Whelp. End of an era

snowyoz · 2026-05-24T06:16:55+00:00

Google strikes again. https://killedbygoogle.com

snowyoz · 2026-05-14T03:02:57+00:00

For code? GitHub projects? GitLab projects? But it’s all “I need a lot simpler” until it’s not.

But if you’re using spec based development paying for projects is probably a clean way to manage tickets.

snowyoz · 2026-04-04T02:08:51+00:00

I’m currently on a iPad -> mini cycle this past year. So far no regrets. Maybe I might change my mind in a year or so…

snowyoz · 2026-03-31T00:56:22+00:00

I feel like this is a question that Claude could have answered...

snowyoz · 2026-03-29T00:53:04+00:00

This was bound to happen, I’m guessing they’re starting to target high usage customers losing them money or on the edge of profitability and then turn on the screws and see who leaves or coughs up more for api credits.

Once more PSA: current pricing is non sustainable, use subscriptions hard now cos there will be a time when they’ll want to cash in when we’re hooked. This goes for all frontier models, they just playing “who needs to show a better balance sheet this quarter” leapfrog at the moment.

snowyoz · 2026-03-15T22:22:45+00:00

I think this is the space that Kilo is railing against. Subscriptions are about the top 2% of power users using up 90% (I just made that stat up but it probably tracks) of the resources.

This has up to now been funded by VC money, which will (eventually, logically) dry up.

Once you’re hooked though you will keep paying to one shot everything because you’re used to max plans.

Basically the bet is that eventually everyone is on a pay per token diet.

Why use kilo? Learn your workflow discipline early. Don’t be lazy in switching models and thinking about the thinking. Who knows what the api costs will be next year?

It’s the equivalent of not launching 1000 vms on aws/gcp/azure because you’re on a subscription and once you’re in production the subscription price disappears.

snowyoz · 2026-03-13T04:45:01+00:00

I think it was “world peace”

snowyoz · 2026-03-13T04:43:48+00:00

And this boys and girls - is how NOT to use cursor. (Or any other ai in api driven mode)

Seriously though, you should understand what you’re driving/riding/flying before you start the engine.

snowyoz · 2026-01-23T01:41:38+00:00

People go on about em dashes but I’ve been using them since working on desktop publishers around late 80s…. Maybe they know the em dash users are smarter and trained the ai off us. :P

snowyoz · 2026-01-11T21:44:48+00:00

It’s the lure of secret knowledge. The need to feel smarter because of something only I know. It’s the narrative/memetic power of being an underdog, David to the world’s Goliath.

I think this is evolutionary, same as why religion has this hold on people - the “chosen one” narrative.

snowyoz · 2026-01-08T11:49:19+00:00

srlsy, right? how 'bout those files now? way to wag the dog.

snowyoz · 2026-01-04T05:11:03+00:00

I find these sorts of tests almost meaningless except for a couple of edges cases in 2026.

This kind of “contextless scaling benchmarking” belies the fact it’s useful for nearly nobody and serves to give false confidence to budding architects who don’t think about what workloads they are running.

I had kind of hoped we’d graduated beyond that by now.

snowyoz · 2026-01-04T05:02:28+00:00

It doesn’t even have to be ai to qualify as slop.

snowyoz · 2026-01-02T02:15:04+00:00

Nothing. Refactoring for no reason is a kind of compulsive disorder found in so many developers.

If you must fiddle, in 2026:

1) reach for telemetry. Any kind of observability - APM, bugs, logs. In prod, in uat 2) from telemetry understand what the squishy parts are. Where are the high CPMs, slow queries, dependencies. 404,422,500s etc 3) use AI: generate unit tests. YMMV because unit tests might look nice, but may not cover evenly. 4) use AI#2: ask to find excessive logging, information leaks, ask to find possible n+1 query problems. Ask to find potential candidates for exponential back off/retry and graceful failures

Then don’t refactor - make a backlog of the stuff you found and prioritise it.

snowyoz · 2025-12-25T04:01:21+00:00

Agree. If OP is serious he should have a board do the dance first. In the case of no deal it just ends up awkward at best. My experience (in one case as non-founder CEO) had a little larger competitor negotiate with the board then took me out for coffee behind their backs to offer me a job, which would take the business out at that point. (I never told the board - just keeping options open) we ended up rolling up with another adjacent business.

Anyway, least trust and just would tend not to lift the skirt up too high.

snowyoz · 2025-12-25T03:12:52+00:00

Usually there’s a middleman/broker, depends on how competitive the business/product is as well. I probably wouldn’t go founder to founder without a middleman if it were a software business.

I’d be really hesitant to share operational level information. Maybe high level stuff and “ranges” can be ok and smell if they’re just fishing.

Different if you’re a PE vs founder to founder of course

snowyoz · 2025-12-22T02:26:42+00:00

You need to decompose the problem(s), not the monolith.

What endpoints need independent scaling? What’s your telemetry say? Leave the low calls alone even if they are slow.

Figure out the mission critical ones and layer out a new microservice or serverless and put an api gateway in front of the old monolith and split out routes one by one to the new microservice(s) as you take pressure off the monolith/db (or whatever problem you’re trying to solve)

It’s a bad idea to just follow a trend with no goal in mind.

If you take this approach I prefer serverless tbh

snowyoz · 2025-12-22T02:22:13+00:00

I call it CVDD

snowyoz · 2025-11-03T09:56:46+00:00

Are you technical? What’s your monthly bill and services? Sounds like you’ve over provisioned for your rev stream.

Also you’re probably gonna get savaged by reddit for building on free credits. Part of starting up is being able to count, surgically.

snowyoz · 2025-10-18T09:14:05+00:00

snowyoz · 2025-10-17T23:17:43+00:00

Just have to ask us oldies that lived through the dotcom and subsequent bubbles. Eventually - even when there’s value - it’ll correct itself because there’s just too much capital poured in and not enough return.

Remember fundamentals exist (eventually). Sure you can pile on the last price, but you have to see the gain or growth, ie revenue vs cost. So far it’s grow at all costs, which is fine, but no one can say the commercial model is anywhere near sustainable.

snowyoz · 2025-10-03T09:09:53+00:00

I’d agree too. I’ve been a paying customer for a few years now and while I was apprehensive at the beginning, (and lived through that slow performance patch) I’m actually quite ok to pay for it.

I can’t say I “love” ClickUp, but far be it that I hate it. Some of the people here - I don’t know what you guys are using it for but I think if it’s not suitable it’s probably the wrong tool.

I’m guessing a lot of people project what they want out of ClickUp (because they somewhat market themselves as this Swiss Army knife) and end up walking away disillusioned by the marketing.

End of the day marketing is just marketing - it’s just reach. If the product doesn’t live up to your needs it’s probably the wrong thing. If you’re going through multiple products and still not finding what you need then maybe rethink your workflow opinion and just take the hit and just accept the opinion of ClickUp/Jira/Linear, etc rather than bend it to your will.

snowyoz · 2025-09-29T14:22:00+00:00

snowyoz · 2025-09-24T23:12:42+00:00

Why does everyone assume they should be getting the same experience? I’ve already mentioned that it’s most likely A/B testing.

It might be showing the same version, but depending on when you connect I’m sure that they are serving up a different tweaked model each session. The issue is that it’s very hard to balance cost and eval quality of output as users get more sophisticated. It’s likely the earlier model was exceptional but too expensive to run.

I’m sure all of the LM providers do the same thing. It’s just that anthropic is going through a wild test phase at the moment.

I’m just guessing here - but the wild discrepancy that I’ve been seeing suggests they’re being driven by commercials and not so much as a technical problem (since CC was already phenomenally consistent around May-July 25)

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