Hacker News: forcer

New comment by forcer in "Accenture to acquire Ookla"

forcer — Sat, 30 May 2026 19:03:01 +0000

I would say if you can reach 1% of the population in a given country every month then you are starting to be interesting for the telcos.

New comment by forcer in "Accenture to acquire Ookla"

forcer — Sat, 30 May 2026 18:52:54 +0000

Once you have a good amount of users testing, its not that difficult to get free servers from the ISPs. The secret is that on-net servers show testers better performance than off-net so every ISP wants to contribute the speed test server. If they dont do it they are shooting themselves in the foot by routing their traffic to competitor networks and getting test results behind their peers.

Whats even worst then your competitors can claim awards for the Fastest ISP and your marketing people are furious!

New comment by forcer in "Accenture to acquire Ookla"

forcer — Sat, 30 May 2026 18:46:38 +0000

Because I got a good offer :)

New comment by forcer in "Accenture to acquire Ookla"

forcer — Sat, 30 May 2026 18:26:13 +0000

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla.

The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annually for this data and we have a few hundreds of of those big MNOs globally. This market is pretty big. Accenture is in trouble with their main consulting business due to AI so acquiring data business is one of the smart strategies they can implement to stay relevant.

To all commenters who think they can code it over the weekend, yes you are right. I coded my first speed checker over the weekend in 2008 but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit. Its not easy as it seems.

Microsoft 365 Copilot trial demonstrates monthly time savings of 400k hours

forcer — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:32:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-nhs-ai-trial-delivers-unprecedented-time-and-cost-savings

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736003

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Silicon Valley chip startup raises $100M to take on TSMC and ASML

forcer — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:13:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ft.com/content/2496edef-4f1b-47aa-877d-9c01271faaa1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45735683

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

Building Voice Agents on Cloudflare

forcer — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 16:19:46 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-realtime-voice-ai/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45066058

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by forcer in "The Death of Daydreaming"

forcer — Mon, 05 May 2025 17:05:09 +0000

>>>>When you are daydreaming (or mind-wandering, as it is referred to within scientific circles), memories that you thought were lost forever can come to the surface again.” >>>

I have been thinking about this lately. Not just in the context of smartphone use but being devoted to some mind consuming endeavour like building a startup.

I have been building and operating company for over 15 years now (I am 43 now). During those years I had amazing quality of life due to success of the business. However, at the same time I spent most of my daydreaming hours on thinking how to grow my business. Now when business is about to be sold and I don't think about the growth that much I am starting to realise I don't remember as many things from my childhood as most of people around me. I keep wondering whether this is common to other people who have been obsessed about something for many years and forgot to daydream about their earlier years.

New comment by forcer in "World first: Plane hooks a skydiver out of the air"

forcer — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 15:34:20 +0000

There were already videos before when skydiver jumped into the plane in mid-flight

Ask HN: Are there any LLM summary features that don't suck?

forcer — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 19:20:39 +0000

Every tech company and their uncle seems to be rolling out AI features these days, especially ones that promise to summarize all the stuff you’ve got stored in their platforms. From Gmail and Slack to smaller players like Gitbook, everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon—usually behind a shiny premium paywall, of course.

Since we rely on a mix of these big and small tools, we decided to put their new AI toys to the test. We asked them to summarize emails, messages, posts—you name it. The verdict? Meh.

The summaries they spit out are all over the place. They either miss the key points entirely or focus on the most random, irrelevant details. It’s like asking someone for a quick recap of a meeting, and they tell you what snacks were on the table.

So now I’m left wondering: is it just me? Or is Google, Slack, and the rest of the AI crew genuinely struggling to make these features work the way they’re hyped up to?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42223144

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by forcer in "Dutch man sabotaged Iranian nuclear program without Dutch government's knowledge"

forcer — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 08:30:01 +0000

After reading "According to the newspaper, the software cost over a billion dollars to develop" , I stopped. Can anyone believe that claim ?

New comment by forcer in "They built their businesses on Instagram. Then the platform changed"

forcer — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 18:09:01 +0000

The complaints from small business owners in the article remind me of the same situation couple of years ago when Facebook reduced brands ability to reach their followers on Facebook. Not to be picking on FB, in the same way Google is shrinking organic reach within SERPs with every passing year.

There is nothing new in this behaviour, it has happened and it will happen on any new platform that gets popular.

Google Play Developer Helpline Invitation

forcer — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 17:15:53 +0000

Just received email from Google they are opening up call center for developers if they need help. Sounds promising after many years of ignoring us?

------------------------------------------------

Hello Partner, We’re always exploring ways to provide more support to developers. We launched the Google Play Developer Helpline and we’re excited to extend the invitation for you to participate. You can use the Google Play Developer Helpline in English to find more information about any Google Play policy and even resolve issues, such as policy enforcements, appeals, warnings, etc. Call us to learn how to get an app reinstated or how to appeal an enforcement. How to connect with us

    Go to the Developer Help Center.
    Open Contact Us > Let’s get started > Contact Options > Get a call.
    Complete the Helpline form.

The Helpline is available from 9 am to 6 pm local hours, Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays. We look forward to speaking with you!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32098843

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by forcer in "Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize"

forcer — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 17:56:31 +0000

When Cloudflare Workers unionize, that will be world first ;)

New comment by forcer in "Cutting Russia off from SWIFT a “matter of days” – euro zone central banker"

forcer — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 15:08:58 +0000

I agree. While Russia has lots of popular services which win over western counterparts (Yandex>Google, VKontakte>FB ...) they still do use Google/Apple devices. Blocking them would cause more powerful force than any government can currently yield.

We have a way to go though - Google generously offered $2M in Adwords credit as a response to Ukraine war. Let's encourage them to do more! (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30476940)

New comment by forcer in "[dead]"

forcer — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:59:09 +0000

This seems a bit useless to me. Its trivial for Russian networks to block out foreign requests before it reaches the sites. So effectively those sites would not be accessible from outside of Russia but inside , business as usual.

New comment by forcer in "Cutting Russia off from SWIFT a “matter of days” – euro zone central banker"

forcer — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 14:52:15 +0000

I am wondering if this automatically means Russia will switch off gas supplies? Understandably, how Europe will pay for Russian gas when SWIFT is switched off, and probably Russia won't be sending gas for free?

Google announces support for Ukraine by giving $2M in Adwords credit

forcer — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 12:11:23 +0000

Ask your friends at Google to explain this joke donation of Adwords credit: https://www.androidcentral.com/google-response-ukraine-invasion

Ukraine needs real support not using this crisis to push your product!

If you want to make a statement switch off Google services in Russia. That is how revolutions are started!

Google makes less than %0.3 of their total revenue in Russia. Surely that is worth a sacrifice to end this unfair war and tell Russia they cannot invade their neighbors!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30476940

Points: 89

# Comments: 24

New comment by forcer in "Ask HN: What kind of online tools are you using, missing or can be improved?"

forcer — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 18:23:16 +0000

I am missing keyword analytics for github. What stuff developers search, most popular searches etc

New comment by forcer in "People may one day drill for copper as they now drill for oil"

forcer — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 07:15:52 +0000

Article says 1M tons, not 1 ton per volcano