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What could have been

coppolaemilio.com

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Re: What could have been

#121

Post by epistasis »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #20
epistasis wrote: post #8

While I'm somewhat sympathetic to this view, there's another angle here too. The largesse of investment on a vague idea means that lots of other ideas get funding, incidentally. Every VC pitch is about some ground-breaking tech or unassailable moat that will be built around a massive SAM; in reality early traction is all about solving that annoying and stupid problem your customers hate doing but that you can do for…

> Every VC pitch is about some ground-breaking tech or unassailable moat that will be built around a massive SAM A surface-to-air missile? As funny as that would be, maybe you should define your terms before you try to use them.

The reply defining terms from busterarm was flagged, so I'm repeating them here:

> TAM or Total Available Market is the total market demand for a product or service. SAM or Serviceable Available Market is the segment of the TAM targeted by your products and services which is within your geographical reach. SOM or Serviceable Obtainable Market is the portion of SAM that you can capture.

Re: What could have been

#122

Post by xnx »

simonw wrote: post #21
ipsin wrote: post #12

I wonder about the world where, instead of investing in AI, everyone invested in API . Like, surfacing APIs, fostering interoperability... I don't want an AI agent, but I might be interested in an agent operating with fixed rules, and with a limited set of capabilities. Instead we're trying to train systems to move a mouse in a browser and praying it doesn't accidentally send 60 pairs of shoes to a random address in…

LLMs offer the single biggest advance in interoperability I've ever seen. We don't need to figure out the one true perfect design for standardized APIs for a given domain any more. Instead, we need to build APIs with just enough documentation (and/or one or two illustrative examples) that an LLM can help spit out the glue code needed to hook them together.

Agree. I often prefer to screen scrape even when an API is available because the API might contain limited data or other restrictions (e.g. authentication) that web pages do not. If you don't depend on an API, you'll never be reliant on an API.

Re: What could have been

#123

Post by kiitos »

simonw wrote: post #106
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs offer the single biggest advance in interoperability I've ever seen. > ... we need to build APIs with just enough documentation (and/or one or two illustrative examples) that an LLM can help spit out the glue code needed to hook them together. If a developer relies on client code generated by an LLM to use an API, how would they know if what was generated is a proper use of said API? Also, what about when less…

The developer has the LLM write the test suite, then the developer reviews those tests. This pattern works really well. "other than as a way to save some keystrokes which have to be understood anyway?" It's exactly that. You can save so many keystrokes this way.

a test suite is a way to stochastically reduce certain classes of risk

it doesn't assert, or imply, correctness in the sense that is used here

Re: What could have been

#124

Post by Nevermark »

Nevermark wrote: post #111

Let's see. 1. Unwanted but coercive upgrades. 2. Delivering genuinely upgraded complexity and incoherence, under the cloak of new feature theatre. 3. In a context where customers just wish they could keep using what they have already paid for. Without paying again. 4. But they have to, because of artificially introduced cross-user new-version incompatibilities and strategically scheduled bit rot. 5. All so a company…

Brevity for the win ——> "Fuckup-grades".

Re: What could have been

#125

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

busterarm wrote: post #40
MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been here for years (across many different accounts), and this is the first time I've heard of these terms. I am here for programming content, not business.

Why should I expect anyone who openly admits to having multiple accounts on the site in clear opposition to the site rules to have any level of awareness? I'm sure dang will come and ding me for this one, but I'm sitting here having my points undermined by literal sockpuppets.

I never have more than one account at a time. I can get addicted to social media, like everybody else, and sometimes I find that I'm wasting way too much time talking on HN (and sometimes having arguments). I also dislike a permanent backlog of everything that I've ever said being attached to me. When I feel this way, and when I feel like noprocrast isn't doing a good enough job modulating my addictive tendencies, I retire my account (locking myself out of it intentionally) and take a few months away, usually eventually making another account.

You're being needlessly aggressive and making some uncalled-for assumptions.

Re: What could have been

#126

Post by acdha »

ako wrote: post #109
acdha wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought exercise: has any of the money Apple has spent integrating AI features produced as much customer good-will as fixing iOS text entry would? One reason for paying attention to quality is that if you don't, over time it tarnishes your brand and makes it easier for competitors to start cutting into your core business.

Text entry has been mostly fixed with AI: dictate, transcribe and cleanup with Ai works well for many use cases, especially larger texts.

iOS 18.6.1 still frequently replaces common words like “that” with typos like “yhst” (yes, I've reset the keyboard settings). Dictation does work fairly well but I should not have to dictate text because their keyboard input has regressed from where it was half a decade ago.

Re: What could have been

#127

Post by acdha »

simonw wrote: post #107
acdha wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought exercise: has any of the money Apple has spent integrating AI features produced as much customer good-will as fixing iOS text entry would? One reason for paying attention to quality is that if you don't, over time it tarnishes your brand and makes it easier for competitors to start cutting into your core business.

Apple's photo search has been an outstanding application of on-device machine learning models for almost a decade at this point. FaceID has proven pretty popular tools.

Good point re:photo search - I should have been more specific about what class of AI tool I was referring to. Photos seems like Apple's traditional approach of focusing on the user experience, whereas a lot of the “Apple Intelligence” features really seemed like they were shipped on the schedule demanded by Wall Street analysts rather than something the Apple product teams must have been happy with.
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