amoorthy

A little off-topic but I have been thinking about how writing changes in the age of AI.

I wonder if similar to how many engineers now write 90% or maybe 99% of code with AI and primarily weigh in on the plan/design, will writers too primarily weigh in only on the content brief/plan and then the actual post is seldom read in full (once you have faith that the AI is not making up citations). Because the audience of most writing is now bots prose and style are no longer relevant.

:) Agreed, I am highly disturbed by the number of people I see driving while looking at their phone.

If you're driving 75 mph and the speed limit is 45mph that's reckless.

Assuming the speed limit is 65 and you're driving at 75 that's quite normal but on a 1 hour journey you've saved ~9 minutes. Maybe worthwhile if you're going to the hospital but mostly not worth the stress and increased risk to others.

Also speeding is a major cause of accidents, even before cellphones were pervasive. https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta.... Also found another report dating back to the 90s that says the same thing but it's a pdf.

Solid advice. On the point about surgery, seems obvious but surgeons are inclined to operate. They aren't inclined to tell you the surgery is unnecessary. They always say it's routine and they've done it many times before. All true but surgery can be very tough on your body as I saw with my late father. Complications happen more than anyone will admit.

The older the get the more I appreciate speed limits as they are. Driving fast barely changes your arrival time on most trips and increases risk to you and others dramatically. I'm still guilty of speeding sometimes but on the whole I find driving the speed limits, or thereabouts, more relaxing and enjoyable (I do not hang out in the fast lane).

Yes I saw 3Blue1Brown say the same thing in his tutorial on how neural nets worked where he built a simple model to recognize a particular letter. Good reminder.

Makes sense what you say. Sounds like you've thought a lot about this. If you write a post somewhere I bet others on HN and beyond would fancy a discussion as it's very much a topical issue now.

That's a very good point. I wonder if AI within a product sometimes is substantially better than AI outside the product for a particular task. Because AI in the product is configured thoughtfully to do a great job at that task. So if quality is a requirement then AI in the product may still have merit?

This is the crux of the issue. I think for infrequent use cases (question/answer) an MCP with tool-calls to some product makes sense.

But for frequent use cases - something you do daily or weekly perhaps - then a native interface still has merit. i.e. I don't think AI subsumes the product in this case.

Our local wine shop in Burlingame, CA has a very knowledgeable 65 yr old proprietor (30 yrs running this store) who told me that Napa wines are definitely overpriced by 3x.

Because I'm not as particular about region he regularly introduces me to wines from other parts of the world that taste great at a much lower cost.

Sorry to hear. I've found that the best reason for me stopping drinking was how it destroyed the next day or two. And once you have kids you simply can't afford that as it sucks to not be able to play with them on weekends.

Maybe try lower alcohol beer. Your tolerance will drop after a while so you'll still get a buzz but takes a bit more time and much harder to get yourself in a bad place.

(if you want a fun distraction check out this SNL skit that your comment reminded me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUPSTQSGb50)

I made this change. Thank you very much!

Thank you so much! I rebuilt the index and it's much better. And good to know about command-2 option; that's helpful. Thank you again!

I struggle daily with Finder's search. It cannot find files in my Downloads folder even if I type the exact name. Do I need to rebuild some index or some other setting?

Indeed! I bought a 13 mini off ebay about 18 months ago I think. Great phone but battery is poor... can't last a full day even as I don't use video. Sigh, great size.

Side-bar: I once hired Ed for PR for my startup. He was very difficult to work with, not even willing to share how he pitched our startup to publications because he considered the pitch his IP. So it was hard to know what was resonating or not.

I share this less to take a shot at Ed but more so that you all know to ask this if you ever hire a PR person.

I just bought a Boost conversion kit from the UK and am excited to install it in a couple weeks. If anyone has installed this kit would appreciate a comment on the experience.

(I'm in the US and have been unimpressed with the kits available here. The Boost one looks compact and well designed).

Agree so much with this! In domains I know well I get much better results then someone who doesn't know the domain because I know where to challenge the LLM. LLMs need to be pushed because otherwise their answers are typically average.

Sorry, didn't see this reply till now. I think a lot of PMs are judged just on shipping software, not necessarily commercial success, or even just production adoption.

Mostly agree and would add that product managers should be responsible for the commercial success of their products. That means spending more time deciding what market to be in, how to differentiate, how to price, how to drive adoption.

For the most part these are not strengths for devs and power users.

Two years ago, my then 81-yr old father, who had Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, was recommended to get back surgery to relieve chronic and debilitating pain. The neurosurgeon said it's routine surgery and he's done it on people much older. We ultimately decided against it and found that a simple wedge pillow to sleep on relieved his pain. A bloody $50 pillow. And this came from a recommendation from a physiotherapist.

What's particularly galling is the recovery from back surgery would've taken at least 6-9 months of rehab and my father's PSP was already sapping his motor skills and yet the surgeon was pushing ahead.

Even with my mom I've had to intervene on several occasions against the doctor's utterly idiotic ideas. Thank goodness for AI to at least make us conversant to ask the right questions of these doctors.

With both my startups I made some mistakes when naming the company. Sharing 3 lessons so hopefully can save you time.

Ah ok; sorry, didn't realize that.

Immigrants to any country are a unique slice of the population because they chose to migrate for a better life. Hence immigrants in most countries tend to do well economically (sometimes after a generation). Uncertain that cultural differences are the reason for different economic outcomes you observe.

Wow, thanks for taking the time to share all this data with such clear points. Much appreciated, especially the personal anecdote to make all this be less academic.

"a pricing model based on seats, a product roadmap built around features rather than outcomes [is outdated]"

I disagree with this.

On pricing, I get that agents and tokens can scale in a way that's unrelated to # of users. But for much SaaS software, AI remains helpful to a human and the human remains the receiver of value. Seat-based pricing is easy to understand and you can always layer in token/agent costs thresholds.

On features vs. outcomes, the latter is hard to define and measure in many industries. In marketing SaaS, which I know well, you can't often tell what outcome to expect. You have to try a lot of ideas and some will hit. No way a SaaS vendor can guarantee that.

Ha! Same for me: 286 in 9th grade (1990) for about $2k CAD. 286 was a bad call though as I think it was harder to expand compared with 386. I remember 1MB RAM but really only 640k usable. Had to change some BIOS settings to get to about ~700 kB?

This. I feel this all the time. I love 3Blue1Brown's videos and when I watch them I feel like I really get a concept. But I don't retain it as well as I do things I learned in school.

It's possible my brain is not as elastic now in my 40s. Or maybe there's no substitute for doing something yourself (practice problems) and that's the missing part.

Ah thank you! Sharing with my nephew who's there right now!