alex_c

I joke that I'm on the "Claude Code workout plan" now.

Standing desk, while it's working I do a couple squats or pushups or just wander around the house to stretch my legs. Much more enjoyable than sitting at my desk, hands on keyboard, all day long. And taking my eyes off the screen also makes it easier to think about the next thing.

Moving around does help, but even so, the mental fatigue is real!

Ironically, this brings us one step closer to believing the simulation hypothesis might be true... In which case, maybe there is no real world anyway ;)

>OpenAI has 800,000,000 weekly users but only 20,000,000 are paying while 780,000,000 are free riding.

By itself, this doesn't tell us much.

The more interesting metric would be token use comparison across free users, paid users, API use, and Azure/Bedrock.

I'm not sure if these numbers are available anywhere. It's very possible B2B use could be a much bigger market than direct B2C (and the free users are currently providing value in terms of training data).

Normally that would be a fair point (and maybe it was valid in 2022).

But given the US approach to foreign policy in 2025, one could argue that the list of countries that “have a contentious relationship with the US” (or, maybe more accurately, the other way around) is a lot longer and less clear-cut today than it was a few years ago.

Do you guys not have phones?

Disappointed this link has nothing to do with Dwarf Fortress.

Except you do still have to think about time, no matter what… Libraries will help with the really messy details, but even the high level requirements have a lot of pitfalls.

“Simple” example that anyone who’s ever worked on a scheduling application will probably be familiar with:

“Get a list with all of today’s events.”

Well, whose “today” (timezone) are we talking about? Server, client, setting in the user account? Or none of the above, and actually timezone at the physical location of the event, if there is one?

And what does “today” mean, anyway? Truncate the date? 00:00-23:59? Business hours?

And what does “today’s event” even mean? Events can cross midnight… Does an event need to start today? End today? Both? Can events span multiple days?

The fun never ends!

I don't know anything about Cord beyond this article, but my team has worked on many projects over the years where we had to add chat / commenting / notifications functionality.

I can see this being a tough market.

One - it's a crowded field, with many solutions in each of those three categories. I don't think we've actually come across Cord while evaluating solutions, which just shows how noisy it is.

Two - I struggle seeing "chat / commenting / notifications" as a unified category. Every project we've worked on had unique requirements for each of these (whether justified or not...) so every implementation ended up being different.

It's definitely a pain to roll out these features from scratch, and we always preferred using something off-the-shelf where possible.

But by the time you finish evaluating options, pick one, implement and customize it, deal with its limitations and bugs - plus projecting several years of usage costs, and uncertainty dealing with an outside vendor - I can easily see how the balance might tip to doing it in-house in many cases.

Not trying to armchair quarterback - I know how hard startups are, and respect to the Cord team for being in the trenches! Just sharing my experience.

>What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude? There are cultural norms which we all have to obey in a workplace.

Yes, it is a cultural norm. It varies from culture to culture.

There are lots of countries / cultures where "neutral" customer service - say, at a restaurant - is perfectly fine. Others have a baseline expectation for "friendly" service. To the latter, the former might come across as rude...

For public health decisions I agree, but I'm not making those decisions.

For private health decisions (should my family go to a splash pad or not) the average rate, or chance of infection from one visit relative to other activities, would be more relevant.

Still gross though!

OK, this is incredibly gross, and I don't want to downplay it.

But it's worth pointing out this is over 25 years of data, or around 400 recorded cases/year.

The functionality looks very very cool. But the privacy policy raises an eyebrow - am I overreacting?

Usage Information. To help us understand how you use our Services and to help us improve them, we automatically receive information about your interactions with our Services, like the pages or other content you view, the searches you conduct, and the dates and times of your visits.

Desktop Activity on our Services. In order to provide the Services, we need to collect recordings of your desktop activity while using our Services, which may include audio and video screen recordings, your cookies, photos, local storage, search history, advertising interactions, and keystrokes.

Information from Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies. We and our third-party partners collect information using cookies, pixel tags, SDKs, or other tracking technologies. Our third-party partners, such as analytics partners, may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across different services.

[...]

How We Disclose the Information We Collect

Affiliates.We may disclose any information we receive to any current or future affiliates for any of the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

Vendors and Service Providers. We may disclose any information we receive to vendors and service providers retained in connection with the provision of our Services.

This comment lists most of the questions I would ask. Couldn't agree more. Only advice I would add for the OP:

Check if your contract with the vendor includes any business continuity clauses. What happens to their solution, their code, and your data if they go out of business or get acquired (by someone else)?

One relatively common option is to have them put their code in escrow, and get access to it if certain events happen. You can probably negotiate this into your contract if you have enough leverage.

If their software is critical to your business, and you feel they are stagnant and underfunded, there may be some risk here you can address today - check with your lawyers.

(also, just noticed the username I'm replying to... hi Teren!)

As CEO / owner of a small business... god I hope so, where do I sign up!

The article lists a couple examples of “virtual” CEOs. Disappointing not to see any kind of critical thought or analysis on what that actually means in practice, beyond a pretty transparent PR gimmick to get headlines for those companies.

BlockBear on iOS works well enough.

“We are the universe experiencing itself”… so technically, yes?

I am fascinated by this - how wildly different experiences can be in different pockets of the industry.

The only way I can see 400k+ salaries is if your requirements are a very restrictive Venn diagram of:

* Geographical location (assuming in person, Bay Area / SV?)

* FAANG experience (is it an actual requirement?)

* Seniority (does not necessarily translate to ability... but it does translate to higher asking salary!)

* Niche technical or industry skills

* Golang experience (which wouldn't explain 400k+ by itself, but may restrict the candidate pool further)

If you're seeing $200/hr, that is high but not unreasonable for a good freelancer and smaller engagements. $400k for a 1 year full time freelance contract is pushing it. $400k/year for a salary position seems borderline crazy to me!

I just downloaded the app and thoroughly enjoyed playing the first random game I tried - “Where’s Madeleine”:

https://downpour.games/~holly/where-s-madeleine

I really love this. It feels like a throwback to a much simpler time, and manages to capture some of that “early internet” magic!

To make it more explicit, the term comes from “castle moat” - a form of defense that makes it more difficult for others to attack your castle (or in this context, more difficult to compete with your product/company).

Fair point, but on the other hand I wonder how much stuff is reduced or reused - which are supposed to come before recycling - if residents feel the real cost of disposing of all this stuff.

Genuinely baffled at the business strategy of taking a relatively low cost commodity product, and attempting to turn it into a higher-cost (in the long term) subscription.

Like, I get it in the spreadsheet sense that more money and recurring revenue is good for HP. But how exactly is this supposed to play out in the marketplace?

Are there any examples of other companies successfully executing a similar strategy?

I felt like the PDF format must’ve been newer than the old dialup times, but it was released in 1993… TIL!

The incredible part for me is that technical exploits can now be written in plain English - really a blurry line between this and social engineering. What a time to be alive!

>We weigh the severity of each type of problem to create a predicted reliability score for each vehicle, from 1 to 100.

It bothers me to see a 1 to 100 scale for this - what does the number actually mean in practice? Comparing a score of 80 and a score of 20, does that mean the lower score is likely to need 4x as many trips to the mechanic? 4x as much spent on repairs in a year?

In other words - how big is the gap between first and last place in real-world terms? Presenting the scores this way suggests a huge difference, is that actually the case?

Either way, surprised to see Mini near the top and Mercedes-Benz all the way at the bottom!

“There is no reasoning, no truth, no falsehood, no lies” etc is as close as it gets to the actual definition of “bullshit” used here.

I agree with you about anthropomorphizing terms like “hallucinating” and “lies”, which imply belief, intent, or knowledge in a human sense.

“Bullshit”, as used here, is a perfect term to describe LLM output specifically because it indicates that none of those terms and concepts apply.

Or roughly 2 millimeters of rail per person :)

Very cool! I was briefly toying with something similar just last week.

Main challenge I see is character consistency. I really like the way you set up the prompts, but even so:

Outfit - a simple black sleeveless gi with white pants, a black belt tied around his waist

In two consecutive panels, the output swaps the colors (first panel gets it right, second panel has white gi, black pants).

Curious how you'll tackle this challenge!

Linked elsewhere in this thread:

https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/popular-physicspr...

I understand (at an undergrad level) superimposing light waves. But this blows my mind:

At the same time, Ferenc Krausz and his research group in Austria were working on a technique that could select a single pulse – like a carriage being uncoupled from a train and switched to another track. The pulse they succeeded in isolating lasted 650 attoseconds

I agree, I assume the manufacturers aren’t out there writing code to detect, categorize and store sexual acts happening in their cars, and then selling that data to third parties.

But the fact that we’re even discussing this is ridiculous.

Would be a lot more refreshing if Flexport gave some compensation to those affected. If not, the only real difference from a corporate blog post is in style of communication but not in substance.