Traditionally, and as is reflected in salary hierarchies, "product testing" is far lower on the totem pole than "development" in Silicon Valley.
I think the AI age starts to level that, if not even inverting the value completely. When anyone can develop an app, especially in the mobile context, the bottleneck isn't the development itself but an *actual* human being with *actual* thumbs using it on an *actual* smartphone out in the real world. No LLM will be able to test that.
So the bottleneck specifically is having real people test it in real environments *and* report back useful feedback to the human/AI developer centaur.
That's a role that I feel I've played in Nostr... Some developers welcome it, some don't, but for every 1 of me who's providing actual feedback, there are 10 users who download your thing, hit the same friction point I did, and give up.
Globe99
globe99@nostrcheck.me
npub147fp...aq44
Scientist | Libertarian | Transhumanist | Urbanist | "Casual" Bitcoiner
Projects I like:
nostr:npub1qwe3auavzmlfzkul67j02atcntgd8hwynvj2794zjmuuly6czcds69qldl Nostr-based service and reputation marketplace
nostr:npub1wrzguj625auyeysfuuxzf7ywhzlwfz9gm3fml2lul72gwqxw8n9swtcm02 Bitcoin-based time-locked crowdfunding
https://blockforgebtc.com/blockforge A fully on-chain voxel world, living on Bitcoin forever.
One of the "other stuff" parts of Nostr that I've enjoyed has been website readers and highlighters. This has been a bit under-developed, but just recently we've got @npub19802...hr0x by @Gigi and Stash by @laoc42 .
The latter works better for me at the moment, Boris can't seem to load web pages for me... I get some "401" error. But both seem to have active development, so that's great!
Hey guyz guess the Singularity already happened.... Funny I don't *feel* like an Infinite Cyber-Being, but I guess Stripe CEO knows more than I do
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Enjoying this long (really long) essay by @Jameson Lopp on the history of "maximalism"... One thing I never appreciated was the Andrew-Tate-esque "cult of personality" surrounding Mircea Popescu in the 2010's, and how it presaged the social and political Right-wing shift of Bitcoin culture in the 2020's...


Cypherpunk Cogitations
A History of Bitcoin Maximalism
Bitcoin Maximalism isn’t what most people think it is, but there is a logical explanation for how it transformed into what we see today.
That janky, open-source freedom tech: Sure it might be rough today, but assuming there's still a good community of devs working on it, it'll only get better.
In contrast, one thing you can reasonably be confident about with Silicon Valley tech is it's only getting worse from here.
Choose which arm of the "X" you want to be riding.
Main body of the page:
"This is a revolutionary new open-source project designed to undercut the hegemony of Big Tech in our digital lives."
Bottom of the page:
"Follow us on X and Discord"
I have a buttload of Bluetooth speakers I've accumulated over the years, and each one has its own unique pathology that makes trying to use it a pain in the ass
LOL Linktree is valued at over $1billion... a company that exists *solely* because Instagram doesn't let you put links in posts
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It's insane to me that "link in bio" is a thing, and that people don't see that as an absolute systemic failure... Entire companies exist solely because of "link in bio"
Where people go when they leave Nostr because "that's where the conversation is"


404 Media
X's Algorithm Feeds Off Ragebait and Impacts Democrats More, Study Finds
X is driving engagement by making users fight in the replies.
People forget what it was like in the '90s when people started looking up at billboards and seeing "www.somewebsite.com" and thinking WTF is that?!?
I think about this a lot in the context of Nostr and those who say that we have to abstract away all of the technical complexity for "normies."
Sure, we shouldn't expect them to have to run their own relay any more than we asked the '90s consumer to run their own website. But we *can* reasonably expect people to adapt to the idea of an npub/nsec pair. It's happened before, and '90s people weren't any smarter than we are today as a species.
Internal Google Document Reveals That Its HR AI Has Been Throwing Résumés From Qualified Applicants Straight Into the Trash


Futurism
Internal Google Document Reveals That Its HR AI Has Been Throwing Résumés From Qualified Applicants Straight Into the Trash
Documents from the behemoth's top AI lab reveal a work-around so applicants don't get lost in Google's own AI labyrinth.
gotta do it to stay inside the light-cone bro
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Manufacturers of gas guzzler cars say "oil is the new gold"
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Oh wow Github is down 😱️
This was a good essay... I love all the "Vibe toys" people think up, but so far I have yet to encounter someone's "hey look I made an app" that hasn't had, out of the box, some maddeningly obtuse error or lack of functionality.
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