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Work with the garage door up (2024)

notes.andymatuschak.org

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Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#101

Post by mgfist »

cyberge99 wrote: post #58
simonsarris wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but [gestures vaguely at the state of it] Everyone wants to gesture vaguely at the state of it but it's still by far the best place. Just use the site the way you want to use it, post the way you wish others posted, and mute stuff you don't like aggressively.

Xtwitter is NOT the best place to be. For anything unless you’re a horny cryptobro.

It's not all that hard to curate a feed without that stuff. Block people who annoy you, mute words/phrases that annoy you, and follow people you enjoy.

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#102

Post by fragmede »

dimes wrote: post #43
simonw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear of AI companies "slurping up data" being used as a rationale for not sharing anything is one of the most underrated harms of the whole current AI mess.

It’s not a fear. It’s reality. It’s literally happening on HN right now. Take this game, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698455 Within an hour, someone had cloned the game with addition mechanics that multiple people mentioned they like more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47729573

Why is that a bad thing? Person 1 built a thing, and then someone came along and made it better? It's a game, so better is subjective, but should ideas only ever come from Person 1, while everyone else just gazes upon them with slack jawed awe, unable to contribute?

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#103

Post by Geof25 »

holybbbb wrote: post #95

Yeah work with the garage door up so better equipped competitors can have an easier time copying your work. Do these navel gazing blog posts come with any life experience?

It really depends. If you know your competitor and understand their core business, then opening garage doors can actually screw them up.

I am working in an industry where if one competitor would go open source and created decent open application, whole industry will effectively implode because end customers will always choose cheaper solution, which in case of open source would be for free.

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#104

Post by stavros »

mattkevan wrote: post #24

Genuinely curious where the best place online to do this is today. Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it]. Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.

I don't know how publicly you mean, but I do this on the maker community I'm a part of (shout out to our general maker newsletter, sign up at https://www.themakery.cc/ for fun links).

I also do something like it on my website, but that's writeups of the finished product. The community gets to see the raw state of what I'm making, throughout the process.

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#105

Post by holybbbb »

Geof25 wrote: post #103
holybbbb wrote: post #95

Yeah work with the garage door up so better equipped competitors can have an easier time copying your work. Do these navel gazing blog posts come with any life experience?

It really depends. If you know your competitor and understand their core business, then opening garage doors can actually screw them up. I am working in an industry where if one competitor would go open source and created decent open application, whole industry will effectively implode because end customers will always choose cheaper solution, which in case of open source would be for free.

That’s true of quite a few industries though, but it takes insider knowledge to know what to build.

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#106

Post by jessmartin »

mgfist wrote: post #101
cyberge99 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xtwitter is NOT the best place to be. For anything unless you’re a horny cryptobro.

It's not all that hard to curate a feed without that stuff. Block people who annoy you, mute words/phrases that annoy you, and follow people you enjoy.

Agree. I ~never see that stuff.

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#107

Post by Shog9 »

dvt wrote: post #97
Shog9 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I suspect the key to your experience is buried in this sentence: "I do follow politics pretty closely, and it seems relatively balanced overall." Balance doesn't mean much by itself. Doesn't mean "informative" or even "accurate". Extremists from every walk of life screaming at each other might be in balance, but isn't much fun to be around. Note that the person you're replying to didn't even mention politics as s…

> What's left is people who are logged in, _engaging_. And man, that was always the worst part of Twitter, the constant posturing and troll-baiting for clicks, pushing every viewpoint toward its extreme. I do agree that engagement farming is—and has been—a problem, but as someone that worked in social media (mostly on the data side, fwiw), it's been a problem for like a decade+ now, long predating "modern" Twitter. A…

I'm well aware; I previously worked "adjacent" to this sphere, and a non-trivial part of my work life was spent trying to forestall precisely this outcome.

The difference between Twitter now and Twitter a decade ago isn't in the quantity of vapid interactions; it's the proportion of that to anything else. The slide started a long, long time ago and at some point effectively no one was trying to stop it anymore. I'm sure there are still corners where useful information gets passed on in a timely manner, but like the citizens of so many venues before it those corners have been diminished and isolated to an extent that it no longer feels worthwhile for those not already entrenched in them to bother seeking them out

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#108

Post by pojntfx »

mattkevan wrote: post #24

Genuinely curious where the best place online to do this is today. Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it]. Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.

I've found Mastodon to be the best platform for this in 2026. If you're working on something deeply technical, there is a good chance the upstream maintainers for whatever you're using and tons of academics in the field will be active on there. Except maybe for something LLM-related, that's still firmly in the Twittersphere, even in 2026.

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#109

Post by idbnstra »

mgfist wrote: post #101
cyberge99 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xtwitter is NOT the best place to be. For anything unless you’re a horny cryptobro.

It's not all that hard to curate a feed without that stuff. Block people who annoy you, mute words/phrases that annoy you, and follow people you enjoy.

Yeah, and pressing the three dots and selecting “not interested” goes a long way as well

Re: Work with the garage door up (2024)

#110

Post by brightball »

mattkevan wrote: post #24

Genuinely curious where the best place online to do this is today. Until recently my reflexive answer would have been Twitter, but [gestures vaguely at the state of it]. Would it be Substack, Bluesky, Mastodon, a personal blog, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it's hard to know where to get started.

It's probably still Twitter.

With the real time translations that they just introduced where people are interacting in all different languages now, it's the best it's ever been. The conversations that people are getting to have across Japan, France, Spain, South Korea, etc are really incredible.

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