The quality of life improvement of having pihole was minimum. I would rather just use cloudflare or google's DNS. What value prop pihole provides I have no idea. I think that is what I feel about many if not all privacy focused tooling this way.

I underestimated how prolific the idea of tracker - first engineering. Tracking (by the defintion of privacy advocate) is inherent in many if not most system. The privacy preaching that I have been subject to made me believe that privacy is a one button tool.

Whether open source or privacy, I feel like has very little net utility when you offset it by convenience or consequences. You can pay for YouTube premium or you can update the sideloaded app every other week.

I had a very time-sensitive and bureaucratic thing to do. It involved making an appointment. I've been trying to find an available slot multiple times a day for months. I was frustrated and desperate.

It's one of those highly bureaucratic, annoying processes. The support team is horrible, and I was completely stuck.

After trying every combination of browsers, turning off extensions and devices I could think of, I eventually missed the deadline. Then I randomly checked the site on my phone yesterday, and it was working. There were appointment slots available (even though it didn't help me anymore).

I tore my hair out trying to figure out what had happened.

Apparently, the site relied on some trackers, and data from those trackers was used to send the visitor's location as part of the form request. Bad engineering, for sure. But whatever the reason, I never figured it out because I disabled browser extensions, switched browsers, and tested different devices but I was always using the pihole DNS.

The whole architecture of Pi-hole is "set it and forget it"—and I forgot it was even there.

The modern web relies on countless systems that interfere with your privacy. The more privacy-conscious you become, the more you end up hurting your own internet experience. Some people block JavaScript, block everything, or use Tor exclusively. I sometimes feel like those folks end up with a more miserable life at a cost of a secure one.

I think drawing the line at an ad blocker extension is enough. We're cooked when it comes to privacy. The framework of the modern web is basically: consent or exit. There isn't much room for anything else.

Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe I should have figured this out sooner. But I think being part of the mainstream internet probably gives you a slightly more frictionless experience than being highly privacy-conscious ever will.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48404963

Points: 5

# Comments: 4

The model is largely "built to be locked in" model. It is not something innovative. The issue is that to what scale of operation the platform considers there customer to be locked in where they can hand them a bill that compensates for the ease of entry model for all the hobby/free tier.

With Vercel I feel like these level is becoming lower and lower. You can within minutes launch a full startup with Vercel and AI assisted coding. And Vercel assumes that as long as you do not recieve any traffic that is good. The moment you recieve even a mild amount of traffic you are considered locked in.

To some people that is a fair trade because they have so little trust in their products in the first place investing hours instead minutes is a fair trade. If the traffic comes they are already in the green. If the traffic does not come any effort they have put in puts them in red. So, you put as little effort as possible to get thing out there.

I like Vercel. They have figured a monetization model for Slop SaaS. The other PaaS needs to catch up. In 2026, PaaS exists as a model to make revenue out of slop.

I always say to just stop with the virtue signaling led sales technique.

I despise the "we are like the market leader of our niche but open source" angle. Developer as a buyer and as a community these days in my opinion do not care about open source anymore. There is no long term value to that. The moment a product gets traction the open source elements is a constant mild headache as open source product means that they have no intellectual copyright on the core aspect of the product and it is hard to raise money or sell the company. And whenever a product gets traction they will take any excuse to make it close source again. With an open source product they are just coasting on brand. Regardless of what your personal opinion is, this has been largely true for most for-profit business.

Open source is largely is nothing more then a branding concept for a company who is backed by investors.

I think your name alone carries significant weight in the industry and you have built a very large community.

If you even vibe code something with, you will get a stupid amount of money thrown at you and a contract that bounds your existing projects and the next 3-5 years to a particular company as project lead.

Here is a list of acquisitions Cloudflare made recently: https://blog.cloudflare.com/tag/acquisitions/

Most of these companies did not have a half dozen paying customer or even a fully fleshed-out product before they were acquired.

So, if you want them to build stuff, ask yourself, are there any "Docker Registry" startups out there. If jsdelivr/globalping is not keeping you busy enough... there is an idea

My other siblings drew a line, and they are miserable themselves because they can't help.

He is the kind of guy who will take a mortgage on my parents' house to do some sort of forex play because he has figured out the true intention of US oil policies and how that impacts South East Asian oil-supplying countries—and wants to bet everything on Brunei and Malaysian currency.

So, I am trying my best to divert his attention.

I have been at my "limit" for several years already. I have a day job, and at night I am making freaking "Happy Easter" posters in Canva for a print shop with 200 followers on Instagram. Everyday I am begging the guy to take over the contract while he continuously keeps saying "you do it" or that his brain does not work. He is literally doing the whole 9 yards. Even has a podcast and live streams. I am not kidding at all. I told myself maybe talking to the camera is a way for him to connect with his friends and a coping mechanism.

We all carry our burdens. It sounds extremely disrespectful and dishonorable, but without the help of autistic parenting groups, I wouldn’t have lasted this long. He is my platonic autistic surrogate son.

This hobby also includes trying to convince him that the business schemes he comes up with are not great—they're exclusively fraud-related, such as various forms of gambling and crypto stuff.

Mum keeps telling me that if I do not look after him, he will likely end up in a worst situation. He is in his early 40s by the way.

I did a second job as a hobby so I could just pay him the money, but that did not work because he keeps investing it in one of his schemes. So, I have to find him a job and convince him to keep it. I have a set of fake accounts that I use to apply to jobs and beg him take them on while he continuously says "you do it".

This has been going on for 7 years now.

Was NFT or Crypto a bubble? The idea of a bubble means that it "pops" in a dramatic fashion. NFT prices in aggregate faded slowly, and the impact it has only applies to a handful of individuals. Moreover, the behavior we have seen with crypto and nft can largely be speculated that the purpose was largely illicit financial engineering.

If a handful of bad PRs "are destroying open source," Open Source as a concept is surprisingly in a vulnerable project. No project worth its salt ever integrates unverifiable PRs. No valid OSS ever integrates uninvited PRs in the first place. Every PR is driven by an issue or a very robust that is specific description. Any project that receives an "unsolicited" PR does not make the project maintainer yell "Oh, I am ruined."

I have stopped checking out these programming content videos for the last year or so. But I stupidly did it here. Every single channel has become like Coffeezilla with an agenda, being AI as a catalyst of great harm.

My money is on holding companies like IAC buying the brand first through financial engineering and restructuring finances initially. They would load it up with debt like they did with the sporting goods store in Sopranos.

Afterward, they would sell it to a Euro-based caretaking company like Bending Spoons, with a focus on maintenance engineering rather than innovation engineering.

- Buy a product that has name recognition overshadowed by a monopolistic company and the leadership is trying to make a pivot and failing terribly.

- Leadership is aggressively rebranding to appease a takeover. They keep doing the most basic forbes council op-ed title moves to make the product appealing.

- It is not a parts-shop, the team is used to sense of "eh what you are going to do about it". It is a signboard and patents that you can use to hostage bigger companies.

- The takeover company has figured out maintenance engineering. You buy the product, you cull the team because they are not a growth engine. You focus on maintenance, and you milk the brand. Any eastern European or LATAM team can approve an automated version bump PR and send out "let's jump on a call" email.

Heck, even Tai fricking Lopez bought Radio Shack under similar pretense.

I do not get the unified industry delusion about "why X company has a bad product". It is usually either one of two things: comfort or ego. Everyone knows that but do not want to say it out loud.

I have seen these happen time and time again. Companies that are cash cow, do not care to do a better job. There is no incentive to do a better job. Moreover, the recurring thing is that if I did something different, I wouldn't have been this much successful in the first place.

The rest of the smart consultants walk on eggshells. They hint at stuff but never want to bite the hand that feeds them because the clients would rather fire you than be challenged.

It is not an IBM thing; it's generic business thing to some degree. I really have to call this a delusion. Good consultants submit generic reports that just tell them what they want to hear. It is not you; it is the economy. Stupid consultants that are well-meaning tell them they should be the best on competitor intel. Do you not think some stupid person did not approach IBM to do what Oracle or AWS is doing? Of course, they did, and they were fired immediately.

The best consultants are less of a consultant and more of a therapist.

After doing only four-month projects for the entire year, this year's realization was that nobody in the industry wants to do better. Everyone is in their place because of ego or a perceived sense of success. Or because of a grand conspiracy theory. IBM has a significant number of government contracts, so they are set for life because the vast majority government IT systems are pigeonholed into IBM systems. The acquisition is to tell the shareholders that we are so successful that we can literally buy companies. We do not even care to do things. Whatever the new thing is, we will buy it at some point.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43982004

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972535

Points: 346

# Comments: 212

I have an extensive experience with dealing with Chatbots and hang out in places where people tell everyone AI will not take job while knowing fully well it might alteast take away the job of starbucks drinker sitting next to your cubicle.

Here is the truth, a single AI implementation won't replace a 15 person support team out in Philippines/India, AI won't replace a 8 person team in Michigan, but.... You pick 3 people and tell them to use AI to automate their jobs.... Now that is how you get AI to do stuff.

AI is a helper. Period. Do not let anyone else tell you otherwise. I have dealt with enough support teams to know an AI can surely do a better job than $3 dollar an hour fixed contract 8 hour shift offshore support hand telling me let me escalate your question to our north american team who will be back on monday as my reponse to "Hi" and no that is not a chatbot response.

You get three decently smart guys, and you hint at them use AI to automate your job. You pay these guys the salary of 5 US support desk salary which is equal to 10 offshore support desk salary. Then you can implement AI. You need a human to AI to work. You need a guy to snooze at the steering wheel so when a guy wearing all black jumps in front of your car in the dark road who can atleast come out and call 911. Does not even need to be a smart person. Just someone capable of calling 91. Hear that Uber? What your mckinsey consultant friend from the same frat or you ex-sister in law did not tell you that to you?

AI is not going to do well in full autopilot but that does not mean it is bad. You need someone with reasonable cognition ans allow them to be in full sync. That is the future and complaining about AI won't help you keep a job or cut costs for your business.

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Now to follow up. When you have established a reasonable framework of AI driven "task execution", you keep doing incremental layoffs. As usual you want your employees to near-burnout. See where that puts you in the next few years