[danpalmer]

> Our Founder! of this project is battling cancer. Your Stars and Forks are appreciated.

I'm sorry to hear this, but I'm also surprised that this is the first thing I learnt about this project, and that it is written in the third person. It detracts from the project.

[throwaway290]

I don't have a problem with mentioning cancer, but they should've mentioned which cancer to raise awareness and help others. The ribbon icon is gold which means pediatric/childhood cancer?

Asking for stars and forks is where it gets weird. I understand a crowdfunding program but how is this going to help?

Makes it even weirder that this is a completely anonymous, we don't know who works on it, and actually the project pretends to be authored by "AI". look at commit history and contributors

I don't want to be cynical here, my dad was diagnosed with cancer too but this just feels like some LLM was given a prompt to maximize stars and forks and this is how that went. I am very sorry to say this.

[calmingsolitude]

Although not disclosed on this page, the author's name is mentioned on their other projects[0].

> Our founder, Todd Bruss, is currently battling Cancer. Through it all, he continues to pour his heart into InkPen. Your support and encouragement mean the world.

The author has posted about their project on LinkedIn as well[1].

[0] https://inkpen.io/ [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/principal-software-engineer-swif...

[throwaway290]

OK, I take it back. What can I say, even knowing he is working on this LLM stuff that's becoming the curse of humanity I still wish him beat cancer.

[macOS26]

:)

[swiftcoder]

Open-source maintainers don't owe anyone perfectly-manicured marketing copy on their landing pages. Honestly, the fact that is the first thing you learn humanises the username behind the keyboard

[throwaway290]

> the fact that is the first thing you learn humanises the username behind the keyboard

The username is macOS26. The name is "Agent!". As in "Agentic AI for your entire Mac Desktop". All commits are made by this entity.

Until someone here told me there is a real guy behind it I sincerely gotta say, it looks like there's no human behind the keyboard and actually there's no keyboard at all.

Combined with cancer message on top it made me think some LLM "agent" is trying different tricks because it was prompted to achieve maximum stars and forks. I feel shitty for saying this but how not to be cynical because literally that's what we degraded to thanks to "ai".

[swiftcoder]

> Combined with cancer message on top it made me think some LLM "agent" is trying different tricks because it was prompted to achieve maximum stars and forks. I feel shitty for saying this but how not to be cynical because literally that's what we degraded to thanks to "ai".

AI might increase the volume of shitty things on the internet, but it's not like GitHub accounts weren't anonymous before AI, and it's not like people weren't using scammy tactics to boost their star count before AI.

If the fear of AI turn us into worse people in our interactions, that's kind of on us, not AI

[throwaway290]

An anonymous account isn't the same as bot account. Number of obvious bot accounts jumped 1000% in the last 4 years or so.

[macOS26]

Thanks! :)

[macOS26]

I honestly don't think anyone starred, watched or forked it because it was a person with cancer. They starred it because it's a good app. One that is missing on macOS.

Today, I used it to weed out hundreds of Linkedin "followings" with Safari. worked like a champ. It does very well at coding tasks too and automating Xcode builds.

[mrcwinn]

What a crazy comment. The first clause of your first sentence was more than enough.

[johannsg]

Imagine seeing a cancer announcement and thinking, 'This is bad for the branding.' Your lack of empathy is what’s actually detracting here.

[macOS26]

I removed the Cancer banners. But I will tell you that I have physically gone through 2.5 weeks off hell. Chemo is no joke and I am 50% there. It gets tougher each time and the symptoms hit you in the middle of the week. And I also am getting booster shots that force white blood cells out of my bone marrow and it has severe side effects and all they can offer is over the counter Claritin.

I've had days of fevers, dehydration, nausea, vomiting and still holding down a day job. So please don't be offended by my diagnosis or saying that stars and forks mean the world because it kind of does.

[macOS26]

Sorry I responded to the nested reply. no offense.