frabia

Maybe, I agree that Liquid Glass is not nice, but staying always in the realm of the “nice but safe” is also not so great imo. Time simply preserves the good stuff and forgets the bad. Same with flat UI that came with iOS7 (?) - it was not so nice initially, but eventually contributed to the overall aesthetic direction of the whole industry.

As you say, putting a random sequence of plausible-sounding words together is a trivial task - even a non-LLM algorithm can do it. No, I don't think humans are unique - they also absorb the ideas available to them and re-elaborate on them to produce novel ones.

An LLM might come up with a sequence of words that express a novel idea/thinking pattern, but so can I on the spot right now. The question, though, is: is that idea any good? In the case of humans, maybe the first idea is good, the second ok-ish, but inevitably they get duller.

Most people come up with very few novel (good) ideas in their lifetime. The question, then, is whether a model can, unlike humans, *repeatedly* generate new ideas, continuously.

My guess/assumption is that NO, a model might come up with SOME ideas that are somewhat original [1], mixing the existing sources available to it (similarly to how a human would do it, just with more sources and more efficiently), but it cannot continuously generate novel ideas.

If that's true, I think there will be a space for humans to be thinkers, even if models are super smart, as a different unique perspective and a different reconfiguration of previous ideas will be more unique than raw intelligence.

Please note: I wasn't refusing the notion that LLMs don't produce anything original, just noting some fallacy in your example about word generation. The jury is still out on whether AI models will own thinking in the future - or will simply be partners to humans - and I don't pretend to have the answer.

[1] More should be said about what makes an idea original (even if derived from others), as opposed to a transposition of an existing concept. I admit I'm not a mathematician or anywhere near an expert on the topic, but from what I've read, the latest AI math achievements seem to belong to the latter case.

yes! I do think that too - and hope I'm (we're) right.

Not sure what this is supposed to prove. Yes it can generate new words - that’s the application of established creative patterns to come up with plausible-sounding words. A different thing is to come up with a novel idea, which (in this case) is about creating a new pattern itself.

It is based on existing sources, but doesn’t mean that we produce the same output. There was a paper here in HN a couple of months back on how LMs are good in the deductive and inductive thinking processes, but not the abductive. So if that’s (and stays) true, humans will have a place in the job market after all. Time will tell.

Nice app, clear presentation. Congrats on the launch.

However, I’m quite surprised this to appear on the top page of HN. I’ll be upfront that I’m asking this with a bit of envy, but: What is special about this app compared to the hundreds of to-do apps being released every day?

Agree, though that’s the current trend of UI design. As you expressed eloquently, the purpose is exactly that: to try to project some values previously attributed by these visuals (eg slow craft, effort) to today’s products.

Looks interesting! Side question: how do you plan to make money out of it?

I recently tried the X API to fetch the latest tweets about a given topic, and I spent ~1$ in one go just to retrieve them and some additional info about the users. This is ridiculously expensive.

So I can only be happy that such service exists (though if there was a better support for an API would be 10x better)

ts is superset of js, so I wouldn't say you avoid it. It's like saying you run to avoid walking.

On the web, I get that CSS is not straightforward, and HTML is not the coolest technology, but by using the canvas you also lose a lot stuff that you need to rebuild from scratch: accessibility and interactivity, responsiveness, etc. So the only argument that I'd buy is that it has lighter & more performant UIs, which I get it might, given that the canvas uses the GPU, but is it worth the effort? Like, is it THAT much better?

I get the argument of native apps though. I guess if you want to build one interface and serve it both as a web and native app, it could make sense.

Edit: thanks for the link - I'll look it up. Also I didn't mean to sound too annoying. I'm starting to see UIs built in Rust but I'm still struggling to see the hype.

what's the benefit of UIs in the canvas with Rust, as opposed to HTML/CSS/JS?

Isn't using the auth of Claude subscription on another UI (that is not Anthropic's) not allowed and causing risk of ban?

I don't know. I mean, "never argue" is not a good maxim, imo.

But sure, ultimately your role is to provide your opinion as an expert, but you should step aside if your manager decides otherwise after hearing you. I think it's also correct: you are responsible for the decisions you make (which is true for you and your manager too).

So I think the author should have softened the discussion rather than going for a full confrontation. The boss surely didn't react rationally, or didn't surface their reasoning properly.

But being able to argue with your superiors (and peers) "the right way" is one of the most important skills to have in the workplace imo.

Great article! One question: you talk about market size, but you don’t address the existing competition in the space. In my opinion, two equally sized markets can have very different levels of competitive pressure.

Is that something you factor into your playbook? Or do you simply not find it relevant to judge whether to enter a certain space?

Super interesting! How accurate is the local model to transcribe audio compared to other cloud services? E.g. Google Meet, Otter, Granola, etc.

so does Photoshop and thousand other visual editing tools. Hardly a reason to claim it to be a copy. Also "slopfork" seems harsh considering it seems limited, but well designed imo.

I recently started looking into hydroponics gardening. You can start very easily with a Kratky system and some herbs, and then take it a step at the time.

I’m quite at the beginning myself, but I like it so far! It’s a nice mix of science and craft.

yeah good point. I think this is to be seen though. Right now AI tokens, especially via OpenAI/Anthropic subscriptions, are heavily subsidized. If token cost between the API and subscriptions should even out though, then I think Cursor might well be back in the race.

The premise of Zed is quite appealing, but I'm not sure I'm ready to switch due to the missing extension ecosystem of VSC. For example, at the moment I'm using the Playwright and Vite ones to quickly run and debug tests.

Unfortunately, I think Cursor is making progressively more difficult to use other AI provider via extension, mostly due to the fact that they are reserving the secondary sidebar for their own chat interface. This makes it super unpractical to use the Codex and Claude extension, as now they all need to share the primary sidebar. (Before it was not optimal, but it was at least possible.)

As many have pointed out, the cost of token via Cursor is prohibitive compared to having a CC or Codex subscription, so I think the new update brings little to current users, but reduces Cursor's usability.

I think Cursor should go in the direction of embracing other provider's extensions and go for a more integrated and customizable IDE, rather than a one-solution-fits-all kind of an approach. Today I opened VSC again after a log time.

Can you share what approach you’re taking for this? I’ve tried engaging in a similar way but struggled to strike a balance between helping for the sake of helping (no return for me), and asking research-focused questions, with people not caring too much about to answer

Tangential to this: what are the most reliable benchmarks for LLM in coding these days?

Lot of people sell similar components (or give them for free), but what I would really be interested in is a course how to make them (properly, e.g. with a11y and performance considerations). Especially in your case, since you are basically selling somebody else's work (the original design), which is a shitty thing to do. You could monetise this in a much more ethical way.

Location: Berlin

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Maybe

Technologies: React, Typescript, Nextjs, TailwindCSS, Redux, HTML/CSS, Figma, UI Design, UX Design, Product Design, UI/UX Design

Résumé/CV: https://francesco-bianchi.com/resume

Email: [email protected]

I am a Design Engineer looking to join a cool team/product. I am passionate about building apps, websites, and other software that merge form and function with elegance and simplicity. Prior to engineering, I worked as a Product Designer for 7 years, designing delightful consumer apps (N26), news and media websites (Edenspiekermann), complex B2B platforms (HiPeople), and more.

Some links:

Portfolio: https://francesco-bianchi.com

Latest project: https://quartzite.ai (bootstrapped app, I did everything alone from design to development)

This is ridiculous (for Firebase). There have been countless episodes like this one happening, as well as the amount of people asking for a hard-block when the spending reaches a certain limit (currently there's only a notification that is triggered, which is anyway lagged behind the actual execution). Making a mistake can happen to anyone (especially for a platform that targets itself to new devs) and makes me seriously consider leaving the platform.

To Firebase: either you must automatically condone such mistakes or implement the requested feature.

To anybody else: Does Supabase or other platforms offer this?

I like and believe too the notion that writing IS thinking and that cultivating this skill helps you form clearer thoughts. One question about this: I'm trying to engage more and more in writing for this reason, but I seem often not to know what to write about. For example, as PG has a lot of experience when it comes to startups, I feel I don't have as much knowledge to share, or if I have some opinion, I don't feel as confident in sharing it. Any tips on how to cultivate writing as an exercise in thinking in this situation?