I love this model of software development, which I think of as "artisanal", as opposed to open-source or enterprise. A small team, maybe just one person, who invests deep effort into a product that does one thing very well.
Readit Newsd_burfoot commented on Show HN: Base, an SQLite database editor for macOS menial.co.uk/base/... · Posted by u/__bb
d_burfoot commented on Privately-Owned Rail Cars amtrak.com/privately-owne... · Posted by u/jasoncartwright
My wife loves the train (hates driving) and so this would be quite interesting to us. But I've heard too many Amtrak horror stories, like the one about how the train broke down about ten miles away from her destination, and they wouldn't let her get off, so she had to sit there for ten hours until they were able to fix it.
d_burfoot commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez
The problem with productivity apps is that one size does not fit all. Everyone has radically different goals, constraints, interests, and workflows. Many people would benefit from having a "living" app that is personalized to their tastes, and also adapts over time as the characteristics of your life change (e.g. having kids is probably going to change your approach to productivity!)
I recommend finding a framework within which to build your own apps, and then building your own suite of apps that have exactly the features you want (shameless plug, I built a platform that can serve as such a framework : WebWidgets.io. It is basically a way to hook up SQLite databases to JS objects in the browser, which allows wide liberty to build your own simple custom apps).
d_burfoot commented on Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn? · Posted by u/unsupp0rted
That’s good advice for a layman but most high earners can do much better if they care and are motivated. Most are neither though lol.
Mostly on the tax side. Some specific examples:
- after maxing out your 401k what should you do next? IRA? Mega backdoor roth? Something else?
- If you have kids, how to best save for future education expenses? Hint: consider 529 plan.
- HSA is technically the best tax advantaged account, most high earners don’t realize it and “waste” the HSA funds to reimburse typical medical bills. HSA has triple tax benefits: contributions are tax-free, growth is tax-free, and withdrawals are also tax-free after age 65 for any reason, not just medical expenses. So basically investing without any tax obligation. You can also withdraw tax free before 65, but for medical expenses only.
i could go on…investing is great, but reducing your tax obligation is an even more powerful technique if you want to grow your net worth.
#1 Rule of Investing: you can't beat the market, but you can beat the tax man
This is the kind of thing that could have been a decent AI startup - hire some education PhDs, make some deals with school systems, etc.
In the old days of desktop computing, a lot of projects were never started because if you got big enough, Microsoft would just implement the feature as part of Windows. In the more recent days of web computing, a lot of projects were never started, for the same reason, except Google or Facebook instead of Microsoft.
Looks like the AI provider companies are going to fill the same nefarious role in the era of AI computing.
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d_burfoot commented on Python classes aren’t always the best solution adamgrant.micro.blog/2025... · Posted by u/hidelooktropic
For people who think classes are terrible, can you explain how you would implement the functionality associated with a Pandas DataFrame, without using classes? Did the Pandas developers simply get it wrong when choosing how to build this?
https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.DataFram...
d_burfoot commented on All AI models might be the same blog.jxmo.io/p/there-is-o... · Posted by u/jxmorris12
For those who don't know about Plato's Theory of Forms, the remarkable empirical fact is that all humans learn roughly the same concepts representing words like "dog", "house", "person", "boat", and so on, even if those people grew up in different places and never had any overlap between their observational experience. You and I may never have observed the same dog, but we still agree on what a "dog" is.
This phenomenon appears to occur for LLM learning as well, though it is less remarkable due to the fact that LLMs likely have significant overlap in their training data.
I believe this is good news for Alignment, because, as Plato pointed out, one of the most important forms is the Form of the Good - a (theoretical) universal human ideal containing notions of justice, virtue, compassion, excellence, etc. If this Form truly exists, and LLMs can learn it, it may be possible to train them to pursue it (or refuse requests that are opposed to it).
The last couple of weeks I've been building 'Recivo', a very simple way to receive emails programmatically. There are plenty of API-based services that can be used to send emails, but receiving them is harder. My service exposes a simple REST endpoint + event webhook that makes it a 5 min setup to start receiving. Attachments are included as well.
The main use-cases I'm thinking of right now is triggering agents using email or a very simple document upload flow to any SaaS (just forward an email to the SaaS).
This is a good idea. I think email is poised to become a more influential user interface tool, due to the advent of LLMs.