Hacker News Reader

nicbouon RealPage rent-pricing case wraps with nearly $360M to renters

Berlin wants to do that to enforce rent control more effectively.

nicbouon Ask HN: Are you tired too in this AI era?

I had something nice going with allaboutberlin.com. It helped people and covered my bills. I spent most of my tine building helpful things.

Now I'm down three quarters of my traffic and my inbox is filled with LLM-generated outreach. I'm competing with AI trained on my work, and with slop websites generated with that AI.

The original research is still necessary, but it has to happen with a dwindling audience and a shrinking revenue. I have to worry a lot more about paying rent, so I have less time to contribute to society.

Worst of all, LLM noise has filled every crevice of my life. It's billboards, blogs, music, videos, social media. It has filled the world with spam and nobody is happy, but everyone's Christmas bonus depends on adding oil onto that fire.

I mourn the loss of our internet, our culture, my career and my business all at once. And for what? We're all worse off!

nicbouon Hunger beats tenure: Advice for junior engineers

I am still in touch with some college buddies. How hard you work seems disconnected from what results you get. Being good at networking, selling yourself and applying effort judiciously helps more.

nicbouon Ask HN: What are your career plans in the age of AI?

75% of my traffic, last I checked. It's affecting everyone putting out information on the internet.

That future is already happening. Many websites have shut down or gone private. More and more content requires an account to see.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/death-by-ai

nicbouon New iPad mini

That's why I buy Apple products now. This iPad still feels as good to use as when I bought it.

nicbouon Ask HN: What are your career plans in the age of AI?

I help people settle in Berlin. The guides on my website used to be a bible for immigrants.

So far LLMs have killed 75% of my traffic, but my income is still acceptable, so I'll keep going. If it gets worse, I don't know.

The information I share is as hard as ever to acquire. I still need to poll experts and my audience, but my audience is shrinking and I can't incentivize experts with as much business as I used to. All the spoils go to parasitic AI companies and slop sites.

Still, the work matters, and the job is fun. I'll keep doing it for as long as I can. In any case, my backup profession (coding) is also threatened by AI.

One thing I'm trying is building a community for immigrants. You still need humans, and I want to build their watering hole.

nicbouon Birdwatching rewires the brain and slows cognitive decline

That sounds a bit like "enrichment" for pets. We all go a little nutso without it.

My apartment has a great view on nature. I see the sunrises and the sunsets, swallows racing across the evening sky, a chestnut's whole cycle, and all that lives in my balcony garden.

I cannot overstate how much it does for my happiness. I love the morning routine of caring for my garden. I love to watch things grow and seasons change.

I think our caveman brains need this sort of thing.

nicbouon ChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support Problems

I am already feeling it.

I went from maybe 2-3 outreach enails a month to one a day. They're all LLM-generated.

I can imagine that the effect would be far more pronounced if I offered something more valuable than a mention on my website.

nicbouon New iPad mini

Mine is a notebook, a sketch book and a reading device. I read books and queued Instapaper articles, take meeting notes, and make digital art. I love that device to bits.

nicbouon The new iPad mini

I have the gen 6 mini for reading and notes. It'sthe least needy, most capable of my devices. I bring it everywhere.

I'm excited for the OLED display because it would make bedtime reading easier on the eyes. I'm also happy about the weight reduction.

Still, it's €749 vs €549 in 2021. I will use mine until it stops fulfilling its role, which might take a few more years.

nicbouon Mapping the Northern Sky

Measuring the angle of the north star in the sky was a fun trig refresher

nicbouon SIGSALY: Churchill's top secret hotline to the president

I reread it earlier this year. It's a very fun book.

nicbouon Ask HN: What's your plan if AI takes your job?

I help immigrants find their way with helpful guides. Now AI is killing traffic to my website, so the writing is on the wall.

I was a software engineer but AI made the job miserable according to friends.

I would like to work for Digital Service or CityLab Berlin. The job is cool, the people are cool and I think I'd be helpful there.

It would be significantly worse than my current occupation, but it would still be fun.

Plan C is to coast for a few years where life is cheap, and keep tackling whatever small problems I find interesting.

nicbouon Ask HN: Would you support a law banning filming people in public?

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/photography-laws-germany

It's already illegal in Germany and I love it.

nicbouon Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?

An appointment finder for the Berlin citizen's office. It looks for available appointments and broadcasts them to people via websockets. A frontend shows a calendar of available appointments and makes a sound when new slots are available.

Now the city got its act together and appointments are easy to find, but for a while it was very useful. I'm glad to say that this service is ready to be shut down.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/appointment-finder

nicbouon Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days

It's not allowed in the EU. Not without consent.

nicbouon Write Like It's 1866: LLMs Relearn Telegraphese

Isn't that the entire point of essays?

nicbouon Animated ASCII Art for Web Pages

Read and write a lot. Read from varied sources. Write every day, about different topics.

Look words up often, even when you think you know what they mean. Nowadays LLMs are really helpful dictionaries and reverse dictionaries too.

nicbouon Show HN: Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app

It's a really cool idea with lots of potential uses, and the extra features are also neat. No notes, well done!

nicbouon I'm the AGI that's wiping out humanity

I would argue that AI as a social phenomenon is one of those systems. I feel like we're all doing AI because our yearly bonus or investments require it. A web of incentives formed on its own and we are all slaves to it.

nicbouon Google ending ChromeOS support two years early

It probably reflects incentives within the company

nicbouon First Principles Thinking

First principles thinking often leads to treating human beings as spherical cows.

nicbouon 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us

And on top of that they'll have to deal with crumbling infrastructure, aging population and global warming. They've already had COVID. I hope they don't have a catastrophic AI bubble pop.

Poor kids.

nicbouon Ask HN: Why does it matter if no one reads your novel as long as the AIs do?

I write for humans.

nicbouon Ask HN: What do you expect from the next 5 years of AI?

The flood of LLM-generated content, code and communications might drown a lot of the things we love in noise. It will slip into every crevice of our existence, and people will adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Sure, it will make the bullshit part of our jobs more convenient, but for the most part it will just make the bullshitters a lot more prolific. I'm already feeling it.

nicbouon Winning the visa lottery

Because that's the word you're using and the people you're talking about, so it's what I'm addressing.

Economic migrants didn't have their lives saved. They were not welcomed to their host country as an act of charity. The conditional and transactional nature of their presence is made very clear to them.

nicbouon Don't Use AI to Write

I use it to write in German, because my German sucks.

I first write the thing myself, then feed it through Deepl Write to see how the AI would write it. It's been very helpful.

I write everything else myself. However I don't know how I feel about spending my time on Earth typing personal responses to AI-generated messages. Do those people deserve my time and energy?

nicbouon Winning the visa lottery

I didn't say that they were refugees

nicbouon Winning the visa lottery

I work with immigrants for a living. It's a wonderfully complex issue, but one that I rarely enjoy discussing because it either makes racist people go mask-off, or makes progressive people think you're a racist person going mask-off.

I think that the issue is less cultural and more socioeconomic. Being "other"ed your entire life sucks. Making it in another country with far more limited resources sucks. It's hard to ignore the toll it takes on the people I interact with.

nicbouon Winning the visa lottery

I also think that the main fear - at least where I live - is not job loss but national identity and crime. At least that's what the anti-immigration political messaging is about. I haven't seen the job loss argument in the decade I've lived here.

Facts are much lesd helpful here because half of the perceived problem is emotional.