Hacker News: remyp

New comment by remyp in "How do you overcome the "build it and they will come" trap?"

remyp — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:19:43 +0000

Build it and they will come is a perfectly great strategy if you can build it quickly and start showing it to customers.

Completely ignoring customers while you "build it and build it and build it and polish it and polish it some more and get to 100% test coverage and make sure the UX is good enough for for your dog to use and then polish some more" is the trap.

In other words: ship it when it barely works and don't improve it until a customer tells you to improve it.

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?"

remyp — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:00:19 +0000

I'm attempting to solve this cold start problem by pooling money with other operators to buy an existing business. We're currently closing on our first acquisition and plan to do more if the experiment goes well[0].

Please feel free to reach out (contact in profile) if you're curious about the approach, I'm happy to answer any questions.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: What's your favorite security cam system?"

remyp — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 18:45:41 +0000

I went with Reolink, but not the WiFi ones. The completely offline version has no privacy concerns, no cloud sync, no subscription. It just records to an SD card. They're great!

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Why have co-ops never played a major role in tech?"

remyp — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:59:56 +0000

Not a co-op, but similar: I'm working on an owner-operated SaaS incubator[0]. A few of us are pooling our own money to buy, operate, and grow a small SaaS company together. We're currently in the diligence phase.

It's an experiment and could fail spectacularly. But if it's successful then we'll finally own our own success and build wealth for ourselves, not VC or PE funds.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

New comment by remyp in "No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user"

remyp — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 14:24:48 +0000

I haven't tried any of these products, but I do have a senior dog with very severe separation anxiety. She barks and destroys stuff the minute I step out the door until the minute I come back. I could keep her from destroying stuff with a crate, but the neighbors would still throw a fit about the barking.

Effectively, this means that I have to hire a dog sitter every time I leave the house without her, just like an infant. If dog tv could fix this problem for me it would create an enormous amount of economic value.

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Has anyone noticed the fear-driven prompt suggestions that GPT5.3 makes?"

remyp — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:59:27 +0000

I've noticed this too. "...two small tweaks" is just a variation on the "one weird trick" you see in chumboxes[0]. I guess this sort of enshittification was inevitable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbox

New comment by remyp in "How far back in time can you understand English?"

remyp — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:28:16 +0000

I’m a native English speaker and I think this is an easier jump if you know other Romance languages. In Spanish and Portuguese “woman” and “wife” are often the same word, “mujer” and “mulher” respectively.

New comment by remyp in "Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help"

remyp — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:17:55 +0000

I think you're right. Desensitization has to be a big factor.

I'm certain that I just _like_ text, but I've also noticed recently that I miss very large attention-grabbing print (eg. "SALE" or "FREE WIDGETS JUST GIVE US YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS") as well. I think my brain has started flagging it as misleading noise along with the rest of the detritus.

New comment by remyp in "Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help"

remyp — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 23:19:47 +0000

Over the years I've noticed something unusual about myself: I don't even see these icons. My brain goes directly to the text. This applies to all visual material, but is most evident in printed advertising.

Apparently other people notice the hot girl and the puppy and the fried chicken sandwich first. Meanwhile, I've already read all the fine print.

No idea why I'm like this.

New comment by remyp in "How to Attend Meetings"

remyp — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:29:04 +0000

I attempted a startup to fix meeting culture a few years back. Selling the product was nearly impossible. We got some nibbles and a couple bites, but it eventually became clear that the vast majority of companies just don't care about the problem. They'll tell you it's a problem (because it is) but nobody wants to write a check to fix it.

New comment by remyp in "Dismissed as a joke, UK's first rice crop ripe for picking after hot summer"

remyp — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 09:33:15 +0000

Humans are lazy and bad at preventing long-term problems. We need to be reminded frequently, otherwise we get complacent and take naps instead of saving our species.

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Why is enrolling in Apple's Developer Program so difficult in 2025?"

remyp — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 11:30:21 +0000

My guess is the friction is there to discourage scammers and indie developers are just collateral damage.

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas"

remyp — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 15:44:42 +0000

Lately I've talked to so many people who are in a similar situation. Whether laid off or feeling stuck in the 9-5 grind, seasoned operators seem disillusioned with traditional employment in our industry.

I've heard this so often that I'm starting an incubator to bring these folks together to buy, operate, and grow existing profitable software businesses. No need to fumble around validating ideas or finding the first few customers, just focus on building and growing.

It's very early days, but I've put together a few thoughts[0] and am collecting feedback on the concept. Please feel free to reach out, my contact info is in my profile.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

New comment by remyp in "Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers"

remyp — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:21:56 +0000

Gleaning information isn't the goal; whittling down deluge of applicants is. For the company, candidate time is free and manager time is massively expensive. The AI tools are cheaper than hiring more HR staff, so companies buy them lest they be haunted by the ghost of Milton Friedman.

Anybody who has been on the hiring side post-GPT knows why these AI tools are getting built: people and/or their bots are blind-applying to every job everywhere regardless of their skillset. The last mid-level Python dev job I posted had 300 applicants in the first hour, with 1/4 of them being from acupuncturists and restaurant servers who have never written a line of code. Sure, they're easy to screen out, but there are thousands to sift through.

Having said that, I don't like AI interview tools and will not be using them. I do understand why others do, though.

New comment by remyp in "How to Network as an Introvert"

remyp — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 19:44:00 +0000

I’m not afraid of the world turning to ash. My rational brain isn’t afraid; it knows people didn’t care and have already forgotten.

I’m afraid of the much louder part of my brain that’s going to spend every quiet moment over the next 3 days replaying and re-living the embarrassing encounter.

New comment by remyp in "Bento: A Steam Deck in a Keyboard"

remyp — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 17:38:07 +0000

That's an awfully big Raspberry Pi kit you've made there. /s

Seriously, though, this is amazing work. Well done!

New comment by remyp in "Google is burying the web alive"

remyp — Mon, 26 May 2025 17:52:58 +0000

People said this about AOL for a long time, too.

New comment by remyp in "VC Funds Struggling"

remyp — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 15:01:17 +0000

I could be misunderstanding, but this sounds like it would be a wash sale, which would prevent the seller from claiming the loss on their taxes.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsale.asp

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Magic links are bad UX and make people's lives worse. Change my mind"

remyp — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 16:24:10 +0000

This happens when customer support spends too much time on password resets. As soon as someone in CS says "we need to hire another person, too many password resets" you get magic links. Bad number go down, good number go up.

It's really easy for us nerds to write off how confusing, cumbersome, and frustrating passwords are for most people.

New comment by remyp in "Ask HN: Code should be stored in a database. Who has tried this?"

remyp — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 09:35:11 +0000

Maybe I’m being pedantic, but isn’t a database ultimately a bunch of files on disk? Unless you’re using a pure in-memory DB?