Readit NewsI'm somewhat torn on this one.
As an amateur blogger, I would not like LLMs to "steal" my content, display the users the needed pieces they are looking for, while leaving me with zero visitors. The reason I write is to convey a particular message, which the meaning of gets lost, or worse communicated wrongly, due to LLMs.
As an online business owner, I do see both ChatGPT and Perplexity as referrers to my business, meaning that potential customers ask LLM a question/service recommendation, and LLM is directing them to my service, and I would not like to lose this vertical of organic customer acquisition.
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On a completely different note, medium should die as a platform, together with substack. The amount of intrusive popups, "install our app" bars, and paywalls is just insane. Bloggers, especially technically savvy ones, should be able to host their own blog.
This is one of the reasons I adore Rust. Creating custom types in Rust geel very native and effortless.
skwee357 commented on Ask HN: How do you digest fact that you are not successful by 40 · Posted by u/hubmusic
I don’t compare myself to others. Deleting ALL social media helps a lot.
I also try to live below my means, as I understand that you can always find what to spend on. So be grateful to have a “normal” comfortable life, and stop there.
skwee357 commented on Ask HN: I want to leave tech: what do I do? write.as/conjure-utopia/l... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
You don't need the "buy the house" part, which is actually bad advice now - renting is now half the cost of home ownership in many areas of the US.
But I strongly believe you're making this out to be much more difficult than it is if you are making decent (not "FAANG level") tech-type salaries. Where I live tech jobs generally pay at about double the amount of people in trades, for example. E.g. a mid-level software engineer is making at least 160-180k, while a trades person (plumber, etc.) with similar experience is making 80-90k.
So obviously if you can live at the level of these trades people, you can save up enough to be able to live without a salary for some time.
The problem is that most people just get used to their standard of living and find it hard to downsize. That's fine, but it's still very much a choice.
The problem with what you say is that you need to be in such environment. Not everyone pays good salaries. Europe is far behind US salaries. In US high salaries are concentrated around SF, which in turn means high cost of living, or subpar living conditions (I couldn’t imagine myself living with roommates in my 30s for example, and what do you do when having a relationship?)
And then comes the downsizing. Sure you can live only with necessities, but then question do you want to find yourself in mid thirties, or early forties, without any travel experiences, no relationship, living in your parents basement? I exaggerate a bit, but the math does not work out. You either live very frugally, or you use exploit geo arbitrage (low cost of living area, with a high paying remote job). There are no other shortcuts.
skwee357 commented on Ask HN: I want to leave tech: what do I do? write.as/conjure-utopia/l... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
This is pretty far out of reach for most people, unfathomable if you have debt and/or living paycheck to paycheck.
^ this.
Even if you don’t live paycheck to paycheck, the life style of owning a place AND living off your investments, is extremely hard to pull off.
You most likely need to be single (or couple both in tech), no kids, making FAANG salary, living frugally (no travel, no expenses outside of food, shelter and necessities). Or you need to use geo arbitrage, which again means probably no kids, while being able to secure a high paying remote job in the US.
I wish it was more affordable, but it’s not. Therefor advice like “buy a house and live off your investments” are equivalent to filling a winning lottery ticket.
I’m working on https://finbodhi.com — a double-entry personal finance tool where you own your data. It’s local-first, syncs across devices, and everything’s encrypted in transit.
It helps you track, understand, and plan your personal finances — with a proper accounting foundation.
It's interesting in many way. Using double-entry (it's a perspective shift), the technical challenges of building local-first app, UI/UX & visualizations, privacy and more.
This looks very interesting. Do you support double entry bookkeeping not avoid errors? Is there support for transactions with more than one currency?
Now, before you jump on me saying that AI is wrong, this is true. But at the same time, I no longer can be 100% sure that whatever SEO optimized website I land at provides accurate information. If I need solid facts, I usually double check AI with various other sources. For queries like "best keyboard for software engineers", I'd rather get a table with pros/cons from AI rather than landing on whatever affiliate related website is promoted on Google. LLM gives me a good starting point to either dig deeper into particular products, or query further to find more suggestions.
Same for coding. I used to Google "how to split a string in ruby" and land on flame war, or 19 years old, StackOverflow question. Now I can get an updated answer from whatever LLM you prefer with a reference to the official documentation. It works for simple queries, as well as code snippets.
Lastly, I use LLMs to plan trips or gift ideas. I'd just throw in my preferences, and let LLM build a rough plan, from which I can iterate further, or start doing my own research.