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blancotech

101 karma · joined February 8, 2016

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blancotech··on LinkedIn Feed Blocker
This is still my preferred way on Safari, no extensions needed. It uses custom style sheets in the Safari > settings menu. https://x.com/BlancoTech/status/2061521432085955039
blancotech··on The Evolution of Google Search (1997–Present)
Stumbled upon this and found it to be one of the most entertaining ways I've seen to explore a company/product’s history
blancotech··on The Quiet Crisis in QA: More Code, Same Old Problems
> The hardest part of QA still seems to be maintaining tests as the system evolves

That’s interesting. It may explain why so many companies now push “self-healing” tests with LLMs for small UI shifts. The teams I spoke with faced different challenges, so the toughest part varied by where they stood in their QA cycle.

> Curious whether you’re aiming...

I started with a broad “AI test everything” approach, but I learned fast that the intent problem I mentioned is tough to beat. The prototype looked great in demos, yell fell short when I dogfooded them on my other projects. And when I met with teams, I didn’t see clear market pull. What comes next is still open.

blancotech··on The Quiet Crisis in QA: More Code, Same Old Problems
Hey everyone, I’ve put together this blog post summarizing what I’ve learned over the past month while building a QA-focused startup. I’m still developing my understanding of the space, so I’m also looking for gaps I might be missing. All feedback is welcome!
blancotech··on Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web
This is a super fun idea. As someone who just launched a chrome extension, I find it cool that with tweeks you are essentially create one but without having to go through the chrome web store. I wonder if there's any risk in you offer shared "tweaks" that goes against some web store policy.

Also I find the founder journey interesting. What made you decide to pivot from AI Recruiting to an extension generator? Saw this https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/MvC-nextbyte-ai-recruit...

blancotech··on The Rise of Codex
Bundling and distribution. OpenAI has more paid subscribers than Anthropic. I started using Codex over Claude because Codex is included in my subscription.

It’s the classic Microsoft Teams vs Slack debate.

blancotech··on Launch HN: Channel3 (YC S25) – A database of every product on the internet
Curious, how are you keeping the product data up-to-date? We built something similar for price alerts on specific URLs, that we use all the time, but have to poll it daily to see the price change (https://lowlow.bot). I imagine that would be a lot of $$ for every product on the Internet.
blancotech··on Show HN: Project management system for Claude Code
I’m curious how any project management to code agent workflow can be successful given how messy the process is in real life.

Especially discovering unknown unknowns that lead to changes in your original requirements. This often happens at each step of the process (e.g. when writing the PRD, when breaking down the tickets, when coding, when QAing, and when documenting for users).

That’s when the agent needs to stop and ask for feedback. I haven’t seen (any) agents do this well yet.

blancotech··on Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots
> An important mechanism here is that even if a crawler doesn’t have a billing relationship with Cloudflare, and thus couldn’t be charged for access, a publisher can still choose to ‘charge’ them. This is the functional equivalent of a network level block (an HTTP 403 Forbidden response where no content is returned) — but with the added benefit of telling the crawler there could be a relationship in the future.

IMO this is why this will not work. If you're too small a publisher, you don't want to lose potential click-through traffic. If you're a big publisher, you negotiate with the main bots that crawl a site (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Anthropic, Google, Grok).

The only way I can see something like this work is if a large "bot" providers set the standard and say they'll pay if this is set up (unlikely) or smaller apps that crawl see that this as cheaper than a proxy. But in the end, most of the traffic comes from a few large players.

blancotech··on Delta Chat is a decentralized and secure messenger app
Anyone else immediately think of delta airlines? I was excited to read an analysis of a seat-to-seat chat implementation
blancotech··on Show HN: One Billion Checkboxes
[x] did it just for fun

[x] instantly usable

[x] no sales pitch

These are the posts that keep us on HN

blancotech··on Show HN: I built an app to generate story relationships using Mermaidjs
Nice idea but the results weren't comprehensive for the book I tested. I find that chatgpt with web search enabled does a better job with the simple prompt "Create a relationship diagram for the characters in <BOOK TITLE> using mermaidjs. Include the relationships between people."
blancotech··on Show HN: Apple Notes and Ollama
The mention of Apple Notes search makes me frustrated haha! I’ve been dreaming of Apple integrating something like this one day. Looking forward to trying out your tool in the meantime.

What are the long-term plans given the likelihood of Apple having on-device LLMs and integrating them throughout their tools in 202X?

blancotech··on Show HN: Scrive – Simplify Your LinkedIn Messaging
Hi, great landing page! The example makes it very clear what you're solving for.

How are you thinking about staying differentiated if LinkedIn were to add this feature?

Also, given that most LLM chat tools are free now (e.g. http://chatgpt.com), how are you thinking about long term differentiation and pricing?

blancotech··on Show HN: I built a Free price comparison tool for Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress
I really like the idea behind this site and the goal of finding best deal across the web.

But what you said is exactly what my buddy and I have felt. Google Shopping also injects all these advertisers who have similar but different products. There isn't a good place to just say "Here's the exact product I want, now find it for me for the best price" that we've found.

We built and use https://www.lowlow.bot for price tracking specific item urls. Next we were thinking of doing it across sites just like you described, so it's good to hear from someone else who prefers that.

blancotech··on [dead]
Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc... but the <> don't seem to do anything for the url

news.ycombinator.com

ycombinator.com

thisisatest.org

thisisatest.io

thisisatest.ai

https://www.test.com

http://www.test.com

https://www.test

https://fake

https://asdfasdf.asdf.as.fd.2asdf$$$asdfaf11<>ASDFhttps

<thisisatest.org>

blancotech··on 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec empire
I’m very impressed. It would be great to see similar maps reconstructions for other ancient cities like this!

For those who want to see the before and after of Manhattan, I highly recommend reading Mannahatta https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5955328-mannahatta

blancotech··on ConstitutionDAO – a $20M stupid Ethereum trick
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed this summary. Had read Patrick McCormick’s newsletter on ConstitutionDAO and wanted to hear the opposite take. I appreciate the optimism Patrick brings to the web3 space. But, there’s a lack of critical thinking in terms of why the problem needs web3 and the risks associated.
blancotech··on Why nobody ever wins the car at the mall
When I was in middle school, I remember doing a raffle at our local mall for an iPod Mini. My Mom told me to ruffle up the paper before dropping it in because the raffle drawer would feel the rough edges and select that one.

We got a call a few weeks later that I won the iPod mini. I still remember my mom driving me to the mall and them handing me the new iPod Mini. That was my peek. I've never won a raffle since.

blancotech··on Teens Who Hacked Microsoft's Xbox Empire and Went Too Far
Really great article. As someone who first became interested in computer science from Xbox “hacking” and JTAGing 360s this shows an alternative path that would have been easy to go down. When you become enveloped by the status you attain in forums, meet sketchy “friends” online, and start getting easy money, then the path of least resistance becomes the one in this article.
blancotech··on ISS HD Earth Viewing Experiment
Thanks for sharing. This site is good too http://spacedashboard.com/
blancotech··on Fooling Neural Networks in the Physical World with 3D Adversarial Objects
On the flip side, someone can use this as a feature. You can create hidden messages in 3d objects that can only be revealed in a neural net's wrong classification
blancotech··on Searching the World Wide World
More info: https://medium.com/@DescartesLabs/searching-the-world-wide-w...
blancotech··on Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
All I can think of when I hear the word Waymo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lMu8V5Xa90
blancotech··on Google Maps adds promoted pins
Recently went to google maps and noticed a bunch of promoted pins for Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Walmart, Shell, etc. https://i.imgsafe.org/a4d2b33fb6.png