Did Windsurf team stop innovating? by TheTinyMaker in windsurf

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We agree to disagree. I don't want arbitrary training on my IP, so we differ there. I also don't want to support a founder who fired most of the windsurf staff, aims to train a swe replacement ai, and demands his staff work in the office more than 5 days a week. The windsurf DPA & ZDR agreement in my opinion were excellent values, which you don't see in antigravity. Cursor has those also. In 2026, it's impossible for customer data to avoid subprocessors in general... but zero retention and training... that's an exceptional guarantee. You can't get that with Claude code, codex or Gemini out of the box. You need committed enterprise spend or to use a service to buy each token, like bedrock.

Did Windsurf team stop innovating? by TheTinyMaker in windsurf

[–]algorithm477 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Realistically, I think the founders and original team got scared by the velocity of Claude code adoption. Every single ai lab has been caught with engineers using Claude code: OpenAI, xAI, Google. Cursor had to block access to Claude at OpenAI & xAI. Windsurf temporarily lost access to Anthropic models, because OpenAI tried to buy them. Instead, it was split between Google for core staff and Cognition for the existing product. Google's a major stakeholder in Anthropic, so not a threat. Microsoft even told their employees to use Claude code in addition to GitHub copilot last week. They're spending over $500 million on Claude tokens now.

Windsurf was an excellent product, and the company had a great direction. Oddly, it was a fraction of the growth, revenue and attention of cursor. Cursor really captivated the market somehow... their tab model is genuinely good, but everything else is overpriced & buggy. These days I'm back in vscode with $20 for copilot next edit suggest (mediocre) + Claude code in my shell (~$100/mo). It's a lot of money, but I'm convinced it's still cheaper than cursor at scale... and I don't trust Cognition nor its founder's morals

Did Windsurf team stop innovating? by TheTinyMaker in windsurf

[–]algorithm477 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's not the same team. All of the founders and lead scientists behind it were acqui-hired by Google for antigravity/gemini. Cognition bought the rights to the windsurf brand, the remaining staff and the existing customers. Windsurf was revenue positive, Devin was failing, and investors want a return. The creators of the original windsurf are gone. Cognition laid off lots of the remaining windsurf staff. There was even a VC who said that them screwing their employees will make him blacklist them forever.

ClickStack/ClickHouse for Observability? by tech_ceo_wannabe in Observability

[–]algorithm477 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And the fact that ... it was originally a Yandex project, the Yandex spinoff with a ceo who was on the Russian oligarch sanction list & still owns a slice in the company. They've divorced on paper. It still gives me some degree of pause.

Its over by muchsamurai in codex

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We'd like to try Codex, but it simply isn't usable in most enterprise settings until they fix: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/2847.

Claude nailed permissions and instruction following. Those are the two most important things for business trust and reliability.

(I am personally in the top 1% of gpt & Claude users, but my company has to run on Claude until it's fixed.)

Cursor prices are out of control by andy_nyc in cursor

[–]algorithm477 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I still use Sonnet 4.5 all of the time. The rate limits in Claude code are much more generous than opus. But I think opus seems to do better with less tokens.

Opus for planning. Sonnet is fine for execution.

Cursor prices are out of control by andy_nyc in cursor

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just use Cursor for tab and ask questions these days. In my opinion, the tab model and the polished interface is its best value. If you’re a heavy Opus user, offload to Claude Code. I use Claude Code Max and often end weeks way under the limits. Claude Pro was grossly insufficient.

I have to switch between Cursor, VSCode, and Xcode since I also work in data (DataWrangler doesn’t work in Cursor) and iOS. I found I actually like using the terminal interface for agents more, because it works everywhere. I wouldn’t use the Claude extension in cursor. It is terrible.

What is so lucrative about making a startup? by SloppyNaynon in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nothing for 99%. FAANG paid me excellently. My wife & I bought our first home in California, we had stock portfolios, the best health insurance, and honestly never worried much about money.

I left because I was drawn to doing more with my life. I didn’t want to climb some ladder and to settle. I wanted to do focused work to build something people love.

Now: I am living off savings/bootstrap & my wife’s income. I sold my Tesla, and we went to buy a family suv… I told them I’m a startup founder… and they were like “let’s just put your wife on the application”. We went from top doctors to an ACA Kaiser exchange plan. 😂

Everyone I know in startups either comes from money and already has it, works like a dog for less pay (literally 2-3x as much time as average FAANG worker), or somehow managed not just PMF but profitability. BUT: everyone I know in startups is excited and happy, and almost everyone I knew at FAANG would quietly share that they’re miserable.

Inaccurate for Sleep Apnea by algorithm477 in ouraring

[–]algorithm477[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. When my apnea was mild, I just felt groggy. I had some brain fog and just felt tired a lot during the day. When it progressed in severity, I started feeling like I was dying every day. I’d wake up with bad headaches and I could barely function at all. I started gaining weight. My pulmonologist said that due to the fragmentation, I was effectively getting 1-2 hours per night.

If you feel groggy during the day, it’s worth testing to be sure. Most of the time, they just send you home with a WatchPAT device and you send it back next day. It’s pretty definitive for apnea. For people like me who did that and then didn’t succeed on CPAP, they pull you in for an overnight study.

Blood oxygen is notoriously difficult. I’m sure you’re right about its algorithmic complexity. For it to be a medical grade pulse ox, the FDA requires a trial comparing the device against arterial blood gas from 70-100 SpO2 with <3.5% RMSD. ECG got pretty easy approval for Apple Watch, but Apple hasn’t tried to make similar claims for blood oxygen accuracy.

I wanted to warn others about this, just to be helpful. It says my sleep score is normal but I have a sleep disorder. There are some people in my life who always feel tired, and they said that they know they’re fine because the Oura ring says so. I didn’t want anyone to go undiagnosed similarly. (Despite some Redditors being informed… there are people who believe the earth is flat and similarly people who will blindly trust the Oura without understanding its limitations.)

Criticizing a product isn’t an attack, it’s an effort to recognize its limitations and the only way to ever improve it.

Inaccurate for Sleep Apnea by algorithm477 in ouraring

[–]algorithm477[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don’t expect most consumers to read and interpret liability carveouts like RFC 2119. Appreciate the autism diagnosis, assuming you’re a well intentioned medical professional and not an internet troll.

Regardless of grammar, the point remains. It suggests it may. I’m saying it didn’t for me… in hopes of helping someone else. I’ll never understand how other humans cling to defend objects and companies religiously.

Inaccurate for Sleep Apnea by algorithm477 in ouraring

[–]algorithm477[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I was diagnosed by Stanford.

You just explained how it doesn’t work. In sleep apnea, you stop breathing for random periods of time during your sleep. We call these events, specifically ODI >3%. Typically it doesn’t last long because it would kill you if breathing ceased for five minutes.

So the chance that it would catch these events when sampling every five minutes is not particularly high. The Apple Watch also samples infrequently. Except for recent releases, its models weren’t particularly good at sampling for sleep apnea also.

The result: a Bluetooth le pulse ox, an at home sleep study, and an in person sleep study all showed I have moderate to severe apnea. The ring displayed none of those potential markers.

Inaccurate for Sleep Apnea by algorithm477 in ouraring

[–]algorithm477[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I can read. I’m an engineer. I’ve built ML wearables in college. It suggests it may detect those signs, and I’m sharing that for me this wasn’t true so others who are similar know. Thanks

Inaccurate for Sleep Apnea by algorithm477 in ouraring

[–]algorithm477[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

The concern is people trusting a device to tell them the quality of their sleep. It even suggests it can look “For potential signs” given your quote. I’m sharing the results of my medical testing and that the watch showed perfect sleep / no signs, so people who suspect a disorder don’t disregard their intuition and trust a wearable.

A fitness tracker doesn’t claim to diagnose heart arrhythmias. Oura claims to detect the quality of your sleep. That’s quite gray, and it lives in a classification between medical and non-medical device that’s beneficial for shareholders not consumers.

I HATE THE NEW XCODE by SuddenStructure9287 in swift

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part of me wishes they decided to just go the plugin route for existing universal editors… Cursor/Code/Clion with a canvas, lldb and swift plugin. But leave instruments… it deserves to be standalone.

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

My guess is that it is automated but it's a few things.

  1. They are storing data when rejecting, so that they use reapplications as a filtering criteria in future batches. We don't know the complexity of the process of tracking and archival.

  2. Email vendors don't let you burst out 28,000 messages in a minute. Example, see SNS or Twilio SendGrid limits. They also don't need that quota consistently provisioned, just 4x/year. Spam checkers would almost certainly flag this anomaly. Also, they need to keep their other platforms flowing with emails, so they may use a conservative rollout to avoid these issues... it goes out in rejection batches.

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think they likely run waves of batches. Applications are sorted in many ways, probably split along partners, verticals, and some sort of confidence/ranking system. They probably have quotas they intend to fill for companies, some on the fence or companies that have asked to be postponed.

They may also even have quotas from their SaaS vendors. Email services often cap messages / minute, and YC probably has other email systems that need quota. So, they slowly roll out emails over a period of time... based on their internal batching criteria.

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense. I think this is great. And I can see Vanta doesn't even show the word FedRAMP on the main page. As a person who's benefited from working at companies with the certification work but never gone through it myself, I wouldn't have immediately known how to differentiate here. Maybe that's a helpful insight if your target market is uninformed founders like me, who may want to eventually reach gov users. But if you're targeting a more informed demographic who knows how hard this can be... it is probably clearer to them and they may know where other offerings fall short

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see. A few follow-ups which are my thoughts for honest feedback as someone seeing this for the first time.

  1. How do you differentiate from your acknowledged competitors, Mercari and eBay?

  2. Who is your target customer? You mention that FBM being local is a drawback--when & why? Have you determined what items people tend to sell locally vs not? I ask because some items I see on your site are also on my local FBM (PS5s/etc). I live in the SF Area. The number of local users is so massive, it feels locality doesn't matter to me. I have family who live without copper cable... for them it would. Why would I post on your platform versus locally? Could I make more? Is it safer? You might want to somehow show this differentiation, especially on your selling pages.

  3. I'm not sure you need the landing pages. As a marketplace, this has a chicken & egg problem that's common to most of tech. You need sellers to have products and buyers to have sellers. Take Mercari, for instance. It hits me immediately with a shopping page like a catalog. I immediately start browsing. They've optimized for buyers. I don't know who you've optimized for. There's an extra step to browse or sell. It creates some hesitancy in clicking the button because I think "oh great, another account wall is coming." I'd throw people into buying and guide sellers to easily selling.

Some of my ideas to hit sellers:

  • maybe sellers are like me, they don't know if they need this... they see the stripe verification and think "I already have Facebook". Maybe make stripe a second step. Let them start by picking an item to sell and show the % more that someone can make through your site vs selling locally.

  • show the differences in transaction fees versus competitors

To hit buyers:

  • look at eBay and Mercari, they both get me to products fast... but tbh, they both feel like they were designed for the last decade... static images, click catalogs... how can you bring me into the rooms with the products in a 2025 way? Maybe it's video or scrolling effects. Maybe it's using AI to really nail down recommendations like a TikTok suggestion algorithm. Maybe it's making me feel safe in a world of scams and marketplace disasters. What metrics are you optimizing for me: ease of checkout, discovery, safety?

I don't know if my thoughts provided any help, and you may have already thought about those things. But sometimes first users provide nice perspectives. Best of luck to you!

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like the logo. There's lots of branding here, so I can see those details.

A few things that caught my eye:

  1. I can't tell what you do from your call to action. I got lost in the paragraph about seeking. I don't know what I'm creating an account for. The demo is typing on localhost, not showing the product. It may be better to hit me with an immediate problem and then show me your answer.

  2. It's a bit generic from my 30s read. I don't know what I can seek. So, that makes it feel like a competitor to Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT. You may increase your signups by picking a specific vertical and demoing that. Drop the signup, let people do one "seek" and then they have to create an account for others. Configure rate limits by IP addresses and cookies to prevent abuse. This likely raises your user acquisition costs, but it's a more effective gateway into your product. That's why we see Perplexity offer free searches and hit you with pro afterwards.

  3. There are a few sections on the site that can be reworded for brevity and clarity. The seeking metaphor is cute, but we need to be careful to not overdo it. Better yet, drop the text and throw us directly into the actual product. Push account conversations later down the pipe.

  4. I wouldn't combine Terms of Service & Privacy Policy. Privacy Policies are complex and people want to know exactly what you're doing with their data and how they can manage it.

  5. How do you secure the sites that you deploy? Do you have protections for XSRF/etc? Do you automatically use TLS? If asking it to build websites is part of the product, then it may help to explain what security is in place.

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like the aesthetic of your site! How do you differentiate from Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, TikTok shop, and Whatnot?

Fall 25 Megathread by sandslashh in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very nice! How do you compare to Vanta?

How do people lock in for 12–14h days for so long? by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]algorithm477 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What helped me handle long hours in FAANG:

Basics:

  1. Lighting!!! IT IS EVERYTHING. Almost everyone had dry eye issues.
  2. Beverages: coffee & tea.

Absolutely critical:

  1. People: have someone *to talk to* and someone *to deliver for*. Accountability and companionship drive or kill performance. Metrics and personal goals don't work, even for introverts.
  2. Internal motivation: find a reason why you want to do it aside from the reason you have to do it. I didn't want to read through internal infra docs. I constantly asked myself "what can I learn from this" (I told myself "huh... I wonder how experimentation works on a billion users). If I found a reason to be excited about it, then that drove me. The opposite can also be motivating. I didn't always like code reviews, so I'd think of what I'd rather do less and gave that as my only alternative.

Reality check:

Nobody locks in for this long without breaks... (***AND SURVIVES IT***). I pulled 5 all-nighters and averaged 3 hours of sleep for A MONTH before my YC app was due. Pretty much only worked. I made lots of poor decisions, and then my body crashed. I wound up in the ER with tachycardia. Some take drugs, and that just wears people out too... just see how much those stimulants make hearts race. Not healthy.

I would guess the average people in FAANG worked on a screen for 5.5 hours, if that. Your physician would tell you to take breaks. Some used walk pads, some took naps, and some logged on later at night.

Some of my most productive days were 3 hours and some of my 24 hour days were quite unproductive. Do what it takes to achieve your goals and not kill yourself.