flessner

I have been out of the loop with Python for a couple years at this point, but how could this get so bad?

If you are looking into a system you are unfamiliar with, where do you look first?... pip? pipx? homebrew?... or is it in anaconda? pyenv?... must be in the os package manager... apt? pacman?

Honestly, Maven and NPM look great compared to this mess.

There's a difference between reading the news and chatting with an AI - evident because of the verbs.

While news are one-sided and usually have no immediate ways of discussing them (besides maybe Reddit and HN). Chatbots on the other hand are a correspondence, which makes them more like a discussion or interview... they seem more approachable (human?)

Platforms like c.ai push this to the extreme. While AI relationships seem dystopian right now, I fear they are already creeping up on us - forming beliefs even stronger than news can.

... Google and Microsoft are big in AI, so it's not even a change in "leadership" anyway.

Keep in mind that WordPress is over 20 years old at this point - the problem it was built to solve just isn't the same anymore.

Most of the use cases nowadays are covered by even easier products (social media, Medium, Linktree, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflowly, ...)

So you'd consider WordPress for anything that requires something more advanced like login, storing user data, complex state, fully custom design, ... (or out of habit/experience of course). That seems to be within the possibilities for low-code/no-code tools - they aren't quite there yet in my opinion, but in a couple years they might be.

The issue isn't having a monopoly, it's exploiting vertical integration in digital platforms.

- Hardware (Google Pixel, Chromecast, Chromebook)

- OS (Android, ChromeOS)

- Distribution (Google Play Store)

- Browser (Chrome)

- Search (Google)

- Products (YouTube, Drive, Gmail, ...)

- Business (GCP, Workspace)

The only other companies that are similar are Microsoft and Apple... both arguably less extensive.

The issue with this also isn't entirely clear until it's "exploited": Google (and the others) can force certain products on their customers due to controlling the "underlying" product. Ad targeting also becomes incredibly precise and valuable... everyone else has to go through the scraps while Google can "just" read your emails (Gmail), get your location (Hardware/OS), go through your files and photos (Drive) and use your search history (Google).

We are at the point where the energy grid is hampering EV adoption and technological (AI) progress - optimistically there is a real economic incentive that renewables will pick up the pace now, pessimistically it's too late.

At the end of the day it's supply and demand. When company A stops advertising it creates less demand so company B gets a lower price which may make advertising "worthwhile" again.

Assuming that companies were just distributing their marketing budget elsewhere twitter essentially became an outside option for companies that were willing to bear the "risks".

Doesn't "AI" already stand for Apple Intelligence, so that might be a bit confusing...

I absolutely support that, but you need to differentiate a bit.

If a game has a functioning single player and a company chooses to shutdown multiplayer/matchmaking after some time I think that's fair. Sure, it would be nicer if the servers were open sourced or an alternative was provided, but at least there is some way to still play.

However, there are also games that only have multiplayer - here a company can just take away your ability to play the game completely. A prominent recent example is "The Crew".

It's also not 100% clear when buying, "The Crew" certainly had a large story aspect to it and it wasn't common in 2014 for such games to be "always online". It's quite a difficult path to find a solution to all of this as we can't force companies to operate servers indefinitely; on the other side we are loosing consumer rights and history.

There are many things web browser can technically do nowadays, but aren't great or not supported in all browser.

- File System (Obsidian, Logseq)

- Push Notifications (IM, Social Media, Email)

- USB/Bluetooth (Doesn't work in Safari?)

- Global Hotkeys (Raycast)

- Interfacing with other local Apps (localhost is often blocked)

Maybe if I want to send my friend $5 Paypal or whatever can do that, but what fintech is actually taking market share from them at merchants?

Maybe it is because I am in Germany, but merchants here only accept cash, girocard and credit cards - online shops obviously have a wider selection that regularly includes Paypal in Klarna, but I wouldn't expect credit cards to loose a lot of market share to them.

So in which geographic regions is this actually the case? Do you have any source I could read on this as I am quite interested.

"mini planes that fly"... that doesn't require a jet engine, and certainly not one built from scratch.

As many have already mentioned, building a jet engine from scratch isn't exactly easy or cheap. In your position I would get a battery, electric motors, propeller, microcontroller and a 3D printer, then figure it out from there.

I know it's probably a bit off from what you wanted, but it's a "cost efficient" way to actually built something. Once you have something flying you can upgrade from there...

I am currently in the process of building my own drone from scratch this way, designing the drone and programming the remote control, flight controller completely myself... it is/was a lot harder than I expected. So, what I am trying to say is: don't be afraid to use of the shelf components and don't make things harder than they have to be. Get started, then get creative.

Just my experience with this.

For university, it hasn't changed by a lot. Ideally I would want a tool where I could input all slides, worksheets and scripts for a module and then get a nice summary, mock exams, ... nothing can do this which is why I wrote my own tool for this, it works alright, but it isn't 100% accurate and misses bits of information. So I am mostly back to compiling my own summaries and learning based on old exams.

As a side project I am currently building a drone myself on a really tight budget. While I am pretty good on the coding side, my understanding of electronics is basically non-existent. So when I am asking basic questions it's quite helpful; as soon as I am giving it specifications ("Will this brushless motor and this ECS work with a 4S lipo?") it breaks down completely - so it's helpful, but far from perfect.

Hi, I am 21. First I didn't want to comment as I am not a founder (yet), but I actually had an idea: My university actually runs a rudimentary founders program/startup accelerator for students.

Maybe the institutions near you do the same, I am sure your input would be invaluable there and also the (future) founders would be right in your age range.

I am using the "Tasks" Plugin in Obsidian, but just supporting a checklist that appears in a specific location would also be sufficient for me.

But Obsidian will probably be quite a difficult destination as it's working locally - in your position I would try and support the hosted tools (Asana, Notion, ...) first as that's probably easier to adapt to your current flows.

As a customer that process makes sense if I had those extra requirements, but why do so many SaaS lock SSO (Google/Microsoft) behind their Enterprise offerings?

I get that it's for differentiation between plans, but as a customer it feels weird to walk into this pricing black hole just for SSO. Maybe you have some experience with that?

I like the idea, but I personally strongly correlate "notifications" with phone notifications so I was a bit confused at first.

I think it's too broad-scoped for the current lineup. Isn't really "unified" with 4 tools syncing to Todoist. I could see this being really attractive as a niche tool though - "developer focused" inbox or whatever.

I also like that it has a Raycast extension, add Obsidian as a destination and it might be compelling for me to try out :)

All new networks promise low fees, but as soon as the activity shifts there they don't hold up. I have seen it happen too many times before and is just by design of the fee market.

I don't even think the hurdle is that big, I find a lot of "crypto wallets" nicer to use than many banking apps - main issue imo is the risk to loose funds, which is significant even for technical users.

Not to forget that "cheap fees" is an argument that doesn't hold up anymore - Bitcoin and Ethereum fees are outlandish; Solana and other chains are just about "alright".

The tech at its core is really interesting though, sadly the most innovation seems to be in marketing at the moment.

I always forget how young I am, just for HN to remind me :)

That's slowly being solved by ETCS to allow more interoperability, besides even within Germany there are drastic differences between city-wide, regional and long range services.

There are also at least a couple connections from Germany to Basel, so I don't think the last point is entirely correct.

Yes, AI isn't entirely to blame for this - it's low quality, irrelevant and misleading content in general.

Also, we have to look at the incentives: advertisement. Somehow, this is acceptable to consumers, profitable for companies and profitable for publishers. How, is absolutely beyond me... and it won't change so long as Google has a majority in the "search"-space as they are directly profiting from this.

Safari on MacOS is really nice, fast and offers everything I need... but every 3 months or so I stumble on a website that refuses to work at all - rendering looks off, buttons don't work etc...

Switching to Chrome usually fixes it - but I always question my sanity for about 10 minutes until I try it in Chrome.

I am a huge fan of the "Backend as a Service" segment (Supabase, Pocketbase, Appwrite, ...)

One of the big benefits that they all share is that they use a mainstream DB in the back (Supabase -> Postgres, Pocketbase -> SQLite) so you have a possible upgrade path if you need it - Is this the case here? I can't even easily tell what it uses as a DB, SQLite?

Also Authentication and more importantly Authorization are so prominent in the other BaaS I mentioned - completely missing here.

Not to disregard what this project is doing, but it might be better suited as a CMS that has some backend features... like for forms or appointment booking. Nevertheless, if I find a need for it in the future, I'll surely try it out.

And I mean why should they? They work great for what they are made for and that is all that matters!

Won't do anything to most consumer facing AI, the UI & convenience is already a major selling point. A bigger threat is that the feature the business is built around makes it into mainline software... there is no demand for (paid) background removal anymore as every iPhone can do it nowadays.

Generally if whatever AI product you have can easily just be a feature in whatever application businesses already use, then you are running a business on borrowed time.

I feel the same, ChatGPT barely beats Google searches for me nowadays.

For example, on a side project I used to explain it shortly and the issue I am facing, mostly looking to discover packages or libraries that can help me build it.

Over 3 months ago GPT4 used to jump straight to the point and recommend alternative scenarios and packages. Now it just gives me a giant text with considerations for the whole project, but rarely actually tackles the issue I am having. Even if I ask it to actually go in-depth into whatever I am interested in it usually doesn't and repeats the same surface level information.

1) You can predict the future economic state of the EU as well as the next person

2) Most of the "bureaucracy" that hits small to medium sized companies is the GDPR, which any business with the slightest of integrity should have no problem to follow

This discussion might be heavy on semantics, but I don't think you are wrong for bringing this up.

AI can be used as a tool to empower authors and artists to create more and/or better works, but it can also be used by a lazy student to finish their 2 page writing assignment in seconds.

The only thing AI will clearly do over the next few years is raise the bar. Beginner art or copywriting is already outclassed and assignments will assume access to AI tools, similarly how many assume internet access nowadays.

Nevertheless, I truly believe that there will always be space for human art... just look at chess, with engines far better than humans, what are the tournaments about? the players.

I wouldn't short it personally, but if you really want to you will most likely need a (crypto) broker that gives you access to leveraged trading and/or futures.

I tried Phoenix LiveView recently and it feels really refreshing. In comparison to Svelte (my preferred tool usually) it feels oddly similar like it occupies the same idea with a completely different execution.

I personally prefer JS over Elixir and having everything in one language also makes everything easier... maybe there is also a future to fuse some of these concepts into Svelte (I will have to experiment :D )