Hacker News Reader

pboutroson Compass: AI (RAG+customer interviews) that answers difficult software questions

If you're reading this... yes, I posted about this a second time, because I did a horrible job of describing it the first time.

pboutroson Ask HN: How do you create a moat if your product is based on a LLM API?

You either need: - distribution: have some community effect, where the more users you have, the more valuable the product is (and the harder it is to replicate) - a proprietary dataset: so that it can't be replicated - a cost model others can't afford to replicate - something incredibly catchy (luck!)

pboutroson Compass: AI (RAG+customer interviews) that answers difficult software questions

I figure that I should (finally) post about the thing that we built / launched. Compass is an AI product trained to give you specific answers to challenging questions about software vendors.

Marketing, Product, and Ops teams use Compass to get critical information they can't find online—like:

- Where customers struggle with their product (and their competitors')

- What terms you should redline in SaaS contracts

- How software vendors price and how to talk them down

- and… any other question they need answers to.

How it works: We trained Compass on InsightDB, our repository of >20,000 firsthand experiences from people who recently purchased and implemented software. (Basically, we have a small army of contractors doing in-depth interviews with people who have bought software). We interview our customers about their experiences using software—you're joining a community of people helping each other.

For any information not already in InsightDB, Compass Pro subscribers get the answer within a 2-week AnswerSLA. (Compass Scale subscribers get answers in just 1 week).

pboutroson Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

Importantly... the behavior is self-reported (by dog owners), who almost certainly have some bias about their dogs. I know I do. :)

pboutroson Regrets of the Dying (2010)

Haha. Assuming this isn't sarcastic—I would assume that (1) sentiments on the last day are probably similar to many of the days before it, and (2) you should weight the wisdom of those days higher than days early in life, because they have more experience.

If that was sarcastic... you got me.

pboutroson Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

Nobody in these threads is saying that housing them is the silver bullet. But shelter is part of the foundation of a human's hierarchy of needs, and being anything but single-minded about people's right to shelter distracts from helping them obtain it.

pboutroson Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.

_What if they want to sleep on the street?_ Let's start by sheltering as many people as we can, and when our problem becomes "too many empty beds", then we can move on to that problem.

_Where do we build them?_ I bet there are choices we can make that house 100+ people for every 1 person who is mildly inconvenienced.

_Are there barriers to living in these dorms?_ No.

pboutroson The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

Yeah, that was fantastic

pboutroson ServiceNow acquires Lightstep

I think you're right -- if only because it's probably the most viable path to growth.

If your value prop is 'we're stable and you can trust us', and your buyers are 'large enterprises that don't like to take risks', your biggest impediment if you have a great product is that you aren't part of a company like ServiceNow.

What's the saying? "The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation."

Even harder when you need enterprise proof-points...

pboutroson Israel’s lucrative and secretive cybersurveillance industry

I think blackmailing someone in the closet is almost always wrong -- I'm sure there's some contrived edge case that could be thought of, but as a whole, it's never okay.

Just because most / all intelligence agencies do something doesn't mean it's okay. It's unambiguously wrong.

pboutroson Twitter acquires Revue

This is a really smart acquisition for Twitter to make. I'm subscribed to a number of substacks (and Patreons) that I only discovered through creators on Twitter.

Job #1 for twitter should be making it easy to subscribe to Revue newsletters from within Twitter. Please do not put the team that rolled out Fleets in charge of Job #1 ;)

pboutroson IBM is splitting itself into two public companies

My read is that they're spinning off the professional services wing.

pboutroson Ask HN: How to learn sales?

I never thought I'd do sales. For B2B, read: - The Challenger Sale - Value Based Fees - Pitch Anything

pboutroson Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

Think of how much worse tight connections are when your connection leaves earlier than it was supposed to!

pboutroson Interpol issues 'red notice' for Carlos Ghosn's arrest

Red notice is different from an arrest warrant.

pboutroson Philosophy as a public service

Good question. I'm certain it isn't, but also, you can't give all things for all people.

These thought experiments are useful, interesting, and appealing to certain segments of people. There should be different ways to transmit the same message to others, instead of looking for 'one-size-fits-all'.

pboutroson Are Passenger Jet Engines Hitting Their Technical Limits?

Honestly, even if it was 10% less efficient, I'd be on board with that just to spectate. I'd also invest heavily in barf-bag stocks and neck pillows.

pboutroson It's raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains

Ebola is really small too!

More seriously, to your point about historical growth + pollution -- (1) this stuff is cumulative and (2) the world is polluting more now than it ever has.

Here's an article on how small pieces of plastic is unhealthy: https://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/mag-features/2016...

pboutroson Does Employment-Based Insurance Make US Medical Care Unfair and Inefficient?

Ah, the rare exception to Betteridge's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...)!

pboutroson It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

To add to this -- even when it was a secret, they were still protesting the idea of providing those incentives.

pboutroson Huge Cavity in Antarctic Glacier Signals Rapid Decay

They're noting that the way that West Antartica is laid out encourages a powerful feedback loop with negative effects. The more it melts, the more it gets into warmer water, which accelerates the melting.

pboutroson Amazon is becoming more powerful than we realize

I agree with the back of the napkin math -- but remember, it isn't 1.3% added to the city's population, it's 1.3% added to the part of the city's population that is looking to move, mostly in the past decade, with a focus (in Amazon's case) on living near downtown. It's proportionally much larger, and they're coming in at the higher end of the income strata.

Add that again, but for Microsoft, and then the ecosystem of SIs / ISVs / startups around it, and suddenly you have Seattle's housing crisis.

pboutroson Amazon is becoming more powerful than we realize

Amazon isn't solely responsible for Seattle's poor city planning (rather, Seattle, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Tacoma, etc.), but they're certainly responsible for ~50% of the influx of high-paid workers, which has increased housing demand, and that has certainly impacted Seattle.

pboutroson Changes to U.S. federal authorities relating to production and marketing of hemp

What? The FDA openly publishes stuff. From long before GitHub was around.

Here's a good overview of how they go about making sure that approved drugs are GRASE (Generally Recognized As Safe and Effective): https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm14353...

pboutroson Ask HN: How to shadow a CEO?

Offer all you want, but remember that if you're doing something, you aren't shadowing. Offer to take notes in meetings for them -- that's probably the most useful thing you could do.

Also, not to doubt your skills, but someone who doesn't have experience in the space "offering to help on sales calls" probably would be a net detriment.

Have a great time!

pboutroson Changes to U.S. federal authorities relating to production and marketing of hemp

What do you think about Thalidomide then? http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/them...

pboutroson How Alexa knows “peanut butter” is one shopping-list item, not two

immediately think of Fezzik (sp.?) in The Princess Bride

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/022/158/Pea...

pboutroson Inside the haywire world of Beirut’s electricity brokers

Also, @Wired:

>Raham, like other operators, complains about repair costs; under-the-table operating fees—essentially, bribes—to the local municipalities in which they operate; the unpaid bills by some of the country's Syrian and Egyptian refugees who are using an estimated additional 486 megawatts; and the increasing cost of diesel fuel to run the generators.

I think you mean Palestinian?

pboutroson Inside the haywire world of Beirut’s electricity brokers

I grew up in a village 20 minutes outside of Beirut. We had 3 different power sources: (1) the 'baladiye' (local municipality), (2) the 'dawle' (regional government), and (3) the diesel generator by our house.

Between those 3, we averaged 8-20 hours of electricity per day, but that was out in the mountains. "UPS" to me still means "Uninterrupted Power Supply" -- a battery box connected to my desktop so that I could save my files and shut down quickly when the power went out.

People who lived on the same power grid as hospitals were typically the luckiest -- they had (almost entirely) uninterrupted power. I have no idea how you're supposed to have a modern economy these days without reliable internet, let alone access to cheap communications (which Lebanon also doesn't have).

pboutroson Motherhood in the Age of Fear

Totally agreed on your first point. The article actually explicitly addresses the last thing you said.

>Dr. Sarnecka, the cognitive scientist, has an answer to this. Her study found that subjects were far less judgmental of fathers. When participants were told a father had left his child for a few minutes to run into work, they estimated the level of risk to the child as about equal to when he left because of circumstances beyond his control. > >I love the way this finding makes plain something we all know but aren’t supposed to say: A father who is distracted by his interests and obligations in the adult world is being, well, a father; a mother who does the same is failing her children.