Once vendors are getting AI spam sent to 1,000 of them and their competitors, they will stop responding and find other sales channels. This won't be sustainable.
Unless they have agents reading those emails and responding ...
Readit Newsjacobr1 commented on Launch HN: AgentMail (YC S25) – An API that gives agents their own email inboxes · Posted by u/Haakam21
jacobr1 commented on Launch HN: AgentMail (YC S25) – An API that gives agents their own email inboxes · Posted by u/Haakam21
> The moat for SaaS is gone.
What does this even mean?
I could spend $1,000s on tokens asking an agent to build (some semblance of) Sentry, or New Relic, but why would I bother? I have real work to do in the near-term, and I'm happy to pay for services that help me do it.
All the hard work is always chasing down edge cases, scaling, operational issues and other things that don't show up the user-exposed features. And talking about features, the innovation in coming up with them, or iterating on making them work with real customer experience is a ton of value, even if copying the ideas that work later is much easier - which is why I generally prefer betting on an innovator with just of enough traction to show they can stick with it. The best category leaders both innovate and steal/copy/buy all the innovation they aren't producing in house to maintain their lead.
I can't remember last time I filled in a form and thought "man, I wish I didn't have to do this". And I live in Japan!
Most forms take 2-5 min and have the useful side effect of updating my mental state with important information about whatever I'm filling in a form for. If you want to replace that, the lowest barrier before it becomes useful is that someone else takes complete ownership of the task related to the form.
Business crave both data for analysis and checkboxes getting checked for compliance sake. If those don't align to the value of the work - then you have the classic of employees hating the "TPS Reports" they are forced to make. As an example, sales people are notorious for basically never updating CRMs and also they have incentives to skew the specifics anyway.
Having an intern is supposed to be about talent development. It's a way to simultaneously recruit, train, vet and build loyalty with future employees.
Using interns just as a source of cheap labour is exploiting interns!
Calling this "AI interns" is like saying "this is sub-par and neglects important aspects of your business".
> this is sub-par and neglects important aspects of your business
But that is exactly the right way to think about it. If you have an army of sub-par workers that aren't going to think deeply about their value to your business, but are really cheap (relative to human labor) - how do you make effective use of them? Thinking about AI agents as being high-competence and able to learn your intent is the wrong model at this point. Though they can be high-competence in very specific narrow niches.
jacobr1 commented on To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI passo.uno/letter-those-wh... · Posted by u/theletterf
The problem is that so many things have been monopolized or oligopolized by equally-mediocre actors so that quality ultimately no longer matters because it's not like people have any options.
You mention you've done work for public transit - well, if public transit documentation suddenly starts being terrible, will it lead to an immediate, noticeable drop in revenue? Doubt it. Firing the technical writer however has an immediate and quantifiable effect on the budget.
Apply the same for software (have you seen how bad tech is lately?) or basically any kind of vertical with a nontrivial barrier to entry where someone can't just say "this sucks and I'm gonna build a better one in a weekend".
Also consider that while the OP looks like a skilled, experienced individual, all too often the documentation is being written by someone with that context, but rather someone unskilled, and with read empathy. Quality is quite often very poor, to the point where as shitty as genai can be, it is still an improvement. Bad UX and writing outnumbers the good. The successes of big companies and the most well known government services are the exception.
> people are just more into paying for $10 / subscription fees, than they into financing stuff
I'm not so sure, seeing the explosion of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms.
The common thread is that people are bad and saving and delayed gratification. The easiest path to instant gratification wins more often than not.
I’m not even sure it does cost more. I could have a geforcenow subscription for like 8 years before it’s more expensive than building a similar spec gaming rig.
Depends on the service, and timeframes. For geforcenow, you also need to consider the upgrade cycle - how often would you need to upgrade to play a newer game? I'm not sure but probably at least once within that 8 years. Buying a new car, or almost new car, and driving it until it falls apart is a better financial option than leasing. But if you want a new car every year or two, leasing is more affordable - for that scenario. Also it depends on usage. My brother in law probably plays a video game once every other month. At that point, on demand pricing (or borrowing for me) is much better than purchase or consistent subscription. You need to run the numbers.
jacobr1 commented on The meek did inherit the Earth, at least among ants nytimes.com/2025/12/19/sc... · Posted by u/marojejian
So...Eugenics, then?
Already happening at the in vitro level, might be possible in vivo as well. Neither require the more abusive approaches from the first eugenics era.
The problem is not that it fails to be cheeky, but that "its funny" is depressing in a context where there was a live question of whether it's a sincere attempt at prediction.
When I see "yeah but it's funny" it feels like a retrofitted repair job, patching up a first pass mental impression that accepted it at face value and wants to preserve a kind of sense of psychological endorsement of the creative product.
Honestly it feels like what I, or many of my colleagues would do if given the assignment. Take the current front page, or a summary of the top tropes or recurring topics, revise them for 1 or 2 steps of technical progress and call it a day. It isn't assignment to predict the future, it is an assignment to predict HN, which is a narrower thing.
They're not objectively amazing. Friction is not inherently a bad thing when we have models telling humans that their ideas are flawless (unless asked to point out flaws). Great that it made you smile, but there's quite a few arguments that paint your optimism as dangerously naive.
Is anything objectively amazing? Seems like an inherently subjective quality to evaluate.