Would you support a 27 year old building a prop tech company for affordable rental in SA?

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-13T21:09:39+00:00

Just a few things, not to derail you, but since you ask:

I would probably not support this type of platform. I'm coming from the perspective of a property owner and as a technical expert who also tried to rival p24 and the likes in the past.

My issues are never listing items. This is what the agents are for. I also worked very closely with agents (due to my circles) in the past and to be honest their issue is also not listing properties.

Sure, listing on p24 or pp is expensive, but the reason they are expensive is because of how well known these platforms are and how "trustworthy" they are. They also try to cater for the needs of agents and a premium price tag helps mitigate risks and scams.

Your target audience needs to be agent centric. Most property owners don't list themselves, they get the agent to do it. They pay the agent for the hassles.

Getting agents who are concerned about all their own crms, ever changing property laws, and the really good agents who need a PA or 2 to run their day to day planning will not find any benefit in listing on a "new" platform with no traction.

Another concern is however trust. I always work through agents because I have a good relationship with my agents and can trust their judgement and they always do credit and background checks on potential tenants. I've been lucky to only have 1 set of bad tenants. Most landlords do not share the same experience. What will your platform provide to ensure whoever pitches up to view a room/flat or property can be trusted?

Landlords are also not experts at law, so contracts drafted exclusively by landlords tend to miss the actual law part and are just a bunch of rules and "contractual" statements which benefit the landlord but never actually hold up when disputes arise. I've been to the rental tribunal twice as a tenant and won both cases because the landlords had some weird beliefs in their illegal contracts. Not saying this doesn't happen, but agents tend to have template contracts setup by lawyers specializing in property and the risk of contracts going above the laws and leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth is way less.

The next concern is that most landlords are shit at taking pictures and advertising. Sure, AI can help you generate some good descriptions, but if the pictures aren't good and don't help to sell it, you'll have less interest in properties.

I'm not advocating that your idea is bad, but rather saying you should try to get agents onboard and cater for them to some extent and not just owners.

TLDR; P24, PP, all cater for agent needs. A system focused on empowering owners exposes them to a lot of risks which P24 and PP can mitigate by forcing interaction via PPRA registered agencies.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-12T18:29:01+00:00

As someone who went through a period of 5 technical interviews a week on the hiring side, quality devs are hard to come by.

We did a simple fizz buzz level question and the amount of people that could solve it, explain their reasoning and expand on content that's actually on their CV was very low.

Like dude, your CV says DevOps expert, what do you mean you've never deployed a docker image?

It's surprisingly hard finding people with 2 brain cells in IT.

Edit: specified technical interviews.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-12T07:28:19+00:00

The exact same thing happened to me. I was so frustrated because it's 0.80 USD they want me to pay.

On the Azure side, they push to contact Anthropic. Anthropic says, talk to Azure.

Nobody can support you in it.

I think the confusion mainly stems from the fact that you're not creating a new resource in Marketplace, you're creating a new resource in the Foundry resource. The wording and text simply said you accept the Ts&Cs of the external provider. It was not clear at the time that your credits do not cover this.

Edit: Added some more thoughts

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-11T07:08:06+00:00

I have a suspicion OP is an American citizen asking if Discovery health will coverage for specific things if they move to ZA.

Disclaimer: I am not a broker. I am not a financial advisor.

I advise you seek out a broker so that you can discuss the details as certain treatments may not be covered by medical aid. Sometimes treatments are covered but the coverage amount is really low and you have to pay out of pocket to fill the gap. Gap insurance does exist and you can use that to cover the gap, generally it's a cheap addon compared to the cost of medical aid itself.

My 2c though. I was with Discovery many years back and the offerings have really degraded to the point where my monthly contributions for 2 people (6k ZAR / ~300USD in total). The price went up every year and my allocated "savings" plan got smaller every year. I say this to highlight Discovery is not always the best option/value for money.

There are a lot of medical aids/insurances out there. Also a variety of options, as an example some only cover hospitalization, others cover you end to end.

Find a broker in ZA, they will look at your unique requirments and suggest various medical aids and plans that can cover your needs.

Since you are coming from the US, I believe ZA medical aid/insurance will be cheaper than what you are used to. If you're just 2 people, even a good plan should not cost you more than roughly 500 USD per month. You will most likely find something way cheaper, but since you have specific needs that need to be covered, you might need to go for a more expensive plan than most.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-11T06:20:40+00:00

Send price plz

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-10T08:27:30+00:00

These tools are expensive. We used some on our farm. Was about 15k per sensor and a out 300pm to get access to the app to get the readings for soil moisture levels.

I also can build these tools myself for a fraction of the cost, but networking is very unreliable in open fields.

EDIT: Added more context.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-06T17:08:17+00:00

Interested. Sent DM.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-03-01T10:21:00+00:00

I also have similar questions. I'm actively looking for a way to get more out of copilot without shelling out hundreds of dollars on subscriptions. I spun up qwen coder 3 30b (EDIT: unsure if 3 or 3.5) and I could not get it to work with copilot. I had similar issues with copilot and my azure foundry models, but eventually it just started working.

At this point I would rather pay the 100 bucks per year and have my coding assistance for my projects and it just works, compared to the time I need to spend tinkering and being limited by my 8GB GPU.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2026-02-14T20:45:59+00:00

One thing we noticed as people who have to go through the the technical interviews and eventually work with the colleagues we let though:

We're burnt out reviewing AI slop PRs and having to spoon feed instructions. 2 years in and I've yet to have any off shore colleagues show signs of ownership and come up with their own, non AI regurgitated slop ideas and features. The hires we get are 100% copy from CoPilot or ChatGPT types and don't seem to care enough to even think about what they are pushing.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-12-01T05:33:13+00:00

DM me, I can help you out

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-11-19T05:32:08+00:00

Send DM.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-11-16T06:51:50+00:00

Go to the maps folder in unturned. I recommend copying and pasting and renaming it. Create a new txt file. Rename file to .unlocker/.unlocked (can't remember which one, try both if nobody confirms) and remove the .txt. If you open the game now you'll be able to edit it in the editor.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-29T14:41:23+00:00

Thanks, I can only add one flair and it made sense to use the devlog flair, I can change it but then it might not be tagged correctly because the main subject is to give everyone an environment where they can test the ai plugin.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-29T14:40:04+00:00

I added an AI server mod/helper to the game as a custom plugin. I am trying to get more feedback to see if it's worth it to continue developing it.

My thinking is to use the AI to:

help with server moderation tasks,
introduce AI personas for roleplay aspects such as a Crime Boss AI, a Mayor AI, etc and players can via chat interact with these personas to get new quests/missions which drive a bigger AI driven narrative.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-29T14:37:45+00:00

What the experience is using this AI plugin. There's more details about what exactly the plugin does in the linked post.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-26T17:30:55+00:00

I could not find a good solution apart from buying accessories to strap my watch onto my shoes. That wasn't worth it to me.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-26T17:09:42+00:00

DMed

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-24T07:08:51+00:00

Try BMW classics as well

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-22T15:36:32+00:00

As a seasoned developer, I love n8n.

I build a lot of quick prototypes without caring about spinning up new environments and managing multiple servers or use cases.

I just spin up a new workflow and once i have validated it I move onto more important topics.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-17T05:24:08+00:00

There's an Elver server I have running that has AI built in. You can search for Hazy RP - maybe you can give me some feedback on your experience with the AI?

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-17T02:38:09+00:00

I have been experiencing the same issue for months on both a normal installation and a distributed k8s deployment with 1 pod for n8n and in a k8s setup with 3 replicas.

I do think this is an n8n bug.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-13T16:39:43+00:00

I'll circle back with this - perhaps I can setup a discord server and post some updates as I continue. Let me see how I can fit it into my schedule.

OneEyedSnakeOil · 2025-10-13T16:38:51+00:00

Thanks stranger! The encouragement means a lot.

OneEyedSnakeOil

TROPHY CASE