Posts

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Which class of business model is most resilient to build in the AI era?

Ask HN: Which class of business model is most resilient to build in the AI era? 2 by chatmasta | 2 comments on Hacker News. If you were to start a company today, what type of business model would you choose? Most new businesses have some form of AI in them, and this makes some sense during a gold rush, but it’s also a crapshoot. And the rate of change is so insanely fast and unpredictable that it’s becoming difficult to read the market with any confidence beyond three months. Even if you hit traction, there’s no guarantee your moat won’t evaporate. And it’s cheap for everyone to build now. Personally I think the smartest business to start right now would be an “online-to-offline” model that bridges digital and physical world - think DoorDash, Uber, etc… if you hit traction with that kind of business then at least you have a legitimate moat that AI can’t drain overnight.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How many of you juggle multiple agent sessions at the same time?

Ask HN: How many of you juggle multiple agent sessions at the same time? 2 by top_rooster | 0 comments on Hacker News. I hear a lot about the future of software engineering work being an engineer sitting with tons of sessions open and multitasking on many jira tickets all at once. I am relatively junior but I feel like I see more people working on one ticket at a time, with maybe 2 sessions open. Curious how many people are juggling 6+ agents and do many jira tickets and orchestrating all these sessions.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Phished Microsoft account, recovery useless

Ask HN: Phished Microsoft account, recovery useless 3 by tgmatt | 0 comments on Hacker News. So my little brother (child) managed to fall for a phishing scam and got his Microsoft / Minecraft account stolen by some scumbag, and the recovery process has been denied by Microsoft. We provided previous passwords, address where it had been used, last 4 digits of a card used to make purchases on it, all to no avail. He is even part of the Microsoft Family I set up, with his mother as the owner. The password and recovery email have of course been changed, so we currently have no recourse to get the account back. Does anyone know any solutions to this, or a contact at Microsoft that we can get assistance from? This seems utterly outrageous that an account of a child that is part of a family account can have his account stolen, and the family owner can't recover the account. How is that a thing?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why do tools like customer.io abandon self-serve after their Series A?

Ask HN: Why do tools like customer.io abandon self-serve after their Series A? 2 by alessandroetc | 0 comments on Hacker News. Why can startups never hold true to the principles that they started with? When I first discovered customer.io I was the most excited person ever. I had finally found an email marketing system that felt designed for the data-savvy marketer. With a good analytics plan you could create amazing workflows. Building, editing, and previewing emails felt straightforward and intuitive. Signing up was easy and there was no need to talk to anyone. In two weeks the whole system was fully operational. Pricing wasn't cheap, but felt fair. I didn't feel locked into a long term contract and could scale pricing based on true usage of the product. I was so stoked about them that I'd bring it up regularly with co-workers and give demos for how we set up our system. THEN IT HAPPENED... I don't know if it was their Series A or a change in leadership, but everyth...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What business would you build if you couldn't use the internet?

Ask HN: What business would you build if you couldn't use the internet? 3 by spking | 2 comments on Hacker News. Not an apocalypse scenario. The internet still exists, but you can't use it. No website, no online ads, no e-commerce, no SaaS, no remote work. You have your current skills, savings, and city.

New ask Hacker News story: I write my own Markdown

I write my own Markdown 2 by KenPainter | 0 comments on Hacker News. In the context of side projects, I've come to these rules for code and text: 1a) Code gets minimal review so long as I've architected the solution, built around the correct data structures (I've heard the code writes itself if the data structure is correct), and have specified the shape of the tests. 1b) Tests I review to check for overfitting, cheats, etc. 2) Comments in code can be chock-full of LLM-isms. Don't care. 3) But the Markdown files, which may be read by a person or an LLM, those must be heavily redacted, edited, and put into a human voice. The simple reason is that LLM's, machines built to generate text, are incapable of presenting a linear flow of relevant facts without sidebars, tangents, irrelevancies, duplication, gaps, well-known style fails like overuse of stock words and phrases, layers of historical cruft, over-explanations, and qualitative fluff. In other words, they can...