Hacker News: garrickvanburen

New comment by garrickvanburen in "The AI Productivity Illusion"

garrickvanburen — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:56:39 +0000

I wrote this back in 2023, and I think it holds

“After compiling all these, it still seems neutral to net negative. Maybe a net positive on the customer service side.“

https://garrickvanburen.com/media-tetrad-generative-ai/

New comment by garrickvanburen in "The anxiety of the perfect loaf: the illusion of culinary precision"

garrickvanburen — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:18:40 +0000

“In the end, if I’m successful, I’ll have this one bread recipe adapted/developed, and if written out comprehensively for someone else (even future me), it will likely be >4 pages.”

https://garrickvanburen.com/only-finding-the-non-obvious-mat...

New comment by garrickvanburen in "How to burst the AI bubble: Strike at its roots"

garrickvanburen — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:48:07 +0000

My default position is: if an LLM is good at it, we probably don’t actually need it.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "The AirPods Effect"

garrickvanburen — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:31:51 +0000

There seems to be an overall, “I’m just now aware of this phenomenon, technology must be to blame” when the phenomenon has stayed constant and the tech has shifted under it.

#moraloutrage

New comment by garrickvanburen in "The AirPods Effect"

garrickvanburen — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:27:57 +0000

Whether grocery shopping or an endurance running event (5K+) those with any kind of headphones in are simply less aware of the people trying to get around them.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6BN"

garrickvanburen — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 16:12:52 +0000

This was my guess on the impetus for the name change as well.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "I stopped tracking my time. Now I can't focus"

garrickvanburen — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:45:56 +0000

My preference is to pre-commit by blocking off time on my calendar in 30, 60, or 90min increments depending on the task. If in the middle of it, I get distracted, I look at the calendar to remind myself.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Doing nothing at work"

garrickvanburen — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:15:27 +0000

fantastic book.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Doing nothing at work"

garrickvanburen — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:15:04 +0000

The metaphor that changed my perspective came from the book, "The Power of Full Engagement", paraphrasing "you're behaving as if you're a world-class endurance athlete without an off season - stop it."

New comment by garrickvanburen in "WWDC 2026: Apple is Folding"

garrickvanburen — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 02:51:28 +0000

I worked a corporate job for 6yrs off an iPad Pro.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing"

garrickvanburen — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:28:40 +0000

I agree, outside of the AI bubble, there's a lot of wait-and-see happening in the B2B world right now, I'd say we're currently 6-8 months into that 14 months.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "The worst job interview I ever had"

garrickvanburen — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:34:17 +0000

My worst job interview ever - in-house creative team at telecom company in downtown Chicago.

I walk into a darkened cubicle farm, down to the only lit corner office for a 'lunch interview'.

Interviewer is sitting at their desk eating a hot pocket on a paper plate.

Didn't even offer me any.

First interview I walked out of.

Not the last.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Uber president says AI spending is getting 'harder to justify'"

garrickvanburen — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:54:23 +0000

I agree. We don't need a nondeterministic 10quadrillion vector model. We need an deterministic expert on our narrow business. Something small, that can be run on the 2026 version of the spare PC under the CTOs desk.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "He Lost It at the Movies"

garrickvanburen — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:54:09 +0000

I think Dan Olson and Folding Ideas is doing a fantastic job of bringing thoughtful criticism to all kinds of modern media, most recently Mr. Beast Games.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNtlmLB73-7gtlBz00XOQQ

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now"

garrickvanburen — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:25:35 +0000

Agreed. Also, as every media organization is free to make editorial decisions on both what they cover and how they cover it, left/right is often far too simplistic and vague to actually reverse engineer a media orgs bias.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Every AI Subscription Is a Ticking Time Bomb for Enterprise"

garrickvanburen — Sun, 17 May 2026 13:23:48 +0000

I agree.

Between: more efficient models - tuned for the task at hand, the ability to run those models in-house, or even at the edges, plus Google and Microsoft are well positioned to stay ambivalent as they’ve got lots of products to sell and whether or not LLMs are part of the portfolio mix is completely dependent on enterprise customer demand.

Anthropic/OpenAI have a number of aggressive downward pressures on their pricing.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for two-sided marketplace?"

garrickvanburen — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:15:54 +0000

it's a great reminder that Uber wasn't a 2-sided marketplace to begin with, just an on-demand black car service, and Travis drove early on. The marketplace model came later, copying Lyft, more as a low-cost expansion strategy than a business model.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?"

garrickvanburen — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:13:12 +0000

This. Stated another way, you need to start by either: fulfilling existing demand yourself....or being the demand yourself.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "Claude Design"

garrickvanburen — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:33:32 +0000

My default position: If an LLM can create it, we probably don't actually need it.

New comment by garrickvanburen in "If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true"

garrickvanburen — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 02:29:53 +0000

I agree, and a willingness to experience failure as soon as possible has always been a competitive advantage.

If anything LLM chatbots & synthetic users will make the majority of founders evermore comfortable not testing reality.