nicbou

11 ms·

241.
by nicbou 5mo ago
And the fact that LLMs are actively taking traffic away from them
242.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Do you trust Google to do a better job?
243.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Perplexity does not control who gets traffic on the internet. They don't own a significant percentage of the mobile OS, browse and online search market share. They can't force the industry in one way or the other, consequences be
244.
by nicbou 5mo ago
No money and no audience . Recognition and gratitude keeps me going. Money pays the bills, but if that was the only concern, I'd still be a software developer. Anonymously feeding the slop machine is nothing like it.
245.
by nicbou 5mo ago
From the HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." In this instance, the internet is more than top-ranking
246.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Same here. People knew the website and it was immensely flattering to meet users in the wild. It motivated me to really sweat the small stuff, because people noticed. Now I'm just feeding the slop machine, and it feels pointless.
247.
by nicbou 5mo ago
LLM already took around 70% of my traffic. I live from that website. I don’t think it will survive another two years, and updating it already feels pointless. Why choose my words so carefully when Google will just scramble them?
248.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Not every website is a blog. Substack is not suited to guides and evergreen information.
249.
by nicbou 5mo ago
That’s the thing, they have altered the deal. You still feed the machine but you get no traffic. Keep writing that helpful stuff though!
250.
by nicbou 5mo ago
I have spent nine years putting out free information. Surely you realise that I have to pay rent and buy food while I do it? My income isn’t ads, just getting a cut of the sale on the complex products I help you buy. Even that sort of curat
251.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Substack is not all websites. There are more than one kind of website out there.
252.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Does the current Google search results indicate that they will be any different? It’s also not disruption if your product relies on the output of the industry it kills. What will AI train on when it destroys the economics of sharing informa
253.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Some people will. The vast majority won’t. You are not playing for an audience, only for crawlers, so what is the point?
254.
by nicbou 5mo ago
It means that they put my name on things that I have never said about topics that I did not even cover.
255.
by nicbou 5mo ago
I see ChatGPT traffic to my website for hallucinated pages.
256.
by nicbou 5mo ago
It has reduced traffic to my website by around 65%. I live from that website. My income is a function of the traffic it gets. I spent 9 years of my life putting hard-earned information on the internet, and now big tech uses it to enrich the
257.
by nicbou 5mo ago
There is zero AI involved in researching or writing the content. A lot of that information was earned the hard way and put on the internet for the first time. It trained the models that are now killing the website. It's super depressin
258.
by nicbou 5mo ago
How about just accepting that no means no? Someone locks their door specifically to keep you out, you stay out.
259.
by nicbou 5mo ago
I run https://allaboutberlin.com for a living. AI lets me build useful widgets for my readers much faster. Not 10x, but 2-3x for sure. It removed most of the friction from programming tasks where I know exactly what to do, but d
260.
by nicbou 5mo ago
Cate Hall has a wonderful newsletter. One of my insta-saves whenever I see her on the front page.
261.
by nicbou 5mo ago
It's written like a LinkedIn post, with the TED Talk pauses for effect. I've come to filter out anything written in that style.
262.
by nicbou 6mo ago
I wrote "anti-tank guided missile", and after a minute of thinking, it gave me a straight-faced comparison of a toy ($19), a vintage practice missile ($5000), a model tank ($37) and a fridge magnet ($8). It highlighted the best, c
263.
by nicbou 6mo ago
I'm no longer a freelancer, but the common wisdom stays the same: - Charge as much as you can get away with. - Never compete on price; it's a race to the bottom. - Charge based on perceived value, not your own costs. There is no c
264.
by nicbou 6mo ago
I'm not a big shopper, but vintage shopping in Japan was so much fun. I get it.
265.
by nicbou 6mo ago
Mine got a software update that rendered it useless. I bought an iPhone.
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by nicbou 6mo ago
If they don't kill it, they might kill your account with no recourse, or some automatic process might lock you out of certain features, or some major bug might leave you staring at a forum post with a "I have the same question&quo
267.
by nicbou 6mo ago
That creates a market for lemons. This is not a good thing. People who create good, valuable things cannot distinguish themselves in such a market, so they exit it. The good creators hurt the most. Like it or not, there is a lot of value in
268.
by nicbou 6mo ago
That sounds really fun. Where did you get the idea?
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by nicbou 6mo ago
They are testing things. There was an undismissable banner for a week or so and now it’s gone for me. It did not get me to download the app. I just stopped clicking reddit links.
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by nicbou 6mo ago
Cycling! I have a fairly unusual bike: steel frame, drop bars, gravel tires, in-hub gears . It’s an absolute dream to ride, and with the weather warming up in Berlin, it’s how I get everywhere. I also have a very compact art kit that got m

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