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marcusestes

687 karma · joined March 16, 2009

Product Guy, co-founder at https://vibes.diy/
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marcusestes··on Claude for Creative Work
I've been experimenting with an unofficial Ableton MCP (https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp) for a few weeks now. If you mess around with music and have an Ableton license, you should try this. It's fun.
marcusestes··on Building a CLI for All of Cloudflare
Making a good experience for AI agents also makes a good experience for the humans that are tasked with the management of their agents.
marcusestes··on Tech people keep falling for the same scam
This category of complaint is useless until it is unfolded to contain better economic reasoning.

In the case of a VC-subsidized service like Uber, the subsidization is utilized by the company until a a monopolistic or network effect takes hold and allows for price increases.

LLM economics are very different. If the tokens are being subsidized now, they must stay subsidized until some form of monopoly, network effect, or pure R&D advantage is achieved.

In the case of LLMs, the open weight models are nipping at the heels of the proprietary models, and this may be a fundamental condition. Perhaps subsidizing tokens enhances increases engagement, and thus, equity value of the company training the proprietary models, and they reinvest this value back into the energy costs needed to train them. Perhaps this dynamic gives proprietary models the performance distance they need in order to increase their margins.

Hasn't happened yet. It's not clear that it will happen.

Next time I read this take, I want to see eight to ten more paragraphs of analysis before it feels like a contribution to the discourse.

marcusestes··on Margin Call
It affects everyone, because the aggressive revenue cut prevents entire categories of apps and services from being published to the app store. An app store with a 5-10% cut would be an app store with a much richer choice of apps.
marcusestes··on Margin Call
That's too much margin. They're trading net profits for user happiness and it's hurting their brand more than they understand. The app store cartel must fall.
marcusestes··on Exe.dev
Great answer, thanks for following up with your reasoning.
marcusestes··on How Lewis Carroll computed determinants (2023)
“Drop the ‘how.’ It’s cleaner.”
marcusestes··on CRDTs: Convergence without coordination
Fireproof implements a CRDT and implements E2E. https://use-fireproof.com/docs/welcome/
marcusestes··on Claude Skills
Agreed, but I think it's actually simple.

Plugins include: * Commands * MCPs * Subagents * Now, Skills

Marketplaces aggregate plugins.

marcusestes··on Why haven't local-first apps become popular?
Your holy grail is probably Fireproof: https://fireproof.storage/

Open source, uses object storage without a web server dependency, syncs, and has great DX.

marcusestes··on AI is propping up the US economy
Never totally discount _deflationary_ scenarios.
marcusestes··on Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches
Appreciate this. But.

Do whatever you want. That’s an option too.

Make a dumb thing, take your hands off the wheel, have fun. It’s your computer.

marcusestes··on Dithering in Colour
Cool project. Sad README update: https://git.approximate.life/fadecandy/file/README.md.html
marcusestes··on AI is blurring the line between PMs and engineers?
Absolutely agree with this observation. And I think it’s a great outcome.

The vibe coding Reddit (http://reddit.com/r/vibecoding) already contains the full spectrum of “first time trying to code” to “just rolled my own custom GPT to optimize this.”

marcusestes··on Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life
[IQ distribution chart meme]

* Just use Apple Notes

* No! You can't just use Apple Notes. You need a full ontological graph structure based on an open standard!

* Just use Apple Notes

marcusestes··on DeepSeek releases Janus Pro, a text-to-image generator [pdf]
lol, that's a nasty combo
marcusestes··on DeepSeek releases Janus Pro, a text-to-image generator [pdf]
This is why Satya was posting about Jevan's Paradox at 10pm last night. (https://x.com/satyanadella/status/1883753899255046301)

Decreasing resource cost of intelligence should increase consumption of intelligence. That would be the bull case for Nvidia.

If you believe there's a hard limit on how much intelligence society wishes to consume, that's a bear case.

marcusestes··on Doomsday Book (2006) [pdf]
Came here to say the same thing. It’s a chilling font choice for a document like this.
marcusestes··on Building a Local-First AI Agent in Minutes Using Model Context Protocol
Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) standardizes how AI apps connect to private data sources, making it easier to build agent-like systems. This walkthrough shows how to quickly wire up an MCP server with Fireproof to manage a to-do list through natural language commands, demonstrating how local state and AI models can cleanly integrate.
marcusestes··on Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes
You did a no-SQL, you did a serverless, you did a micro-services. This makes it abundantly clear you do not understand the nature of your architectural patterns and the multiplicity of your offenses.
marcusestes··on Show HN: Fireproof – local-first database with Git-like encrypted sync
Yeah, that seems like an ideal application for Fireproof. I just built a RAG application for cannabis retail data and we could have benefited from some of the realtime support.
marcusestes··on Hamburger Business Review
I promise you don't have to actually care about the financial earnings of the fast food industry to find this podcast dedicated to business case studies of McDonald's totally captivating.

Business journalists usually stay at arms length from the industries they cover. This guy actually applied for a job at Mickey D's and reports from the front line. (Back of house too.)

This show is weirdly compelling. McDonald's is the key to understanding America.

marcusestes··on ChatGPT Search
I like it. It's clean, fast, and the results seem solid. Google search has become so bloated with sponsored results that I've been hoping for a tool that could provide better results than DDG or Bing.

I'm going to use this as my daily driver for a few weeks.

The contemporary web is basically an epiphenomenon of Google, and they've failed to defend it. I hope OpenAI puts a huge dent in their market share.

marcusestes··on Meta Quest 3
Terrible marketing website. I tried and failed to find improvements over Quest 2.
marcusestes··on Unity’s new “per-install” pricing enrages the game development community
The outrage is warranted. Two things about this are poorly designed:

1) Charing for installs vs sales. Because installs are potentially a multiple of sales (and thus, revenue), this will make it extremely difficult to build accounting models for in advance of launch.

2) For the thousands and thousands of devs that decided to invest in learning Unity (vs Unreal or otherwise), many of them did so with the understanding that the business model would always offer a royalty free tier. This was asserted by the CEO! They've since raised (arguably) way too much private equity capital and now have to put the screws on their customer base.

While Unity has been slowly losing its focus (indie / mobile), Unreal has been executing better and better. If you're invested in Unity, it's time to strongly consider a switch.

marcusestes··on Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society
He wasn’t asked to sign a statement that he was anti-racist. He was asked to sign a statement explaining how the academic work submitted to be presented “advanced… anti-racism goals.”

He’s quite right that not every academic paper need directly concern itself with the very specific set of ideologies contained within contemporary anti-rascist texts.

marcusestes··on The end of the manual transmission is near?
Disagree. Because the utility is seldom fully utilized in an urban environment, they are nearly pure fashion. They serve as a signaling mechanism the same way that a pair of Gucci loafers do, just for a different culture.
marcusestes··on On the link between great thinking and obsessive walking
That must absolutely suck. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
marcusestes··on Regulators should treat stablecoins like banks
Regulating stablecoins like banks would absolutely have to involve reform of the OCC, whose willingness to actually issue new banking charters has slowed to a near halt in recent years.

https://wp-vip.law.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2...

Many fintechs would be more willing to submit to banking regulation if they felt there was a sane and cost effective path to, you know, actually becoming a bank.

marcusestes··on To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe
You say thoughtless, immediate, and animalistic as if it’s a bad thing;)

Sometimes it’s exactly the right strategy for decision making and almost always for creativity and play.

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