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mattcantstop

720 karma · joined May 8, 2012

likes to build software
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mattcantstop··on What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
It's rude to me as well. But I think we are wrong about this.

I was in the doctor's office and a person was on the phone talking in the waiting room. I thought it was weird. But then I thought "if a person was sitting in the seat next to them and they were talking, would that be weird?"

I don't think we'd see two people talking as being weird. Why is it weird if someone is by themself speaking to someone that isn't around on the phone? If two people can speak in that place, it's not weird for someone to have a phone discussion.

Now playing music speakers or watching TikTok videos on your phone in a public place...psychotic!

mattcantstop··on Amazon Says Its Data Centers Use 2.5B Gallons of Water
I've always found this a weird comparison. There is no more important use of water than providing food. I love tech and earn my living from it, but the importance of food cannot be overstated.
mattcantstop··on Googlebook
First thing they show is shopping with Gemini AI. Everything is around advertising and shopping with Google. Not the platform for me.
mattcantstop··on Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing
This is such a tiresome perspective. The value of the quote from Thiel should be based on how true/predictive/helpful the quote is. Not the political leanings of the person who said it.

Someone locally said they wouldn't listen to anything Strong Towns wrote because they are pro-housing. Even though the article from Strong Towns directly addressed the question the person was asking about quite well.

Tribalism is going to destroy us all. Thiel can have great perspectives, even if he has been undercutting democracy at every turn.

mattcantstop··on Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
This combined with a tv that had tactile buttons again would be nice! So tired of the buttonless TVs now, or the buttons that have no tactile feedback so you don't know what you are doing in the dark.

Like no tactile controls in cars, this was also a mistake for TVs

mattcantstop··on Glaze by Raycast
Makes sense to me. It's a marketing page. Know your audience.
mattcantstop··on Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android
There was a video posted in the article that demonstrates it better than a comment would. One of the most glaring defects these days are the keyboard registering the press on the correct letter, and then inputting a different letter. The keyboard is hot garbage right now.
mattcantstop··on HTTP Cats
404 should have been the cat footprints in the concrete but without the cat.
mattcantstop··on Downtown Denver's office vacancy rate grows to 38.2%
I think Denver (I live here) is an example of our horrible zoning. We have entirely focused our cities (especially Denver and RTD (Regional Transportation District)) around people commuting in for work.

This is one of the main principles of BAD design, where you create an entire area around close to a single use (offices). That creates a very fragile city. This "single use" zoning that the US proliferated makes us really fragile to changes like working from home vs in-office work.

Another point is that cities are rather hostile for families. We create cities so they need to be fled as soon as people have kids. We have streets entirely of concrete and 1 and 2 bedroom apartments. If we want cities to be more resilient we need to rethink them. We need streets that have greenspace as a fundamental part of the infrastructure. We need permeable surfaces.

I went to Park am Gleisdreieck in Berlin and stayed in a multi-family unit right along the park. There were tons of families with kids playing in the park, people riding bikes for transportation along the park bike paths, adults playing ping pong on outdoor tables together. It was wonderful. It made me rethink what a city can look like.

Denver needs to take notes. We don't need a single use city and a light rail system that only goes into that city. We made an incredibly fragile city. We can build better cities.

mattcantstop··on It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
Agreed about the icons, but sweet mercy, that was a challenging read with the snowflakes falling in front of the text.
mattcantstop··on Koralm Railway
Interstate 70 in Colorado is very problematic. It is constantly backed up. Colorado needs to learn from this and get serious about rail for shipping and for human travel.
mattcantstop··on Show HN: Onlyrecipe 2.0 – I added all features HN requested – 4 years later
It's great to see other people working on this. It's a problem that needs solving, and you've solved it in a meaningful way. I have been building https://spoonme.kitchen/ for a couple of years now (but with a different focus) to help solve this problem and a few others that are meaningful to me.

One aspect that I've been really wrestling with is how can we make the end user experience of seeing a recipe better, while still providing meaningful income to the recipe creators who labor so much to share their stuff with us. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. That to me would be the very meaningful, positive change: that end users get a better experience, and creators get paid. That's been my overarching goal and motivation.

mattcantstop··on The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence
I have the opposite viewpoint, and I lean heavily progressive in most of my views.

Healthcare in the United States isn't a market, and that is why it is so terrible. For instance, there is no reasonable ability to compare prices of services. Prices are entirely hidden. Then there is the "with insurance" price vs cash prices.

Healthcare doesn't function as a market, to our detriment.

mattcantstop··on GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT
One of the main things that I want changed for conversation mode is I don't want it to be so sensitive to any background noise. ChatGPT can be reciting back and answer and someone across the room turns a page in a book and it stops dictating, and then, instead of finishing the previous answer, starts to answer the same question in a different way. ChatGPT is way too deferential for any noise during the conversation.
mattcantstop··on LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
I think this is true. It can super charge some bad takes.

But I've had the opposite experience. The average person is never going to read a scientific study, nor invest the time to find out the real details of any topic they are opinionated about other than simply typing a Youtube search and finding a video that is:

- Entertaining - The person has their same biases - the present the information in a short, consumable manner that doesn't require much investment.

In comparison to this dynamic LLMs are wonderful. They can reference scientific data. I have noticed that they do push back on bad takes (very gently) and steer people towards truth.

It's not that I think LLMs are perfect. They are not. But they are infinitely better than the average human at discovering truth.

mattcantstop··on Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
I pay about $90/month for a small company I own. I've been thinking about moving off Slack, but this is a good push over the edge. I am going to migrate over to once.com/campfire.
mattcantstop··on Grammarly acquires Superhuman
I think Superhuman's CEO in an interview said their product is specifically catered to people who are seeking inbox zero.

For those people this would be a great outcome. The question is should this be the goal of most people? Probably not. But most people are not their ideal customer. They explained their ideal customer in depth in an episode of the Acquired Podcast.

mattcantstop··on Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment
We can pause and acknowledge that life (and what that means) will change, while also acknowledging that for many it will be the easiest decision in the world for it to change.
mattcantstop··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2025)
ReSim | https://www.resim.ai/ | Application Engineer | HYBRID Mountain View, CA Preferred / REMOTE (US)*

ReSim is on a mission to revolutionize robotics development by building the ultimate virtual testing platform. We empower autonomy teams to scale simulation for their robots, helping them accelerate their progress and impact. We're looking for an Application Engineer to join our Professional Services team to help onboard and support our customers in integrating ReSim into their workflows. You'll also help develop the product across the stack to deliver customer requests.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives at the intersection of technical expertise and customer engagement. Our ideal candidate will have:

- A love for robotics or simulation

- Strong skills in Python and/or C++

- Experience with Docker, modern CI/CD systems, and Bazel

- Passion for creating intuitive APIs and working with customers

- For this hire we are specifically targeting a candidate who has experience at a product-focused robotics company

If you're interested, reach out to us at jobs [at] resim.ai with your resume and some examples of relevant experience.

*Note on location. While we have a presence in Mountain View much of our team is remote. We have a strong customer base in South Bay. A team member located in the Bay Area could be a strong fit.

mattcantstop··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2025)
ReSim | https://www.resim.ai/ | Application Engineer | HYBRID

Mountain View, CA Preferred / REMOTE (US)

ReSim is on a mission to revolutionize robotics development by building the ultimate virtual testing platform. We empower autonomy teams to scale simulation for their robots, helping them accelerate their progress and impact. We're looking for an Application Engineer to join our Professional Services team to help onboard and support our customers in integrating ReSim into their workflows. You'll work with some of the leading robotics companies in the world helping them move faster and make better robots. You'll also help develop the product across the stack to deliver customer requests.

This role is perfect for someone who thrives at the intersection of technical expertise and customer engagement. Our ideal candidate will have:

- A love for robotics or simulation.

- Strong skills in Python and/or C++

- Experience with Docker, modern CI/CD systems, and Bazel

- Passion for creating intuitive APIs and working with customers

If you're interested, you can read the job description (https://www.resim.tech/application-engineer) and apply at jobs [at] resim.ai with your resume and some examples of relevant experience.

mattcantstop··on Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass
I'd be cool to create a simple template that you could repeat for each post in video form:

- The plant - The location (sidewalk, park, etc) - Native vs non-native? - Seen as a weed or flower/desirable plant? - Who pollinates it.

I just subscribed.

mattcantstop··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2025)
Location: Denver, CO

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No (four kids in high school and middle school). Very willing to travel

Technologies: Version control, Swift, Ruby and other tools

Resume/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maduff/

Email: matthewlduff @ gmail com

Started as a software engineer and have built Professional Services and Customer Success orgs at companies like MX.com, GitHub, and LaunchDarkly. Have been building my own startup for 1.5 years (writing code, doing everything), but am looking for a full-time role again.

Happy to work at small startups looking for Customer Success or Professional Services team members. I started as a very early employee for my teams in previous roles, so I am not afraid of starting as an IC as we build things. Or even happy to sweep the floors. Whatever is needed for the company to be successful! Feel free to reach out.

mattcantstop··on DOOM CAPTCHA
Difficulty level: 1000/100

But I love it!

mattcantstop··on Matt Mullenweg Asks What Drama to Create in 2025, Community Reacts
Millions of people would. Because the vast majority of people have no idea about the drama and don't care about it. They are just trying to solve a business problem, and their friend says "use Wordpress" or the consultancy they are using tells them to use Wordpress.

People are hacker news are not a representation of society at large.

mattcantstop··on Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I fed ChatGPT the description and they said a name without such a negative connotation was "navigator." I think this is better. It also recommended "politician" as well. I think navigator is fitting. They let the structure of the system they find themselves in determine their path. The system navigates for them.
mattcantstop··on Show HN: Clean News - A cleaner curation of world news events
Are you changing the titles to remove anything emotional or misleading manually, through AI, or some other way?
mattcantstop··on Show HN: Clean News - A cleaner curation of world news events
I had the same perspective. This seemed more like a running "who was bombed today" news feed. Those events are important and meaningful, but it's not something I would come back to frequently as I have found it is not healthy for me to bombard myself with sad news which is outside of my sphere of influence.

I do like the simplicity and interface, however.

mattcantstop··on Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
Even the evidence listed (the retweeted tweet in the article) doesn't support the claim of the author to me. If you open source software and give it a license that permits commercial use on top of it, then you are okay with that use. If I was a cohort of a team that built an open sourced AI editor I would think they would WANT me to build on top of it. Otherwise, why permit that use? They may have a bad business model, where their business does not work if they open source their tech and other companies build competitors on top of it. But that's a questions for them and their decision to open source. But it doesn't seem shady to use open source software from another company that permits commercial use.
mattcantstop··on Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
There is a part in the Netflix culture doc where it talks about how sometimes people do bad things, and Netflix tries to not overcorrect by implementing burdensome policies on the company as a knee-jerk reaction to a single bad actor.

The conclusion (YC's brand has been tarnished because of the lower quality companies in their larger batches who do bad things) doesn't follow from the evidence of this ONE company doing something that people could view as a low integrity move.

This exact situation could have occurred even if they kept their acceptance rates, and cohorts, incredibly small. There can always be bad actors (not saying this company is a bad actor though). I think you wanted to share your conclusion, even if the available evidence didn't necessarily support your claim.

mattcantstop··on Facebook scraped every Australian adult user's public posts to train AI
I am very likely in the minority here, but I think AI SHOULD be trained on everything that is in the public sphere. I'd be disappointed if it wasn't trained on everything they had access to.

If it is trained on private information, then I would have issue with it.

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