agotterer

I appreciate your thoughts and definitely share some of your sentiments. But don’t underestimate the value and importance of continuing to be a creative.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of creative stagnation due to AI. If AI’s creativity relies entirely on training from existing writing, anrchitecture, art, music, movies, etc., then future AI might end up being trained only on derivatives of today’s work. If we stop generating original ideas or developing new styles of art, music, etc., how long before society gets stuck endlessly recycling the same sounds, concepts, and designs?

I’m excited about the space and intend to keep an eye on you guys. I actually gave the opened source version of browser-use a try last week and ran into two problems:

The first, it refused to correctly load the browser tab and would get stuck in a loop trying. I was able to manually override this behavior for the purpose of prototyping.

The second, it hallucinated form input values. I provided it strict instructions on how to fill out a form and when it didn’t know what to do with an address field, it just wrote 123 Main St instead of not being able to complete the form.

The thing I really want and haven’t found in any of the browser agents I’ve tried, is a feedback loop. I don’t personally know what the final format looks like. But I want to know that what I expected to happen inside the browser, actually happened, and I want it to be verifiable. Otherwise I feel like I'm sending request into a black hole.

This a neat project and an impressive collection. I’m curious, if shes hosting streaming listening party shows is she obligated to pay royalties?

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HouseAccount (https://houseaccount.com/)| Senior Product Manger | Full-time | NYC Hybrid or Remote | $165k-$215k + equity

HouseAccount aims to disrupt the $500 billion home service industry by revolutionizing and digitizing the homeowner experience. We (and our customers) firmly believe that the future of the home service industry lies in embracing technology to replace outdated and inefficient phone calls, manual scheduling, non-digital payments, and costly paper-based processes.

Founded by an experienced executive team that have been founders or exec team members at the following companies: Seamless ($GRUB), Slice ($1B+ preIPO), OLO ($OLO), SinglePlatform ($TRIP), Constant Contact ($CTCT), and Good Uncle ($ARMK).

Apply: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/houseaccount/jobs/444340400...

I found the latency to be very reasonable and for most of the conversation near instant. Only one or two "awkward pauses". I also really liked that I could interrupt and she would pick up on the new thread.

That was fun! We agreed to play only one more riddle after I solved the first riddle. She said I have 5 chances to guess a number between 1 and 100. Through some convincing I was able to get her to narrow it to a 20 number range. From there I made a guess and she said I have 4 guesses left. So I told her she was wrong and that I had 20 guesses left, she agreed. I brute forced the number and with a reminder that we agreed to play only one more game, she gave up the code.

That seems challenging to do with a writing/note taking app like this. First, what would the pricing tiers be based on? Word count? That would just be another way of saying token. Number of documents created? That puts you at risk of long unprofitable documents. Google Sheets doesn’t really have this problem because the incremental cost of storage is relatively cheap. Tokens on the other hand are not cheap.

How do you price based on value without a corollary to tokens? If you charged $40 for this service then maybe you don’t provide enough value for the casual user who does the occasional school report. On the other hand you may be unprofitable for the doctor that decides to dictate all of her interactions every day or the author who dictates an entire book.

This is a great point and a topic I’ve been thinking about myself. As more LLM services pop up that are subject to token/consumption pricing, what is the right pricing model for consumer based consumption products like this?

I hope you’re wrong as well! As a casual creative with the occasional need for photo editing and vector design tools, I could never justify the price for an Adobe subscription. But I’ve happily bought Affinity Photo and Design. They aren’t as polished as their Adobe counterparts, but the price was just right. I wouldn’t sign up for a monthly subscription.

You make a good point about the possibility that they could be even more successful with stronger leadership and product focus. I can’t argue with that and don’t disagree.

My points were focused on the fact that the data just doesn’t currently show Google failing or declining as a company.

It’s going to be really interesting to see how the Google AI strategy plays out. I agree that they could have absolutely been the leader. They had the money, resources, and ingredients to make it happen.

I believe that AI is a threat to their current business model. How much did that influence their investment and focus on it?

GCP is struggling? Is that an opinion based on experience or based on actual stats? Because GCP revenue has increased every year since 2017. AWS and Azure are capturing more market share. But I’m not sure I consider third place and $33B in revenue last year a struggle.[1]

> I just don't think Sundar is the right person to do it

That was sort of my point. Does Google need to be turned around? All stock metrics and revenue metrics show that they are doing well as a company.

Sure the AI model stuff was embarrassing. But it doesn’t seem to be having an impact on the value of the company. Maybe goodwill was hurt. But if we’ve learned anything from the Meta drama over the years, people will be quick to forget about it. I don’t think a few fixable and public missteps like that will sink the company. Does anyone outside of tech even know about it? It’s possible it’s indicative of a larger internal issue thats brewing. But it’s not impacting the value of the company… yet at least.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/478176/google-public-clo...

The goal of a public company is to increase shareholder value. Hard to argue that Sundar hasn’t done that. Revenue has increased 5 years straight. Market cap with the exception of a dip during Covid is strong and is approaching its all time high.

As a Goolgle user and long time admirer, there have certainly been some disappointments and mistakes over the years. But there’s also been some major accomplishments which people sometimes overlook.

While still early, Waymo seems to be on the right trajectory and may be a key player in autonomous vehicles. Let’s not forget Googles work on transformers, which is heavily responsible for the current AI boom. That’s just two that come to mind, I’m sure there are others. Maybe these were started before Sundar, but he’s been CEO for almost 9 years now. So he gets credit.

Google may have some culture challenges to work through, brain drain, and identity issues. But I don’t think their story is written just yet. With a giant stock pile of cash they have plenty of time and resources to buy or figure their way out of any perceived issues (if that’s even what they need to do).

Microsoft did it. And if you really want to have your mind blown, go take a look at IBMs stock chart. I didn’t expect to see it approaching an all time high.

Number 1 is the main reason I haven’t made the switch yet. Google local search results are something I care about and use frequently. If Kagi solves local search, I’ll switch completely over to them.

Spreadsheets didn’t replace accountants, however, it made them more efficient. I don’t personally believe AI will replace software engineers anytime soon, but it’s already making us more efficient. Just as Excel experience is required to crunch numbers, I suspect AI experience will be required to write code.

I use chat-gpt every day for programming and there are times where it’s spot on and more times where it’s blatantly wrong. I like to use it as a rubber duck to help me think and work through problems. But I’ve learned that whatever the output is requires as much scrutiny as a good code review. I fear there’s a lot of copy and pasting of wrong answers out there. The good news is that for now they will need real engineers to come in and clean up the mess.

Does anyone know if these are expensive to manufacture at scale?

I like that they are being used for aid, but I’m curious why they couldn’t also be extended to commuter travel? Is it not cost effective?

I’m not much of modern gamer but have very fond memories of playing N64 as a kid. Just last night I was looking for an N64 hardware emulator which could connect to modern TVs that could play in a digital format. I came across Analogue in my search, but this hadn’t been announced yet. If the price is reasonable I would be interested in buying.

Do they do a good job of getting into the inbox and staying out of spam? That’s the main reason I stay on gmail, it’s so hard to find a provider with shared IPs that reliable land in the inbox.

If you're open to hosted service, is the best commercial visual + headless CMS I've come across that supports React - https://www.storyblok.com/home.

It’s actually the opposite; more poor people have gambling problems than rich people. Here’s one source, but if you Google you will find more. https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2014/01/001.html

For my family it’s just about finding a balance. I have a 4 and 6 year old. During the school year there’s no TV during the weekdays. When they wake up on the weekend they can watch TV in the morning until the house is up and ready to start the day. This is also good for my wife and I because we can sleep past 6am.

Our family is usually pretty busy with sports, parties, and other activities on the weekend so there are fewer chances for screen time throughout the day. But we don’t mind an hour here or there between activities or at the end of the day.

Both my kids have Kindle Fires. It gets used on airplanes, drives longer than 4 hours, or if they can’t agree on something to watch or want to play a game instead of using the family TV. We don’t allow the use of screens at restaurants or in the car.

During the summer they go to camp from 8:30am-4:30pm. They usually come home and watch TV for 1-2 hours and relax from a day of being outside and running around.

Sick days are TV days.

I’d love for them to maybe have a little less screen time. That’s also coming from someone who’s watched almost zero TV in the last 6 months but spends 12+ hrs a day on a computer. But I feel like we’ve found a decent enough balance. My kids do there school work and are active and have other interests. They don’t put up a fight when we tell them to turn the screen off.

Not all funding is creating equal or share the same expectations. Borrowing money from a bank to open a bakery or taking an investment from friends and family to cover the initial startup costs is very different from raising venture capital money. The growth and return on investment expectations are wildly different.

Facebook did the same when they developed HipHop for PHP. I imagine the reasoning is the same in both cases: spend a few million dollars and a handful of engineers improving the language and tools, or spend hundreds of millions and years of time rewriting everything into a more performant language. I honestly think the math pencils and makes sense.

Quite a few of our transit problems today are actually because of the choices Robert Moses made. However, he certainly is responsible for the rapid growth of the transit system and did a great job consolidating power and getting stuff done.

* He had the chance to buy the land and put transit along many highways in queens and Long Island but said that people would prefer to drive so he passed on the opportunity. Acquiring those rights today would be unaffordable and likely impossible.

* Moses didn’t want black people going to Jones Beach (his pride and joy). To prevent them from visiting he built the overpasses on the highways that go to the beach lower so that buses from the city couldn’t fit.

I highly recommend the book The Power Broker which is a deep dive on the history of Robert Moses. The book is very long and can be a bit dry at times. But I learned a lot about the history of New York and why some things that we enjoy and suffer through today are the way they are.

Won’t the tracking companies work around this by providing each account their own set of unique obfuscated tracking names and keywords that gets mapped back behind the scenes? Impossible to build a database that way.

Thanks, I looked at PineTime and a few other programmable watches. She decided that she didn’t need an interface and wouldn’t use any function outside of the time. So I went with a Lilygo t-wristband (https://www.lilygo.cc/products/t-wristband).

Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet. Maybe you should meet with a medical professional and get evaluated. If you do have ADHD or some other such condition you may benefit from an appropriate treatment program.

It seems like you are well intentioned and there are great tips in this thread and around the web. But it’s perfectly reasonable that if you suffer from a condition or disorder that you may need extents support to execute some of these plans. I know several children and adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD or various sensory deficit disorders who struggle with focus based tasks.

On a more technical note since this is HN. I have a friend with ADHD who says she is “time blind” and often loses track of time, even with a watch. I’m building her a smart wristband that vibrates the time every hour. She believes it will help to train her to keep better track of time. We shall see.

I’ve been very happy with Air - https://github.com/cosmtrek/air

I personally find value because it saves me time. I’ll ask chat-gpt to write something slightly more complex than boilerplate code for me based on some requirements. Because I’m an “expert” I can read/run the code and message back improvements and tweaks until to arrives at something satisfactory. It certainly doesn’t always produce correct code from the start and I often encounter syntax errors or code which doesn’t work. However, I’ve found it pretty good at remedying those issues when I describe what’s wrong.

It produces something which is a good enough starting place. Sure, I could have written the code myself because I already know how. But I’ve found it saves me time and require minimal effort.

At the restaurant for the monthly meals. We are also experimenting with a "chefs table" with a smaller more intimate group hosted in pop up locations.