Re the patent of voice control, does it really sound defendable? That sounds a bit too obvious to be patentable at the level of “observe speaker’s speech and adjust text accordingly”, I’d have thought. Maybe they’ve patented a particular technical approach but now there must be dozens of voice to text models that you could leverage in a slightly different way. I’d love to try the result of something like that.
Seems to get a bit funky if I scroll on the screen while it’s playing. It changes the speed permanently until I reset. The speed slider also seems to invert after that??
I love the premise and I felt that a lot in SF. The transport system is not really a complex enough network that I need to be shown routing options. Just wanted to know when to leave the house and not stand at the stop for 20 minutes :’(
(In a highly networked place like London, seeing all options is helpful)
Do you do extra spam filtering? I see the advantage of not always giving out my email (I use Apple relay sometimes) but ultimately, a thing that routes to my email is another avenue for spam (until I kill that route).
I don’t really know. I don’t write posts to optimize for SEO (include FAQ at the end or something like that) and hope it’s just good content people will share.
There are also SEO pages which do not have any useful content. I think I should have more of them because my competitors have only SEO pages but I don’t have time for it as I have to focus on the product and customer support. Probably a good mix between useful content blog posts (maybe with SEO filling) and strictly SEO pages is best to bring traffic.
Does WP actually provide (1) any more? I built my first personal (photog) website on WP about 10 years ago and it was ideal. I went to do a simple website this year and WP is web builder framework inception - it’s web builders all the way down. You install a theme and it brings its own rat nest. So yes, I think it’s cooked but was before this spat. Webflow is simple. I assume there’s an OSS alternative by now(?)
I feel exactly the same way. WordPress used to be my go-to as well, and it was fantastic for simple sites about 10 years ago. But now? It feels like you’re stuck inside a never-ending loop of web builders stacked on top of each other. You install a theme, and suddenly you’re dealing with its own set of custom builders, page templates, and sometimes a whole new interface. What was once a straightforward blogging platform has become a full-on web-building labyrinth.
I agree—WordPress feels over-engineered for something that should be simple. I’ve recently been experimenting with static site generators and Webflow as well. Webflow is intuitive, fast, and gets the job done without all the bloat. As for open-source alternatives, I’ve seen some buzz around platforms like Ghost or Hugo for those wanting something lightweight, but they don’t quite match the "everything in one" ecosystem WordPress used to offer.
I had mixed feelings until I read the quote “better not to waste the credit”. That attitude rubs me up the wrong way for (a) a take what you need if/when you need it type perk and (b) someone being paid 400k.
I wouldn’t want to employ someone who saw their sick leave as something they deliberated used up in full each year (even when they didn’t need it). It’s a similar attitude IMO.
Do you have an ICP in mind right now? Reason I ask, is that while hyper scaler to hyper scaler makes sense and I can see that being easy to digest and therefore valuable to many, many enterprises are actually making more complicated trade offs. Namely a managed SaaS solution vs. (a pipe dream) of build it themselves on hyper scaler infra. IMO that’s the really interesting question plaguing enterprises and I saw it a lot when at Palantir doing pre sales engagement.
In practice, the hyper scalers often “buy” an enterprise customer by undercutting the incumbent (eg when a new CIO comes in), which makes the sticker price arbitrary a lot of the time.
Our ICP are sales leaders in GSIs/Cloud partners whose teams submit Cloud proposals with pricing estimates to customers. (I am ex-AWS myself and have seen this as a pain point both internally as well as when working with partners due to the quantity of excel work in estimates & scenario-building). Are there any other ICPs that you see as a good fit?
(Other ICPs we considered:
1/CSPs' sales teams - We ruled this out as we would have to sacrifice objectivity as a CSP-neutral platform. One of them asked for points favorable to their platform as talking points for their sales teams
2/Enterprises with contracts renewal deadlines - we haven't ruled this out, but they are simply harder to reach out to for us currently.)
You are right about complicated trade-offs. As a first cut, this output is intended as a starting point to evaluate the architecture / commercials from the three main CSPs for our ICP.
And you are right about the sticker price too. When we pull the billing & cost details from AWS, we end up getting their EDP / PPA discounts too. One of the features in our roadmap is to provide for an input field to apply a similar %age on the other two clouds for an apples-to-apples comparison (assuming they are able to negotiate an equivalent enterprise discount with other vendors)
Re the patent of voice control, does it really sound defendable? That sounds a bit too obvious to be patentable at the level of “observe speaker’s speech and adjust text accordingly”, I’d have thought. Maybe they’ve patented a particular technical approach but now there must be dozens of voice to text models that you could leverage in a slightly different way. I’d love to try the result of something like that.
Seems to get a bit funky if I scroll on the screen while it’s playing. It changes the speed permanently until I reset. The speed slider also seems to invert after that??