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jen729w

7,115 karma · joined October 14, 2014

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jen729w··on I'm not convinced the AI bubble exists
I think we've already demonstrated that the vast majority of people don't care.
jen729w··on I'm not convinced the AI bubble exists
Right. So my worry – inasmuch that I worry for the state of the global economy – is that this doesn't generate valuations that match the current hype.

There's so much ad money to go around. It currently fuels Meta and Google. Let's say Anthropic and OpenAI enter the field and take a slice. That's a fine business, sure. But does it justify the state of the market?

jen729w··on I'm not convinced the AI bubble exists
Now tell them it costs $100/month and, eh, not so much.
jen729w··on Ask HN: How do you manage your AI agents' context across clients and projects?
…and your task manager and email and archives and physical papers and…
jen729w··on Ask HN: How do you manage your AI agents' context across clients and projects?
Use my Johnny.Decimal system. [0] (Disclosure: I'm Johnny.)

Every part of my life and business has a well-defined ID. This ID has:

- A defining entry in my index [1], which is an Obsidian vault.

- Therefore, also a Markdown note(s).

- A folder on disk.

I have a CLI [2] and agent skills [3] that help your LLM understand these relationships.

Then you just:

    jd 21.15    // or search by title
    claude
and now Claude has access to:

- All of your notes from your index. This is your shared memory: it's designed to be human-readable.

- All of its memory and transcripts from the fact that you launch it in the same folder whenever you do this piece of work. This is its internal memory.

- With this comes the ability to easily `--resume` past conversations and so on.

That's … it. Carefully-named Markdown files and folders. My numbers aren't a prerequisite – there's nothing magical about them – but they sure help.

You can do this all for free. It takes about half an hour to set up. My MCP server [4] adds some quality-of-life but is paid (and means I can buy lunch :).

> I’m exploring whether to build something

I really wouldn't. I get 10 emails a week from people who already are and I don't see the point. It's a solved problem.

[0]: https://johnnydecimal.com/

[1]: https://johnnydecimal.com/documentation/the-jdex

[2]: https://johnnydecimal.com/documentation/jd-cli

[3]: https://johnnydecimal.com/documentation/agent-skills

[4]: https://johnnydecimal.com/software/mcp-server

jen729w··on I struggle to believe that AI R&D is ingenious
I wasn't making a value judgement. I was being scientific.
jen729w··on I struggle to believe that AI R&D is ingenious
A proof is a proof though. It's either true or it isn't.
jen729w··on I struggle to believe that AI R&D is ingenious
> quite likely

Citation needed.

jen729w··on Japan's Jimi 'Mundane' Halloween Costumes of 2026
So who is it? Claude? Or someone they've farmed out their marketing to?

Either way they're pretty transparently mass generated. "Hi Johnny, we've been watching your {{latest YouTube video}} with interest and are impressed by how you {{summary of your latest blog post}}."

jen729w··on Japan's Jimi 'Mundane' Halloween Costumes of 2026
> Yes, a thousand times yes you can put your seat back you gentle soul.

Overjoyed that I understand this, allow me to explain it to those who don't.

Seats on the Shinkansen [0] are bolt-upright by default. You basically have to recline them a little bit to be even vaguely comfortable.

Every person, every time, asks the person in the seat behind them whether it's okay to recline their seat by 5°.

The seat pitch on the Shinkansen is approximately 1 metre. There's a lot of room.

[0]: My line, anyway – the E5 series cars that run the Hayabausa service.

jen729w··on Japan's Jimi 'Mundane' Halloween Costumes of 2026
Mine would be "dude who vibed a to-do app with Claude and thought he'd be rich then realised 20,000 other dudes had done exactly the same thing".

Source: these dudes email me at a rate of about 5/week asking me to spruik their app to my audience.

jen729w··on New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6
If you consider the transition from macOS 15 to 26+ 'small', I think you should see an optician.

Like GP, I despise the new design. I'll say the old design was pretty peak design. Windows looked like windows. Buttons like buttons. With accessibility tweaks (for transparency and borders) I could make it very, very usable.

This new thing is a crime against UI. Every icon now sits in a circle, and takes up % more room as a result. Because … it's pretty? It isn't pretty.

I upgraded my laptop thinking I was going to develop an app and that I'd need to be on the latest design. I ended up developing a TUI so I needn't have bothered. Every time I see my partner's laptop, still on Sequoia, I shed a little tear.

jen729w··on Ask HN: If the models are so good, why doesn't OpenAI just start 100 companies?
> including the ops

Citation needed.

jen729w··on Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash
Edited?! Wow.

I forgot about my other Airbnb experience. The place was mediocre, I rated it so. The guy called me and offered me money, just cold hard cash, to change my review. I refused.

jen729w··on Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash
Yes! Great point. Japan seems to be the only place where people actually rate sensibly.

Which, of course it is. There's a reason we're going back there, again, next week.

jen729w··on Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash
We stayed in one last week in Seoul, only because hotels are prohibitively expensive. (We book last minute.)

On leaving, the host offered us a discount on future bookings if we left a 5-star review. This 'beg for a 5-star' practice is common in every Asian business. We got it from a Hilton in Vietnam. (It's probably global. Our recent experience happens to be in Asia.)

In fairness, hotel ratings are the same. My SOP now is to ignore all 5-star ratings. Simply don't read them. Instead, sort by lowest and that gives you the true measure of a place.

Ratings are totally broken.

jen729w··on Show HN: Death Plan Switch, a self-hosted dead man's switch for solo devs
> the thinking is mine even where home page's words aren't entirely

I know that, because I saw your HN post.

A drive-by visitor doesn't. They see the AI copy, think 'slop', and keep going.

jen729w··on Show HN: Death Plan Switch, a self-hosted dead man's switch for solo devs
Hi Peter. This is advice I give to every AI product now, not just yours. Nothing personal.

It's fine to use AI to create the product – but please, for the love of god, write your own copy. When someone can't be bothered writing their own landing page, I assume they're just not that bothered about the product.

jen729w··on Making big downloads resumable in Firefox
A waste of resources?! Good lord.

I run Tailscale on all my devices, all the time. This particular VPS isn't exposed on any public ports. This is better for everything, and saves me – not a Linux sysadmin by trade – a ton of time.

As a result, I get the very convenient and fast `tailscale file cp` command for free. You're telling me that the minuscule number of extra cycles it takes over `scp` is a "waste of resources"? Have a look at yourself.

jen729w··on Making big downloads resumable in Firefox
OP here. Tailscale file copy seems much more resilient than the direct-from-site download.

Might not be faster, but I don't care. It always completes without me having to retry it.

jen729w··on Making big downloads resumable in Firefox
Because a VPS is in a datacentre and my machine is on some residential wifi. Internet is better in datacentres.
jen729w··on Threat of AI share crash puts world financial stability at risk, says IMF
GP here. I use AI all day. I love Claude.

But it's objectively true that if the market crashes tomorrow, lots of normal people lose money. This hits extra hard – which happened back in 2007/8 – if that's the day your life-long savings are converted from stocks to cash.

Are you arguing that because those pensioners can now get a frontier model cheaper than they can today that this is a net benefit?

jen729w··on Making big downloads resumable in Firefox
My process now for downloading giant things when I'm on poor wifi:

1. Start the operation in a browser, inspect it, copy as cURL, cancel it.

2. Login to VPS, paste cURL appending `-o <filename>`.

3. When finished, `tailscale file cp <filename> <machine>:`.

A bit of a faff, but 100% reliable.

jen729w··on Threat of AI share crash puts world financial stability at risk, says IMF
Weird that you're downvoted. It would suck very hard indeed if your pension portfolio matured the day after a crash.
jen729w··on Show HN: WallHop – 12ft.io is gone, so I built a replacement
Generating information isn't free. I do it for a living. Let me tell you, if I got paid nothing I'd stop real fast and go dig a hole.
jen729w··on Show HN: WallHop – 12ft.io is gone, so I built a replacement
Believe me, I know. I used to make my living selling a book. Guess how long that lasted.

So the answer to your question is one of these, depending on your personal viewpoint.

1. Obviously it's blatant theft.

2. "Information should be free."

(My glibness stems from the fact that this has surely been litigated to death by now.)

jen729w··on WallHop – 12ft.io is gone, so I built a replacement
Welcome to the Internet! You have so much to explore. Start here and just follow the links that interest you.

https://yahoo.com

;-)

jen729w··on Claude Haiku 5.5
Can I build an app against this? Do you commit to not changing it again tomorrow?
jen729w··on So you think you could be an electrician?
Which part of my backyard plumber story do you think will be automated?

Either the plumber is replaced, or they aren't. I contest that they aren't.

jen729w··on Agents don't need memory, they need documentation
Wikipedia?

What is it that you are doing with tomatoes today? Store that locally. Sounds like you're cooking. I put those here, then I can find them again really easily.

   10-19 Life admin/
    └── 12 Where I live & how I get around/
       └── 12.44 Meals & recipes
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