DoingSomeThings

Maybe you've done this yourself. I'm honestly jealous if solving customer support was as easy as your describe.

In my case, I've spent the past 12 months running implementations at multiple companies. I've engaged directly with smart engineering teams to assist. It was not that easy.

What you outlined might work for a simple ecom business. It probably does 95% of the job for a simple case where you're delivering information. But it will fail the second it needs to take action or deliver personalized information based on client's account data.

That leads to the exact issue people here complain about... an LLM that doesn't actually answer the question, can't solve the problem, and is worse than talking to a human

"Paying Fin $250k flat does nothing since it isn't going to actually know how to solve problems. The real challenge is the knowledge and context engineering and Fin doesn't help there"

You misunderstand the model. Fin does not have flat fee. They charge exclusively for resolutions. That's the entire value prop.

Correct that knowledge and context engineering are the key. Fin DOES help here. They have an entire backend suite to help you build out areas where Fin is failing. It shows you questions it couldn't resolve, looks at the answers your human team gave, and suggests updates to help articles to

You're correct this could all be build by a skilled engineer, but that's not the point. It's built for non-techincal users to use and implement. A person who rose through the support ranks and shows some technical competency can learn the system without any software knowledge.

"The 3 common issues used to be solved by a manual with an FAQ page, or just you know, actually intuitive and usable software and hardware."

Having led customer support, this grossly misunderstands how people interact. People don't read. It's as simple as that. You can write something as clear as day in a FAQ, and they don't want to put in the effort. ~50% of the inbounds I receive are fully written out in plain language in an FAQ.

LLMs are perfect for this scenario. It puts the answer in clear english and will endlessly re-word the answer when clients followup.

This is disappointing. I've worked closely with Intercom for the past few years. I've run Fin implementations at multiple companies. I've found their product team incredibly strong & the product to be customer friendly. Salesforce... not so much.

imo - Fin's AI chat is the best on the backend of empowering teams to self-serve & integrate with Helpdesk. They don't require consultants.

I really hope they don't lose all of that in this acquisition.

I was looking for a discussion on this book.

Was a fascinating look into how different college experiences can be, how insular the venture ecosystem seems, and the gross efforts powerful people make to keep that power. I’d love to know how true to life the undergrad->tech power pipeline is.

I’ve never lived in CA, worked for a unicorn or big tech. Didn’t go to an Ivy. I took the route of state school to startups in second tier markets. I’d never heard of VC until a few years into career. Hard to fathom how different the Stanford experience is, as described.

I walked away from the book feeling jaded. It makes everything about career and company success feel dirty in a manner I’ve never experienced first hand.

Dave Matthews Band similarly cultivates the fan recordings.

https://antsmarching.org/ forum has hundreds, maybe thousands of show recordings. Often multiple for each night. They make their own official Soundboard releases that fans still purchase, but their stewardship of fan audio capture is commendable.

A few personal examples from my 400 book history:

Reader Summary: You are a walking existential crisis who oscillates between trying to save your soul with 13th-century Catholic theology and escaping reality via magic-system spreadsheets. Your reading list is essentially a debate between a Trappist monk and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and somehow, they're both currently losing to a talking cat in a death dungeon.

Information Diet: Your media consumption suggests a high-low split. You balance dense, slow-burn philosophy (Josef Pieper) with high-octane, 'popcorn' entertainment (Dungeon Crawler Carl), intentionally using fiction as an escape from heavy systemic analysis.

Life Arc: Your life trajectory appears to be a journey from 'Enchanted Orthodoxy' to 'Humanistic Meaning. You moved from preparing for the priesthood/ministry to a deconstruction of faith, eventually landing in a space of 'Conscious Leadership' and secular contemplative practice.

Unexpected favorite read of the year: Dungeon Crawler Carl. It’s popcorn fiction, but

Personal Growth: “15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership”. The encouragement to “feel all your feelings” is insanely difficult for me, but has sent me on a multi-month life arc to be more present to my body sensations.

Related: If you log your books in Goodreads, I built this web app to recommend future books based on reading history and reviews. Was fun for me and may resonate

https://goodreads-analyst.vercel.app/

This is a frustrating article. To pick one example:

"The most damning aspect is not their exploitation of loopholes or their willingness to combine dangerous drug cocktails or even their reliance on unvetted Chinese suppliers..."

"unvetted" is doing a lot of work here. There's no evidence provided for this claim of working with shady sources and doing no diligence on the products they are selling. I know that to be false from first-hand connections in the telehealth space.

Hims works with 503B pharmacies. They are FDA inspected. They run batch testing on their source material and require strict compliance. All safe, legal, vetted pathways.

It's bizarre to me that the author is linking Novo Nordisk newswire press releases as sources of truth but is unwilling to to do basic research on how Hims operates. NN is hardly a faultless player here. They're selling this medicine for $1k+ per month!

Separately -- Algorithmic care is fine because most decisions are algorithmic. It's no different than what you receive from the 5-minute dr visit in person.

In a perfect world we'd have primary care doctors to coordinate care, direct you to the perfect pharmacy for each medicine you need, etc. In our real world, convenience and access are a good things. The shift from "patient" to DTC "client" is a net win for the public.

I felt an immediate, physical relief when I hit the credits screen.

Fantastic landing page!

Related thought - Is there a good way to search for projects like this? I know there are hundreds of these passion projects that never show up in google.

Ex) This year I want to get better at playing piano. Reddit and google bring up a few consistent big name links. I'd love to support a well-produced course by a creator like this, but have no idea how to find it.

The video game example resonates. I realized recently that I load up walkthroughs by default. Before I’ve even turned the game on, I’m already following someone else’s ideas of best practice.

I think it comes from a misplaced belief about saving time and optimizing for “best” solutions. Taking a less optimal path is scary, even in a game with 0 real world consequences. I’ll consider that next time.

CICO is the mechanical answer. The question OP is getting at is "why" they naturally eat less. The poster is saying "I eat until I'm full and don't gain weight". For other people, they eat until they're full and gain weight.

Personally, my "satiated" level is very low. When trying to gain weight while weightlifting, it was difficult to eat the amount of calories needed. I know others who can easily eat twice as much as me in a sitting and not feel full. Something different in happening in our bodies to signal "stop".

I love this idea. My high school our english program had us write letters to ourself 10 years in the future. Such a joyous surprise when that teacher actually sent the letters 10 years later.

I wonder though - How is this different than journaling? Doesn't a written record from the past you can refer back to in the future accomplish the same goal?

Corporate ownership rings true. Especially land marked off for future development. You'll likely need to jump a fence, but no one is watching once you're inside.

Private land I'm more concerned about simply due to firearm ownership & laws surrounding it. I'm sure many citizens would welcome respectably sharing. There's just no way to know that in advance and the downside risk feels higher than I'm willing to accept.

In USA National Parks & National Forest are open for exploration. I'm incredibly grateful for the park service maintaining them.

Unfortunately, their locations are not evenly distributed. They are highly concentrated in the Western portion of the country. The closest national park to me is 8+ hours away.

Found this map on a quick search: https://preview.redd.it/public-land-of-us-texas-is-surprisin...

Here in Texas the Community Impact newspaper has been growing with a monthly print edition. They serve local content with multiple editions per city. ~50% of the content is broader city related and ~50% specific to the suburb / neighborhood. I find it incredibly helpful to keep up with local govt, business development, etc.

It's free and ships via mail monthly. I never signed up, it simply shows up. Their website[1] says they currently publish 40+ distinct editions across Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio.

I have no idea how their finances work, but they seemingly found a model that could possibly be duplicated elsewhere.

[1] https://communityimpact.com/corporate-about/

Unfortunately in my area of the USA south, there simply isn't much free land to explore. We have contained city parks and a few state parks. Less than 2% of all land in state. Everything else is either developed or privately owned.

"I studied my map for a while and found what appeared to be its most boring grid square: no roads, houses or rivers, just a single footpath, one pond and the merest flutter of a lonely contour line. Here, it seemed, was nothing at all, neatly outlined within crisp blue lines."

Near me that boring grid would almost certainly be fenced off. Untouchable.

Seconded. I buy 2 varieties of Muji pens -- 0.38 and 0.5 Gel Ballpoint -- and stash them everywhere.

A while back I heard the phrase "If you ask 'where is the good XYZ' it means you have a 'bad' XYZ". I was inspired to throw out all of my cheapo pens and always have a good one nearby.

Same with power cables, scissors, tape, and other small household accessories. They're too cheap to have to worry about 1. where they are and 2. where the "good" one is.

All makes sense. I currently use the Hatch for bedtime light and noise. Don't feel any need to replace it.

I'm picturing this as more a daytime thing. Kiddo is likely too young to appreciate the "choose yourself" aspect of it, so I'll revisit around age 3-5.

Thanks for the link. Seems like a well built ecosystem. The pixel art pairing with the card/audio is a nice hardware touch.

On one hand, feels like extra work to purchase and duplicate existing Spotify lists.

On the other hand, I’m attempting to keep my kids in “physical” world as much as possible. This is the best solution I’ve seen for audio. Could be worth some ongoing dollars.

Have your kids enjoyed it? Any sense of how often you’ll be buying new cards?

There's an interesting progression watching him over time. While his technical ability has dramatically improved, so too has the engagement. Now you start to get more clips of people saying "Wait. I've seen you on Youtube/TikTok". Love his journey.

As others are pointing out, there's a general problem with financial literacy in the USA population, exacerbated by a culture that values flashy signs of wealth. But it's not the whole story.

There's a macro problem that that cars often are necessary to function in USA cities. With limited public transit, especially in the suburbs/exurbs where below median earners are forced to live, getting to a job requires a car. And cars are expensive, no matter how you slice it. Our city designs make it doubly hard to be poor.

I feel for low income earners - They're least able to afford extra expenses, have the least ability to devote mental/time resources to rate/price shopping, and get hit with the highest rates due to low income / low credit. Even if you want to make a good choice, the finances are stacked against you.

I bought a used car from a dealership a few months into COVID before the huge price spike. I had outside financing and the salesman couldn't believe my 2.7% rate. In his words "The average person coming in here is trading in a car with negative equity and taking a 10%+ rate." That was pre rate hikes. I can't imagine how high the payment burden is now.

Pure anecdote, but that guy left soon after our sale. In his words "I feel dirty facilitating these purchases. It's really screwing people over who are incapable of making sound financial decisions."

Middling Excel skills still make you a wizard able to do things nobody else can, in most offices (though not most tech offices)

Do those skills translate directly to a job/pay, or are they simply nice-to-have competencies inside other jobs? I've always worked as an ops/analyst/spreadsheet guy but I've found over the years that those formula manipulation skills never actually translate to "advancement". They enable me and my company to do things easier than they would have otherwise, but appear as nice-to-have rather than valued in it's own right.

Put another way - Is there actually a career where the primary hard skill is "I'm good at excel"?

People find it easier to follow rules rather than principles.

The 10 commandments tell you what to do/not to do. The Beatitudes offer values and require interpretation to put into practice. They also are more ambiguous in their punishment/reward on the physical/spiritual level.

Compare:

"You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal."

vs

"3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." ... "25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry."

Any specific suggestions for rope to buy? I love the idea of practicing at home in my living room.

Steve Reich is a fantastic example. Four Organs is unlistenable to me, but I find Music for 18 Musicians and Electric Counterpoint beautiful. Part of it comes from performance exposure. I enjoy music I've studied and devoted time to understanding well enough to play.

As a percussionist, I find Clapping Music enthralling. Pure rhythm. Nothing else. I'm under no illusion, however, that this is mass market appeal. That's ok with me.

In previous experience with browser extension solutions, I unfortunately found it way too easy to "remove from chrome" when I wanted to get around the block.

Ultimately you can't program around self control and determination. There's always a limit to baby-proofing yourself and that's an indictment of me more than any program. However what I appreciate about the system level phone solution is that there's no easy to immediately remove it.

On a phone, the barrier to uninstall is larger than the barrier to waiting 15 seconds. The effort reverses in a browser.

I'd probably need a system level solution to effectively work for me on laptop.

Alt Text: After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.

Earlier this year a link on HN introduced me to Clearspace (no association). It does exactly this. When I load an app, it forces a time delay and asks me to set the time I want to spend in it.

I've found this remarkably effective. Much more so than previous attempts to simply cold-turkey.

https://www.getclearspace.com/