SunshineTheCat

Choosing "form over function" has been the hallmark of bad design since flash and I don't see that tradition changing anytime soon, even with AI.

I don't really get why people have the audacity to presume what other people like and do.

You are not every other person. People are different from you.

While I 100% agree Ai is getting shoved down people's throats by tech giants, I would never presume to know how people are using it.

More people are discovering it, at least, as a better search box than Google. There's at least data behind that.

It isn't too far of a jump to then have it shop for you as well.

One thing that is interesting with stories like this: the wild, emotional responses Ai-related news gets out of people.

I feel like increasing each day, I cannot help but hear Squidward's voice when reading HN comments.

I know that I'm in a bit of a bubble with this one, but I am surprised there is still anyone using Chrome instead of Brave. I get the dependency on Gmail other Google-specific tools, but the built-in ad blocking and Google-free aspects of it made me switch instantly and haven't look back after years.

Location: Boise, Idaho

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, MongoDB, Postgres, Node, NextAuth, Cloudflare, Figma, Adobe Creative Suite.

20+ years as a designer/developer hybrid. Currently sole designer and developer at current company, shipping a Next.js site averaging 40k monthly visits and a hand-coded admin CMS used daily by the team. Founded Makeable Brand LLC and shipped 5 SaaS products solo. Built and sold a WordPress theme business serving tens of thousands of users. Brand and print foundations from a decade of editorial design, including 1,000+ book covers and covers for a NYT bestselling author. AI-assisted workflows with Claude Code/Codex as a core part of how I ship.

Looking for design engineer, founding designer, or senior product roles where I can own a surface end-to-end across design and code.

Resume/CV: https://thomasmcgee.co/resume

Email: hello@thomasmcgee.me

If they don't show up as green Subaru Outbacks with a bunch of bumper stickers on the back they'll stick out like a sore thumb.

100%. It's like being asked is this black or white and being shown 50% grey.

I mostly agree with this sentiment, but I do still find it funny how dramatic and curmudgeony many people on HN are.

We are, after all, talking about some metadata here you are more than welcome to leave off your site.

That is actually a pretty good encapsulation of why the vast majority of people, myself included, will never go within a galaxy of that website.

What a lot of these site owners fail to realize is that "I don't like X/Elon" isn't a very strong reason for creating content on their platform.

If one of them built a platform with better discovery/reach than X (or any other platform) I would join in a heartbeat.

The problem is that everyone is making the same mistake Elon is, making the platform about politics rather than making it about the content.

You're hitting the nail on the head with this one, a solution in search of a problem lol.

Fiverr does not proactively expose users' private information.

This is such a weird thing to say, has any company ever "proactively exposed users' private information"?

Isn't that kinda taken for granted that most data breaches, leaks, bugs weren't meant to happen?

No, Dropbox had a defined use case and solved a particular problem.

I was a fan of Dropbox when it game out because of that fact.

OpenClaw does not serve a particular problem. When/if it does, I will happily use it.

But no, the two couldn't be more different. You'll notice, yet again, in your very message you failed to mention one specific use case of OpenClaw.

If you asked me the same about dropbox when it first came out, I would've said, duh it helps me keep my files synced between devices.

There is no such thing with OpenClaw.

After using this site a bit more the last couple of weeks there is something I need to get off my chest:

LinkedIn is the worst website that has ever been made.

Thanks and have a great day.

That's pretty much where I'm at with it.

I think once I see someone post a use case that I could actually see saving me some serious time, I'll take the plunge. Until then, I'll just let people continue to say how great (or terrible) it is.

I see a decent number of people on social media who won't stop posting about how great it is and how much of a moron every person is for not using it.

Oddly enough, rarely, if ever do they say what specific things they're using it for and how it's saving them time.

I remain interested in it, however, I've still awaiting an actual use case that can't be handled by some other tool/service that does it better/faster.

I have been thinking the same thing.

In fact, I recently started a one-man-show business I'm doing as a bit of an experiment in my city.

Every single web agency here builds WordPress sites. Really old, mostly ugly, WordPress sites.

So I've built out a next.js-powered CRM that's faster, more secure, easier to use, etc.

Now I'm in the starting stages of rebuilding local sites for free just to grab the case studies.

I'm doing this 1.) as a bit of an experiment and 2.) because it feels like the web agencies here are ripe for disruption (and no one else seems to even mention or touch AI)

With Claude + Codex (and a 15-year background in WordPress) I've jumped from taking around a month to build out a custom site to less than a day.

The interesting/tougher part will be product/market fit and building those first few paying clients.

So to answer your question? It definitely looks like it. I'm sure there are plenty out there who are adapting but they seem to be the exception in what I've seen.

You know what's funny, just the other day I tried to do an "export" of my data from my account.

The option I chose was "profile data" because I wanted to get my whole work history/projects/etc. for a new resume.

The export took several hours.

When I finally downloaded it, it included my name, Email, short description, and my Email address...

Giant leaps in innovation almost always have a reaction like this.

It's new, people fear it. Sometimes justified, usually not.

People greatly feared the car because of the number of horse-related jobs it would displace.

President Benjamin Harrison and First Lady Caroline Harrison feared electricity so much they refused to operate light switches to avoid being shocked. They had staff turn lights on/off for them.

Looking back at these we might laugh.

We're largely in the same boat now.

It's possible AI will destroy us all, but judging from history, the irrational reactions to something new isn't exactly unprecedented.

I've long since stopped building WordPress sites for clients, but you would be blown away by the number of people who have installed the free version of Securi or Wordfence, zero configuration, and then assume their site is completely safe from attacks.

Another one I've been seeing more often is a missing unsub link and instead a "Manage Email Preferences" link.

Which of course you click and then have to go through a number of hoops to log in, confirm Email address, authenticate, etc.

At this point, I just mark those as spam as well.

Try going a day or two without being in any way connected to the internet.

1000%. I have been running claude's work through codex for about a week now and it's insane the number of mistakes it catches. Not really sure why I've been doing this, just interesting to watch I guess.

Not to mention a billion times more usage than you get with claude, dollar for dollar.

Slightly off topic, but I've been making some shorts content recently breaking down some of the fundamental problems with WordPress when compared to modern dev practices.

It's been funny to read them: "you just don't know how to use WordPress" or "you aren't using the right plugins."

I built custom WP themes/plugins for 15 years.

It's like saying the reason your horse isn't as fast as a car is because you don't know how to ride it properly.

Ok, I thought I was going insane. The last two larger coding tasks I gave Claude Code it left about 35% of my request completely undone or done sloppily.

I because of this, the next task I gave it on the larger side, I ran its work through Codex which identified 7 glaring unfinished parts of the task.

The trend was starting the part of the task but then leaving a "skeleton" of what I has requested without any of the actual working parts.

The way I would describe it is a kid cramming his 3 month project into a Sunday evening for Monday's due date.

Yea pretty similar idea to a polygraph test which for years was called a "lie detector."

In reality, they measure a bunch of things that may indicate lying, but they are just as likely to indicate that a person is nervous or reacting to the fact they're being tested at all.

They're typically inadmissible in court these days, however, there is still a pretty solid amount of blind trust in their results.

That part of the article gives a similar "lie detecting" hypothesis, just without the machine.

Doordash has become better, but they use to do the same thing with notifications:

Your order has been placed! > Your order is being prepared! > Bob is on route to pick up your order! Bob is waiting for your order! Message from Bob: I'm waiting for your order! > Your order has been picked up! > Message from Bob: I'm on my way! > Your order is approaching! > Your order has arrived! > Your order was dropped off! > Please rate your dasher! > etc etc etc

The only reason I never completely turned off notifications was because there was one I actually needed: my order was dropped off...

Traditional archery.

I started a few years back and have been doing it off and on since. It's challenging but a lot of fun.

I shoot a lot of older style "recurve" bows, but the main style I shoot are horsebows, that is, bows that were historically shot from horseback.

They're very lightweight and you can shoot much more rapidly than you can with a more modern/mechanical recurve or compound. Right now I shoot around 20-25 arrows a minute. Not amazing compared to experienced archers, but a lot of fun.

I have a number of bows, but here are my favorites:

Assyrian: https://www.bogararchery.sk/image/cache/catalog/product/boga... Buryat: (No longer available)

I also shoot an English longbow from time to time.

The horsebows use a technique called "thumb draw" which is very different from the way most bows are shot in the west.

Here's a great YouTube channel if you want to explore getting into it: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminHirmer

What's always kinda funny to me are people who freak out about a salary like this and then shrug their shoulders at an average NBA player making in the ballpark of $10 mil.

I ping pong back and forth between claude code and codex.

In my experience (very subjective, obviously) for backend/"logical" tasks Codex seems to outperform Claude.

For front-end/UX related tasks Claude wins easily.

Overall, Claude does seem to be a little better in other areas too.

Codex's biggest advantage in my personal opinion, however, is usage. I think maybe once in several months did I even get close to hitting my limit with the $20 plan.

With Claude, however, I feel like I can sneeze and half my weekly usage is gone. Same $20 price tag.

That's been my experience, I'm sure it differs user to user though.