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Comment by tantaman | Hacker News Reader

us ai?

The website [1] is very strange. What does U.S. stand for? If I were to stumble on this I'd assume it was a fishing / scam website trying to impersonate the government. Bad vibes all around.

[1] - https://us.ai/

I'll try to improve the vibes :(

I've been working at this startup for almost two years now and that page and branding etc has been changing a lot as you can imagine ...

But what is the branding?

United States AI?

Like the premise of the company name is bad. Real bad.

A) Thanks for sharing your OSS with the world!!

B) I'm also a little confused. Surely that domain cost(s) $$$ -- why not go with a cute "us" branding rather than "U.S."? Unless you're looking to sell in other countries where maybe U.S. expertise is a selling point, this definitely comes across like you're pretending to be part of the government.

EDIT: For comparison, we.ai costs $500,000/y (!!!)

EDIT2: It looks like you're positioning yourself as a defense/govt contractor, thus the branding? That's certainly cool, but IMHO, if I were you and owned that domain, I'd offer it to Palantir for $$$$$ and just go with your second choice. They're currently starting in on a whole genocide/global war thing, so they have cash to burn!

Hi thanks! The domain actually used to be a redirect link to U.S. Automotive Industries (a trade publication). I reached out to them and got a deal, so it was a lot for me but not, like, we.ai expensive lol.

The name was always a corporate placeholder and I liked the idea of US Steel or General Electric type names. Some startups have done similar things, and many people actually like the name a ton. But I know it's controversial and so any products I made have their own names and branding that's pretty separate (see: Abbey).

Over the past few months I've gone the gov contracting route and the name actually made some sense, so I've used it raw. Still, the plan is to get a DBA in the near future and switch it up. Thanks for the advice!

Ok that’s actually kinda hilarious — hopefully some blogger picks up that tidbit. I bet there aren’t many people using “ai” for “automotive industry” anymore!

Props for using Garamond Condensed and giving me flashbacks to 1990s Apple.

The similarities with WhiteHouse.gov’s design can’t be much help either, I imagine.

I thought the same, but I didn't double check so I did not mention it.

Just a totally normal domain for an Anguillan perspective on all things America

Unrelated, but I continue to be confused by "ClaudeMind" a JetBrains Plugin by "73signals": https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/25082-claudemind

Their website doesn't even mention 73signals: https://claudemind.com/

Surely Anthropic must have an issue with this use of their trademark? And 73signals seems so similar to 37signals as to be intentional.

It's one guy running his little AI startup fresh out of college. Claims to be a former national security analyst but makes no such claim on his LinkedIn.

Thanks for the catch on my LinkedIn, I really should have that there now. It was originally something I kept private.

Thanks, I'm always on the lookout for people with suspicious or over-exaggerated credentials cough-Lex Friedman-cough. Is the national security paper public? Is it something about Ufimstev?

Hi, it is unfortunately not public and cannot be made so to my understanding. It was frustrating to talk about in job interviews for that reason and therefore was not on the LinkedIn.

> cough-Lex Friedman-cough

Oh please elaborate!

listen to any episode and it's evident

Yeah I mean I gathered that, still would be interesting to know what specifically he lied about.

the very same

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