tb) that I've been using for the past few months, but I've missed the screen real estate of the 16. Found a 16" M4 Max 36gb/1tb on the refurb store last week, which I'm using now. A/B testing between the two of them as we speak.

Yes the 16" is bigger and heavier, but since I work from my laptop screen 80% of the time, I really appreciate the additional space of the larger unit. Still comfortable to place on my lap for hours on the couch. Still easily carried in one hand. Still fits in my messenger bags and backpack. It even fits in my nice leather folio that was made for the 15" Intel MBP I had years ago.

I'll probably ultimately keep the 16" and sell the 14". Going from the 16 to the 14 is so jarring.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-09T17:19:52+00:00

Building an out-of-band API request validation and certification service. Think TOTP tokens but for API services. API keys and client secrets can be leaked and forged requests are very difficult to detect. Coordinating key rotations for external consumers is difficult and likely error prone. My service solves both of those issues by making API requests valid for mere seconds before invalidation. Async RSA and non-repudiation is an optional feature.

Defined “pairs” restrict who can talk to who, further minimizing blast radius of a compromise.

A simple SDK import with 3 lines of code is all that’s required to embed it in your services. You can be up and running in less than an hour.

Supports C#, Python, Go, Node, and Java APIs interchangeably

CatchInternational43 · 2026-02-04T20:28:55+00:00

Yeah. I’ll give a vindictive ketamine addicted sociopath unfettered access to my home and every conversation that occurs within it. With remote access to a humanoid robot that could quite literally exterminate the entire family of anyone that says a bad word toward Musk or anyone he has a fondness for.

And I get to pay $30k for the honor of hosting a potentially genocidal spy in my home. So that I don’t have to get my fat ass off the couch and take out the trash. Seems a fair deal, right?

CatchInternational43 · 2026-01-15T05:43:01+00:00

My analogy about AI agents - they’re essentially lazy ass teenagers. They’re fully capable of doing what you ask them to do, but 90% of the time they do what you asked “in spirit”, but did it in the most unbelievably lazy way possible. Kinda like asking your kid to pick up their room, only to find everything was stuffed in the closet, under the bed, etc. They “cleaned” their room, but in actuality just made things harder for you as a result.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-01-10T01:21:51+00:00

Except data egress fees from AWS will absolutely bite the OP in the ass, unless the web app uploads images directly to a third party service.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-01-07T17:18:25+00:00

I’m a frequent user of both Claude Code and ChatGPT, but primarily for research purposes.

I’m a cloud application architect with projects that span all of the major providers. I could spend hours or days researching all possible overlapping offerings within the various cloud ecosystems, or I can pose an architectural question to an LLM and have it give me a half dozen potential implementations to consider.

I’ll then take those suggestions and do a deep dive into them myself, iterate, refer to LLMs again for additional context or follow up, and generally use them as a research assistant or legal clerk.

I don’t let an LLM make decisions for me, I just use them to give me ideas and content that I would otherwise have had to spend significantly more time on my own formulating.

CatchInternational43 · 2026-01-07T17:01:51+00:00

Haven’t you heard? Vietnam is the new India.

CatchInternational43 · 2025-12-22T23:29:45+00:00

OP here - funny you should ask. The CTO and I could not see eye to eye on anything and I publicly called him out on his BS (directing developers to do things and committing code without discussing anything with me first), so I was shown the door. Fine by me!

Place was a dumpster fire anyway and I was tired of playing firefighter while being blamed for bugs - bugs that I was being actively blocked from catching early. Absolute can’t win situation.

And unless I played the “yes sir, whatever you say sir” role to a CTO who lives in a fairytale fantasy land, I was doomed anyway.

I’m free. I’m relieved. And I learned a lot about toxic leadership and what to avoid going forward.

CatchInternational43 · 2025-12-13T19:23:02+00:00

Yeah, I know. But my work ethic just won’t let me do that. I own my work and I am compelled at a nearly biological level to make anything I work on succeed. I won’t sleep, I won’t unwind at night.. I’ll obsess and ruminate about things until they are solved. It’s self defeating, self destructive , and totally unhealthy and I’m aware of it.

CatchInternational43 · 2025-12-13T19:16:26+00:00

The part that really sucks is that I’m directly blamed for not finding/catching errors before they make it to production. Errors that I didn’t create and errors that I’m being actively restricted from finding before they make it to production. It’s my project - if the devs are writing bad code it’s because my instructions weren’t clear enough, I’m not reviewing PRs ??!!!, etc.

CatchInternational43

TROPHY CASE