godot

With so much work now remote, your people spend their days in small home offices with the door shut.

People should probably get used to opening doors and windows more. Sure for some people there's noise problems (kids in the house, or outside environment being noisy) but there's also a lot of people who just don't know better even if they are in a perfect environment to open windows in (e.g. no noise outside).

Is "jargon-as-shorthand" not exactly that?

On another note, I find AI instructions like this (e.g. "Don't hype findings. Skip "a critical finding changes everything",...") more harm than good in my own uses. It changes behavior in subtle ways that makes it less predictable to me. I'd rather it has its own AI-isms and quirks, that I've fully gotten used to, and I know what to expect. I know when it says certain things, in certain ways, that's what I think it means. Quirks and AI-isms don't annoy me, I get used to how it states things.

the readme uses paulgraham.com as an example (which is text articles mostly) and I never use "Save As" for a web page (for the reasons the author states), I always just print as PDF and save the PDF file.

for an entire website though of many pages I can see this can be useful.

Raising a kid, nothing else really compares.

I agree with this. AI is a tool and amplifier. If one is already disciplined and strong-minded and has clear meaning and purpose in their life, AI is a very powerful aid in accomplishing missions. But I'm afraid most people in the world are not like that, too.

So I think there's multiple layers of this:

- at the first layer, people (even mainstream folks) hear about openclaw and what it "can" do, gives them amazement and think they want to try (somewhat like chatgpt itself did a few years ago). the github stars on the main repo can come from that. people think of the potentials, want to do something with it

- most people who actually set up an openclaw, don't actually have legitimate and substantial use cases of it. I'd wager >90% of them end up setting up something basic. the gmail/search/etc "pedestrian connectors" you mentioned is a good indicator that people are doing pretty basic stuff they could've used other tools for. they use openclaw for it for a variety of reasons, maybe they haven't heard of the other tools, or they think openclaw is novelty tech, etc.

- the skills has way fewer installs and stars than the main repo because setting up an openclaw by itself is hard enough and most people probably don't understand why they need skills or what they use it for. I actually barely understand it myself either.

- also, the high number of stars indicate most people see it and think it's cool and want to try it out, but never end up doing it. as an example, in a tech co of 200~ people, maybe 10 people will have tried actually installing openclaw and using it. most will have heard of it and maybe starred it but never had time or bothered trying.

- most people try openclaw for a bit and realize actually how expensive it is to run. to do some basic cron job you're easily using a few dollars a day in API costs. $3/day doesn't sound like a lot and sounds like coffee money but you soon realize that's equal to a $100/mo subscription (assuming you're using raw API per token pricing and not some flat monthly plan). it really isn't a toy but most people who try it treat it like a toy and it's way too expensive for that. properly set up, it really should be a virtual assistant for a busy business owner. you have to get enough value out of it to be worth its price in tokens.

all in all, at this point in its ease of use, it really is niche tech, that somehow made it into mainstream consciousness, but mainstream is realizing it's not for them, after trying it.

It would seem that way for sure, if it was just a random anon posting it, but the person you're replying to is the creator of Redis so I feel it's more likely a genuine opinion/experience rather than a Claude ad...

If I remember correctly (it has been a while since I looked), Hetzner although is a lot cheaper on the price sheet, they're European region by default and then if you look to get US region servers at Hetzner, the pricing is a lot higher and similar to Digital Ocean. Is that still the case?

For OP though who is a Turkey-based company and want European region servers anyway, it might make sense.

Hah I don't know if your msg is a "show me the script so I know where the security holes are so I can hack it" or just genuinely want a setup script for yourself to use.

But either way, nowadays it's trivial to ask Cursor/Claude Code to write you such a shell script.

The personality part, wow I thought I was the only one since no one else seems to have mentioned it anywhere. I agree.

During initial setup it even asked how you want its personality to be, I said upbeat and cheery. I know, I know, cliche for AI chatbots, but I kinda like it that way. But after that setup, it was nothing like it. Everything it says is just matter-of-fact-ly/stoic. That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't also have this quirk where if you point out its mistakes, it keeps saying it'll fix it, but it still does not work right the next time. It just keeps reassuring you it'll be fine, in that stoic way, and then it's not fine. That's enough to drive me nuts.

I got used to it now though and I don't get mad at it or scold it. I just learned to work with its quirks and still get tasks accomplished.

I think this is a pretty common experience with setting up openclaw to do useful work. Both the unreliability as well as all the reassuring you it fixed some stuff but not really.

I use it, it works well for a certain limited category of tasks once you've set it up properly, it's not as easy and straightforward as it seems, but once you've learned its quirks you can make it work.

The category of task I have it do is basically the pattern of "scrape some certain websites on a regular schedule, do some light data processing/understanding/analyzing, report the result to me [all or sometimes only when there is something worth mentioning]".

You could simulate the same things with cron jobs on a server and some scripts and LLM APIs. But having Openclaw do it does make it a little bit easier to set up and make changes.

The initial setup was a bit more time consuming than I thought it would be. I set it up on a VPS, I already have scripts to set up a server and tighten security normally, so I could just use that, but people who don't already have that stuff would have to do that first. Then the Openclaw setup and configuration was like a 20~30 step situation, lots of API keys to get, etc. I opted for Slack over Telegram or Discord (I don't use either of those regularly) and you pretty much have to set up a new slack bot app yourself (you follow their listed steps, but there's still hiccups here and there), you have to debug and solve issues etc. to get through it all.

Then even after all the initial setup is done, it takes some time to learn and get used to its quirks and behaviors, at the beginning there's just a lot of frustration about things it can't do, or things it says it can or will do, but doesn't.

I think you're not wrong and I also think the author is not wrong -- and this just may be how technology/civilization/humans are going to change inevitably?

For example a possibly trajectory might be that many years in the future because human thinking has degraded due to AI-assisted cognition, most people will get a chip implant and AI-assistance becomes integrated with the brain. Basically same pattern as most everything else -- technology augments solve the new reality. I'm not saying this will happen, but just a possible outcome of this.

I don't know about any of the drama happening, but if LibreOffice ceases to exist, there's still Softmaker FreeOffice as a free & local option. It's nothing fancy, but works for the times when I have to use one. I'm not against cloud products as you are, but it's nice being able to do stuff locally sometimes, it's just more convenient.

The way I approach having LLM help with writing documents like this is to have it help me clean up my writing, not write the substance of it.

I tend to do extensive research (that process in itself would involve LLMs too, sure) in a tech plan, a product spec, etc. and usually end up with a really solid idea in my head and like say, five critical key points about this tech plan or product spec that I absolutely must convey in this document.

Then I basically "brain dump" my critical key points (including everything about it, background/reasoning, why this or that way, what's counterintuitive about it, why is this point important, etc.) in pretty messy writing (but hitting all the important talking points) to a LLM prompt, asking it to produce the document I need (be it tech plan, product spec, whatever) and ask it to write it based on my points.

The resulting document has all the important substance on it this way.

If you use LLM to produce documents like this by a way of a prompt like "Write a tech plan for the product feature XYZ I want to build", you're going to get a lot of fluff. No substance, plenty of mistakes, wrong assumptions, etc.

After so many years we're finally going to start making use of http 402 payment required... maybe

Wow, I did not know about this Feeds page despite being a daily FB user for 20 years (yes, to the ridicule of most people, I know). Thanks for pointing this out. I wish this was the default homepage or at least a way to set it as default.

I agree, there seems to be a level of criticism of marketing bordering on irrational among devs, it's almost like it's trendy to hate on marketing.

For devs who currently think this way, I suggest thinking about it more deeply from the perspective of a developer: Let's say you want to start a company/startup from a passionate idea you had. What do you think happens when you build it? In reality, do you truly expect "build it and they will come"? What happens when you bought a domain, put up your product on the web, or the app store? I can tell you what will happen: there will be zero people signing up to use it. Posting it on a Show HN or Product Hunt is an illusion of ease to publicize a product. A PH launch is a carefully planned and curated process involving hours and hours of marketing work to prepare for. A Show HN post will go unnoticed with no clicks 99.9% of the time.

And if you just work in a bigger company, as a non-founder, and say "this isn't my problem, I just build stuff for a job", what do you think the founders did to build their company so there are users who sign up and pay?

Could it be bigger? Sure. But at some point — maybe even before 1,000 people — the vibe breaks. The intimacy evaporates. You stop recognizing names. People talk less because it’s harder to know who’s listening. Growth would make it worse, not better. > Some things work precisely because they’re small.

I'd argue this is true for social networks like Facebook actually. There was a magical period in Facebook between 2005 to 2010 or so where it was mostly college friends, high school friends, some work friends, and we all actually shared what we thought on our posts, shared links to interesting stuff, etc.

When all the relatives started being added to your network the vibe became decidedly different, and then acquaintances, people who aren't close, etc. and everyone has that one experience where one time they post something and someone who isn't close get offended, whether it's political or not, and they gradually share less and less.

Little fun tidbit: I happen to use the WinXP wallpaper on my Macbook (just for fun nostalgia, and because I like it), so when I open this up on my browser the background blends: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/70a66a71-3f6a-485...

I don't have "the right answer" for you but I would just chime in that in the current job market, your best bet is your existing/previous network. Reach out to folks you previously worked with in past companies, especially those in tech leadership positions. With more and more AI applicants trust is weighed more than ever and existing relationships is a major leverage point now.

I don't know if this "should" be how it is but this is the reality based on what I observe now. Hopefully you have some relationships you can reach out to.

One thing that not enough people realize is that the gap between haves and have-nots widen in almost everything when technology advances, and I don't mean just wealth (that is one too), but also knowledge (LLM/AI widens knowledge gap between the curious and not-curious by a lot), and in this case socialization -- the availability of technology (in both organizing activities like your example and in AI loneliness like the article) widens the socialize and not-socialize people.

In the old days, not-socialize people tend to be forced to socialize anyway; but techonology enables them to not-socialize 99% of time now. Likewise, socialize people needed to put in more effort to socialize in the old days, but now it's easier than ever.

When more people realize this, the discourse should shift from "technology creates this trend" to "technology widens the gap between X and not-X".

I've been using Cursor pretty extensively in the past few months and I use it to code pretty hard problems sometimes, and a while ago when the options were between claude 3.5 sonnet vs gemini 2.5 pro, there was such a significant difference in quality that claude 3.5 often straight up failed -- the code it wrote woudln't work, even after retrying over and over again, and gemini 2.5 pro often was able to solve it correctly. In a particular project I even had to almost exclusively use gemini 2.5 pro to continue to make any progress despite having to wait out the thinking process every time (gemini was generally slower to begin with, and then the thinking process often took 30-90 seconds).

I think the general public (and by that I mean including software engineers too) overestimate the likelihood of a huge screw-up leading to being fired like they do in the movies, if the screw-up is neither (1) malicious/intentional in nature, nor (2) demonstrates that you're grossly incompetent for the job.

Most huge screw-ups happen to well-intentioned, knowledgeable software engineers, who simply made an honest mistake.

The correct way to handle it, on the company/management's perspective, is not to fire the person who made the mistake, but to allow them to correct it (perhaps with help from others). And that is indeed what happens in most cases. There are certainly poorly managed companies who would fire someone in these scenarios, but they should be less common than otherwise.

I'm not going to name any names: in the late 00s/early 10s I worked in one of the highest-profile, high-growth tech startups of its era, and I've personally made a blunder that corrupted literally millions of user records in the database. This incident was known internally as one of the most disastrous technical things that happened in the company's history, among a few others. The nature of the product was one of very quickly updating data, and updates were critically important (e.g. is affected by user spends) and hence restoring from DB backups of even the night before was unfeasible. There was irreparable damage where a whole team of us had to spend the next few weeks painstakingly hand-fixing data for users, and coming up with algorithms/code to fix these things as users use the product as they go. As you expect in this anecdote, I did not get fired, I was part of the team that worked tirelessly following this incident to fix user data, and I continued to have a good, growing career in my remaining time in this company (the next few years).

I'd be curious to follow along and read more. My experience is that everyone's body is quite different and what causes chronic issues with everyone can be quite different. That's not to say his observations and solutions won't be useful to others, but it's another good anecdote to understand and things worth trying for others having similar issues.

I myself for example have had headache and migraine issues for more than 25 years. I understand deeply an incredible amount about what causes my migraines, how they feel, how I help with it, and so on. I understand migraines more than anyone else I ever know in my life because I observe, pay attention, study, and try different things so much. I understand it more than most doctors I talk to. But I also know that everyone's migraines are a little different and not everyone gets triggered by the same things (though there's a lot of overlaps) and my solutions may not help for everyone. I'd totally write something like this for migraines if I had the time (I don't :( ).

I think most people underestimate how much of their immune system depends on their sleep. Sleep quality, amount (hours) of sleep, time in bed, all of it -- they matter.

In stressful periods, it's likely not stress crushing the immune system, it's the indirect relationship that stress causes bad quality sleep and low amount of sleep, that in turn crushes the immune system.

If, even if under stress, you manage to work out a system/habit that allows you to get proper sleep, you'd likely be ok.

Would anyone still use a desktop-only (no mobile) messenger where you have to run/turn on intentionally (not always-on like most mobile-first messengers nowadays), lists online/offline friends the way AIM/ICQ did, and you can only send messages with online friends?

I get that most leisure computing has moved off of desktop to mobile in modern days, but there's definitely enough of us nerds who're on a computer a lot (even if just for work, if nothing else). It can't be any less than in the late 1990s when ICQ was popular.

Yeah, my mentioned times are with faster-whisper, but I have not tried whisper.cpp. I just use a python script to run the model.

I realize I must be in the minority of software engineers/tech circles, I do not keep a "personal knowledge management" base.

I do have a personal Notion, but the things I keep in it are like list of restaurants we want to try and haven't yet, list of travel destinations we want to go at some point, the trash collection schedule, things like that. Basically references/bookmarks.

I don't keep reading lists, knowledge I learned, or anything like that in an archive. I rely completely on my own memory in my brain for those. (I also don't open up tabs with intentions of "I'll read this later". Either I read it and close it, or don't. If it feels semi-interesting but long, I just skim it, then close it.)

If anything interesting comes up, I talk about it, typically in a group chat (I have about half a dozen group chats with various friend groups or ex-coworkers groups that are active). If a discussion took place about something, I will likely remember it. If I remember some key points, if something comes up in the future about it, I will remember enough to look it up, whether by Google or by LLM. *

I've lived this way for decades professionally and never found myself missing a piece of knowledge in any context that I wish I had. In other words I don't find a use to keep a personal knowledge base.

For those reading this, maybe it helps you think about whether you need one like this as well. Perhaps like the article author here, you might feel more relieved not having one.

* I also want to note that I operate this way at work / in meetings as well. I find that if I try to take notes during meetings, I can't pay attention fully, and can't digest the information being discussed. It works much better if I don't take any notes at all, pay attention in the meeting, and if there's anything important from the meeting, I try to write it down afterwards (typically in a Slack message) from memory. 99% of the time it works fine and once in a long while I might miss something (but someone else who reads my Slack message would fill out what I missed).

If you're already doing local ffmpeg stuff (i.e. pretty involved with code and scripting already) you're only a couple of steps more away from just downloading the openai-whisper models (or even the faster-whisper models which runs about two times faster). Since this looks like personal usage and not building production quality code, you can use AI (e.g. Cursor) to write a script to run the whisper model inference in seconds.

Then there is no cost at all to run any length of audio. (since cost seems to be the primary factor of this article)

On my m1 mac laptop it takes me about 30 seconds to run it on a 3-minute audio file. I'm guessing for a 40 minute talk it takes about 5-10 minutes to run.