remyp

I don’t know anything about this particular company, but in general companies do this so they can practice first-degree price discrimination [0].

In other words, they can’t charge a big company 100x for SSO if that company sees what small self-serve companies are paying.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-are-dif...

We hate it and are more and more powerless to change it every day. The parties are entrenched and swing districts are becoming increasingly rare. Those competitive districts that remain are flooded with unlimited campaign funds from big business and plutocrats, thanks to Citizens United.

This is so much worse now that crossovers are the default car in the US. I seem to be the last person in America driving a car that isn't a tank and have never understood why everyone loves those massive machines so much.

I guess so, but it seems to me it would be far more efficient to use already-above-ground materials (there are loads of them floating in the ocean!) and leave the oil in the ground.

Build it and they will come is a perfectly great strategy if you can build it quickly and start showing it to customers.

Completely ignoring customers while you "build it and build it and build it and polish it and polish it some more and get to 100% test coverage and make sure the UX is good enough for for your dog to use and then polish some more" is the trap.

In other words: ship it when it barely works and don't improve it until a customer tells you to improve it.

I'm attempting to solve this cold start problem by pooling money with other operators to buy an existing business. We're currently closing on our first acquisition and plan to do more if the experiment goes well[0].

Please feel free to reach out (contact in profile) if you're curious about the approach, I'm happy to answer any questions.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

I went with Reolink, but not the WiFi ones. The completely offline version has no privacy concerns, no cloud sync, no subscription. It just records to an SD card. They're great!

Not a co-op, but similar: I'm working on an owner-operated SaaS incubator[0]. A few of us are pooling our own money to buy, operate, and grow a small SaaS company together. We're currently in the diligence phase.

It's an experiment and could fail spectacularly. But if it's successful then we'll finally own our own success and build wealth for ourselves, not VC or PE funds.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

I haven't tried any of these products, but I do have a senior dog with very severe separation anxiety. She barks and destroys stuff the minute I step out the door until the minute I come back. I could keep her from destroying stuff with a crate, but the neighbors would still throw a fit about the barking.

Effectively, this means that I have to hire a dog sitter every time I leave the house without her, just like an infant. If dog tv could fix this problem for me it would create an enormous amount of economic value.

I've noticed this too. "...two small tweaks" is just a variation on the "one weird trick" you see in chumboxes[0]. I guess this sort of enshittification was inevitable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbox

I’m a native English speaker and I think this is an easier jump if you know other Romance languages. In Spanish and Portuguese “woman” and “wife” are often the same word, “mujer” and “mulher” respectively.

I think you're right. Desensitization has to be a big factor.

I'm certain that I just _like_ text, but I've also noticed recently that I miss very large attention-grabbing print (eg. "SALE" or "FREE WIDGETS JUST GIVE US YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS") as well. I think my brain has started flagging it as misleading noise along with the rest of the detritus.

Over the years I've noticed something unusual about myself: I don't even see these icons. My brain goes directly to the text. This applies to all visual material, but is most evident in printed advertising.

Apparently other people notice the hot girl and the puppy and the fried chicken sandwich first. Meanwhile, I've already read all the fine print.

No idea why I'm like this.

I attempted a startup to fix meeting culture a few years back. Selling the product was nearly impossible. We got some nibbles and a couple bites, but it eventually became clear that the vast majority of companies just don't care about the problem. They'll tell you it's a problem (because it is) but nobody wants to write a check to fix it.

Humans are lazy and bad at preventing long-term problems. We need to be reminded frequently, otherwise we get complacent and take naps instead of saving our species.

My guess is the friction is there to discourage scammers and indie developers are just collateral damage.

Lately I've talked to so many people who are in a similar situation. Whether laid off or feeling stuck in the 9-5 grind, seasoned operators seem disillusioned with traditional employment in our industry.

I've heard this so often that I'm starting an incubator to bring these folks together to buy, operate, and grow existing profitable software businesses. No need to fumble around validating ideas or finding the first few customers, just focus on building and growing.

It's very early days, but I've put together a few thoughts[0] and am collecting feedback on the concept. Please feel free to reach out, my contact info is in my profile.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

Gleaning information isn't the goal; whittling down deluge of applicants is. For the company, candidate time is free and manager time is massively expensive. The AI tools are cheaper than hiring more HR staff, so companies buy them lest they be haunted by the ghost of Milton Friedman.

Anybody who has been on the hiring side post-GPT knows why these AI tools are getting built: people and/or their bots are blind-applying to every job everywhere regardless of their skillset. The last mid-level Python dev job I posted had 300 applicants in the first hour, with 1/4 of them being from acupuncturists and restaurant servers who have never written a line of code. Sure, they're easy to screen out, but there are thousands to sift through.

Having said that, I don't like AI interview tools and will not be using them. I do understand why others do, though.

I’m not afraid of the world turning to ash. My rational brain isn’t afraid; it knows people didn’t care and have already forgotten.

I’m afraid of the much louder part of my brain that’s going to spend every quiet moment over the next 3 days replaying and re-living the embarrassing encounter.

That's an awfully big Raspberry Pi kit you've made there. /s

Seriously, though, this is amazing work. Well done!

People said this about AOL for a long time, too.

I could be misunderstanding, but this sounds like it would be a wash sale, which would prevent the seller from claiming the loss on their taxes.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsale.asp

This happens when customer support spends too much time on password resets. As soon as someone in CS says "we need to hire another person, too many password resets" you get magic links. Bad number go down, good number go up.

It's really easy for us nerds to write off how confusing, cumbersome, and frustrating passwords are for most people.

Maybe I’m being pedantic, but isn’t a database ultimately a bunch of files on disk? Unless you’re using a pure in-memory DB?

Am I the only one that gets an icky feeling when I see things like “I am so tired of all this political stuff, I want to filter it out”?

All the political news you don’t like is a symptom of the toxic society we’ve built. Maybe we should be making new social networks that bring people together fix the root problem, not ignore it because it’s harshing the vibe.

I can’t speak to the public system. My visa requires me to carry private insurance, so I have only used the private system.

It’s a breath of fresh air. I’ve had to wait a week or two here and there for exams and tests, sure. My preferred hospital system has a great app where I can book doctor appointments (€15) and see results as soon as they’re available. The system knows what my copay is and I pay it on my way home. That’s the end of it; there are no inscrutable bills in the mail months later for hundreds or thousands.

Here’s an example: due to family history, my doctor recommended an MRI. When she saw my horrified face she told me not to worry. I booked it, got a text from my insurance company a few days later with the approval, and had the exam a week after that. The results were available in the app soon after, including the raw images (not that I have the training to interpret them).

My copay for the MRI was €50. I pay €80/mo for the best insurance available. I’ve never had a claim denial and have never interacted with my insurance company.

To Portugal. If you have enough assets to retire in the US then you probably qualify for the passive income visa.

It’s not all smooth sailing, though. The immigration agency here (AIMA) currently has 300,000 cases in the queue. It’s so difficult to get an appointment that people are making hundreds of calls per day, standing in queues for hours only to not be seen, and filing lawsuits.

Most people here make about €1200/mo and there’s a severe housing crisis that I have contributed to with my presence. The influx of people like me with vastly higher purchasing power is creating resentment: the far-right party quadrupled (5% -> 20%) their seats in parliament by running against immigration.

Having said that, I do love it here. I’ve been considering blogging about my experience since there’s a dearth of clear-eyed information from real people who moved to Portugal and aren’t selling something.

Anyhow, I’m happy to share more info and resources with anyone who wants to learn more. Please feel free to reach out - my contact info is in my profile.

I did. Healthcare was a big part of that decision. My older siblings have been through hell both medically and financially because of the US healthcare system.

I decided to learn from their experiences and GTFO while I could. I miss my family and friends dearly, but it’s a massive relief (and privilege) to be able to get the care I need and not worry about whether the cost is going to bankrupt me.

I live in Lisbon. Over 80% of housing units in the historic Alfama neighborhood are now vacation rentals. This is the most historically Portuguese neighborhood in the capital. It was the only neighborhood to survive the earthquake in 1755. Fado was born there.

Yes, it's a failure of government policy, but I don't think it's hyperbole to say that AirBnB and its ilk destroyed that community. That is, assuming you define "community" as a group of people and not a group of buildings.

I shared some stats here [0] from a front page Show HN. The data is a handful of years old, though.

[0] https://jeremyphelps.com/blog/from-idea-to-revenue-in-5-work...