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bjpless

316 karma · joined September 19, 2011

https://www.loyaltyworks.xyz/app/profiles/j1knqpf6d01c
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bjpless··on Show HN: MCP server ONLY app for personal finances
Curious about preference stack:

A) Within their favorite LLM, data sharing with Plaid and the frontier lab.

B) An entirely self-hosted agent on their computer with open source LLM models + WhatsApp / SMS communication channels.

C) I don't care about conversational finance.

bjpless··on YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
I’m not raising a question about his rights or generosity.

He and other independent political pundits have large audiences and as a result generate valuable content for the platform.

If the game theory above plays out and cynical actors act cynically, it will ultimately hurt YT in the long term run and drive users to other platforms (I’d assume Twitter).

I think YT may be opening a can of worms for themselves.

bjpless··on YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
As a disclaimer, I’m not a Brand content consumer and I’m also not commenting on the validity of the claims.

I’m aware that he’s a popular populist and the slippery slope is obvious here, independent of the particulars of the specific case.

The playbook to silence a relatively loud political voice is now obvious from the YT response. It is a given that cynical actors on all sides will evolve to further exploit this strategy, especially so if accusers do not have to testify under oath.

YouTube, on a common sense basis, should have recognized that political reality today and tred more carefully — much more so than for a travel influencer, for example.

The long term game theory here, like brand boycotts, is hopefully that the exploitation of this strategy by all political players would lead to the strategy losing power due to general fatigue and whataboutisms.

bjpless··on Show HN: AI to help you online date better
Great question! Presently the AI is primarily used as a tool for our human experts and end users to generate ideas for prompt responses, captions, etc. It’s not meant to be entirely self deterministic but it’s quite useful practically speaking.
bjpless··on Ask HN: How would you share your legacy with future descendants?
Which of those options do you plan on using personally? :)
bjpless··on Ask HN: Could we make the Gmail Promotions tab more usable?
If others agree that the Promotions tab could be greatly improved, what are some theories as to why the Gmail team has maintained this version?
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Founder here, let me know if you'd like to chat about working together!
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
It’s really just a fraud concern in the short term if money is involved but definitely planning to change that
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
I love surfing and skiing so should be planning those too. See my email that I’ve included a bunch in this thread and I’ll add you to a “village”
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Ben@villagersapp.com, reach out!
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
I use vendors rather than storing myself. Tokenization only :)
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Appreciate the feedback! I’m personally less rules based as well aside from no parties, that’s probably strictly required by most lodging. Aside from that I agree.

Keep in mind these are all configurable by the trip planner in the UI

bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Yes for sure. Email me at ben@villagersapp.com and I’ll add you to an internal list of founders
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Thank you, that’s really generous of you. It’s a dead simple stack — which is helpful as a solo founder — of rails as an API and react. I make liberal use of other saasy services.

It’s more complex than Facebook events in that there are fintech (payment) mechanisms built in. I’d describe it as Kickstarter meets FB events but with a focus on travel UX requirements

bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Yes it is solo developed and I sincerely appreciate that!
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
That’s exactly my thinking as well :)
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Yes, I'm really focused on the commitment mechanism -- Kickstarter for group travel effectively.

I had thought that was already eliminated so thanks for pointing that out! I just pushed a fix to remove the AirBnb requirement.

As for more complex itineraries, certainly want to tackle that in the future...

bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
On a related note, I'm willing to personally act as a travel agent for a remote co-working trip among coworkers as a non-scaleable way to grow the platform initially and get user feedback. If you're interested in exploring in a fun 4-10 person trip with colleagues, email me at ben@villagersapp.com.
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
I completely understand this objection. Ultimately, this was a tough trade off that I made for reasons that I can elaborate on at a different point.

In most cases, the goal is to have an organizer create a quick video describing the trip to communicate enough info for you to then declare your preferences. Here is an example:

https://villagersapp.com/t/gkkfv

Either way, I just pushed a change to make the modal escapable.

bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
I'll just reiterate what I said below which is that, while I think you point of view has a lot of merit, there are compelling "Why Now" counterpoints that I think you're undervaluing. Only time will tell though!
bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Interesting, I'll check that out. It's presumably a javascript error that I can't reproduce but here is the direct link to plan a trip:

https://villagersapp.com/app/trips/new/edit

bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
This is a great and valid question along with a helpful citation. Here are some counterpoints:

1) I would argue that that perspective misses a number of travel consumer apps like AirBnB.

2) I've bootstrapped this business and, while I do think that it could eventually morph into a regularly engaging social network or a tool for professional trip leaders (who would invalidate the limited usage point as power users), a healthy lifestyle business outcome would be reasonably ok (if not desirable) by me personally. I don't believe that I could have bootstrapped this company in 2012 (the date of that article) given the startup ecosystem and, frankly, this is a passion project after having previously worked at and founded SaaS fintech companies.

3) I do expect group travel to grow a ton over the next few years if people continue to work remotely. The evidence of mass social alienation is clear and folks have previously unheard of flexibility to travel.

bjpless··on Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app
Any other locations / dates that I could propose that would interest folks?
bjpless··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2020)
Tremendous | Software Engineers and Sales | Full-Time | Remote

--------------------------------

We’re a Y Combinator backed payments company. Our mission is to help businesses and governments reward and incentivize behaviors by individuals around the world, easily and instantly, with digital payments.

We’ve grown 300% over the past year, we’re already very profitable, and we're on a financial footing that allows us to ride out economically uncertain times. Some of our notable enterprise clients include Spotify, Atlassian, Pinterest, and IBM.

See a demo of our product here: www.tremendous.com/demo

We're hiring for:

  • Software Engineers - https://cdn.tremendous.com/static/Fullstack-Engineer.pdf
  • Account Executives - https://cdn.tremendous.com/static/Account%20Executive.pdf
If you're looking for a ton of impact / leverage at a startup, while still preserving long term job stability during uncertain times, email jobs@tremendous.com.
bjpless··on Show HN: Send digital gift cards within email clients
Our support and sales teams have been using this email relay tool to nice effect. We send gifts to our prospects and users within Streak and Desk to demo the product or win back customers.
bjpless··on Show HN: Fantasy Sports Solved through Dynamic Programming
I'm just using (bad) third-party projections for now with the assumption that people who want to use my tool will be bringing their own projections to the table.

I also feel for Danilo...so many surgeries.

bjpless··on Show HN: Fantasy Sports Solved through Dynamic Programming
Just wanted to release it as quickly as possible. Referral codes coming soon.
bjpless··on Show HN: Fantasy Sports Solved through Dynamic Programming
Point of this tool is that you plug in your own projection values and it computes the best possible lineup.
bjpless··on Show HN: Fantasy Sports Solved through Dynamic Programming
Ha, that's awesome to hear. That last sentence is gold.
bjpless··on Show HN: Fantasy Sports Solved through Dynamic Programming
It's a side project for now. But, in theory, I'd like to continue building cool utilities for daily fantasy sports betting leagues. That market is growing quite quickly and the tech is pretty poor.
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