Back to Basics & Off the Cloud: 3D-Printed Moles, a DIY Pocket, and Ditching Third Parties
A 3D-printed carnival game spec'd by Claude, a DIY Pocket clone that never touches the cloud, and Stripe buying OpenRouter for $7B.
Is AI pushing us back to basics? I demo two builds that say yes: a 3D-printed "don't whack the lemon" carnival exhibit (servos, heat-set inserts, an Arduino Mega, and a bill of materials spec'd by Claude) and a homemade Pocket clone. That one is a Raspberry Pi Zero that records, rsyncs over Tailscale, transcribes with local Whisper and lands in a Chroma RAG database without a byte leaving my network.
Sean brings his voice-transcription setup and the old-school backup renaissance (Arq and Backblaze are back). Then the bigger picture: Bill Gates' "greatest equalizer or worst source of injustice" essay, notification overload, cloud bills versus idle local compute, and Stripe buying OpenRouter for $7B.
Listen to episode 17 on bloodsweatandtokens.xyz, or watch it on YouTube.
About Taylor MacDonald
Taylor’s career started in Lexington, KY designing and developing big-name collegiate athletic sites like ukathletics.com and texassports.com. Later, while working at Creative Department in Cincinnati, he pushed his analytical side, working on brands like Tide, Macy’s and LexisNexis.
Taylor joined the Ample partnership in 2014 and in his role as our Chief Technology Officer has pushed our company and clients to the next level. As chief JAMstack evangelist, Taylor has a passion for simple, battle-tested architectural solutions that drive down costs and increase confidence for our clients.
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