bjpless's comments

bjpless | 4 days ago | on: Show HN: MCP server ONLY app for personal finances

Curious about preference stack:

A) Within their favorite LLM, data sharing with Plaid and the frontier lab.

B) An entirely self-hosted agent on their computer with open source LLM models + WhatsApp / SMS communication channels.

C) I don't care about conversational finance.

bjpless | 2 years ago | on: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

I’m not raising a question about his rights or generosity.

He and other independent political pundits have large audiences and as a result generate valuable content for the platform.

If the game theory above plays out and cynical actors act cynically, it will ultimately hurt YT in the long term run and drive users to other platforms (I’d assume Twitter).

I think YT may be opening a can of worms for themselves.

bjpless | 2 years ago | on: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

As a disclaimer, I’m not a Brand content consumer and I’m also not commenting on the validity of the claims.

I’m aware that he’s a popular populist and the slippery slope is obvious here, independent of the particulars of the specific case.

The playbook to silence a relatively loud political voice is now obvious from the YT response. It is a given that cynical actors on all sides will evolve to further exploit this strategy, especially so if accusers do not have to testify under oath.

YouTube, on a common sense basis, should have recognized that political reality today and tred more carefully — much more so than for a travel influencer, for example.

The long term game theory here, like brand boycotts, is hopefully that the exploitation of this strategy by all political players would lead to the strategy losing power due to general fatigue and whataboutisms.

bjpless | 2 years ago | on: Show HN: AI to help you online date better

Great question! Presently the AI is primarily used as a tool for our human experts and end users to generate ideas for prompt responses, captions, etc. It’s not meant to be entirely self deterministic but it’s quite useful practically speaking.

bjpless | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app

Appreciate the feedback! I’m personally less rules based as well aside from no parties, that’s probably strictly required by most lodging. Aside from that I agree.

Keep in mind these are all configurable by the trip planner in the UI

bjpless | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app

Thank you, that’s really generous of you. It’s a dead simple stack — which is helpful as a solo founder — of rails as an API and react. I make liberal use of other saasy services.

It’s more complex than Facebook events in that there are fintech (payment) mechanisms built in. I’d describe it as Kickstarter meets FB events but with a focus on travel UX requirements

bjpless | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app

Yes, I'm really focused on the commitment mechanism -- Kickstarter for group travel effectively.

I had thought that was already eliminated so thanks for pointing that out! I just pushed a fix to remove the AirBnb requirement.

As for more complex itineraries, certainly want to tackle that in the future...

bjpless | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app

On a related note, I'm willing to personally act as a travel agent for a remote co-working trip among coworkers as a non-scaleable way to grow the platform initially and get user feedback. If you're interested in exploring in a fun 4-10 person trip with colleagues, email me at [email protected].

bjpless | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app

I completely understand this objection. Ultimately, this was a tough trade off that I made for reasons that I can elaborate on at a different point.

In most cases, the goal is to have an organizer create a quick video describing the trip to communicate enough info for you to then declare your preferences. Here is an example:

https://villagersapp.com/t/gkkfv

Either way, I just pushed a change to make the modal escapable.

bjpless | 3 years ago | on: Show HN: Villagers – A group travel app

I'll just reiterate what I said below which is that, while I think you point of view has a lot of merit, there are compelling "Why Now" counterpoints that I think you're undervaluing. Only time will tell though!
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