jtap's comments

jtap | 1 year ago | on: Show HN: Mktbx.com – Merging LLMs with Expert Systems

Hey HN,

I’ve been thinking, for a while now, how I could merge a LLM and an Expert System. What I wanted was the ease of use of an LLM and the rules based processing of an Expert System. Over the past couple of weeks, I built what I thought was a unique way of merging the two. I choose to use auto insurance as an example because of my past history in the industry, but I feel as though it would be applicable in other industries. It’s still very rough around the edges, but if you are interested you can try it out at https://mktbx.com/#tryout I’d appreciate any feedback and your thoughts.

jtap | 1 year ago | on: Ask HN: What have you built with LLMs?

I have a couple. A fun one is catchingkillers.com. Here you are a private investigator who is trying to find out who committed a murder. Two stories are active. The third, bathtub one, isn't done.

jtap | 1 year ago | on: Ask HN: Ideas for LLM-Based Games

Yeah I did just that. CatchingKillers.com hosts the game. The first two stories are playable. Sour Grapes of Wrath, taken from an excellent pdf I found online. The other, The Masquerade Murder of Charleston Manor, is custom story for the game. The third story hasn't been finsihed. So not really payable. I have set the limit on that gpt account to $5 so I don't get abused, but should be enough for a bunch of runs of the games if someone wants to try.

jtap | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: What have you built with LLMs?

I built out a few utilities as experiments. One app linked to Salesforce to query/analyze sales data. Another that reads our help documentation and gives instructions via chat.

The last app, the only one that was deployed anywhere, is https://catchingkillers.com This app is a simple murder mystery game where the witnesses and the killer are ChatGPT bots. The first two stories are complete and active, the third is not complete yet. The first story of the working two is taken from another murder mystery group game https://www.whodunitmysteries.com/sour.html. The second story was highly influenced by ChatGPT.

It's a bit rough because I didn't spend too much time on it, but if anyone does signup to play, I'd love to hear feedback.

jtap | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: What is the best air quality monitor purchasable on Amazon (no DIY)?

Not sure if it's the best but I recently bought a "Airthings 2960 View Plus - Radon & Air Quality Monitor". Choosing the correct app and setup was a bit annoying, but not too bad. I think setup was about an hour once done. Also the phone app wanted to read results for a week or so before displaying some info. The device has a screen that will show you the current values.

I purchased the device because I was a bit worried about radon and other garbage that I might be breathing while working in my basement office. Radon and other data points were not a problem. Turns out C02 was more my problem. It's pretty surprising how quickly that number rises with a closed door. I believe I can attribute the tiredness with the C02 levels. Having history correlates with when I'm in the basement office, and opening a window, it's a walkout basement and I have windows, decreases C02 stat pretty quickly.

Overall I'm happy with my purchase, and I'm considering buying another one for the ground level of the house.

jtap | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell

I've made a bunch of projects that hit about 80% completion that I never end up finishing. My current projects that I have most recently put in some time are:

https://cruisedirector.io/ I have it running on some of my sites. It continues to run but I have no customers, and I haven't tried to sell it as a service. Tracks user actions inside an application. Every click is tracked so you can make rules based on any user clicks and show prompts made with a graphical editor. For example: Someone is button smashing, you can ask them for feedback. Popup a message on first login in the past month... Really lots of fun stuff.

https://ezdataloader.com/ I recompiled some old c# code from about 10 years ago, and with a few tweeks the backend now can run in mac, windows, or linux. Pretty sweet, other than the interface. I used electron for an interface and got it working a bit. But, I haven't put too much time into this one either. I'm tempted to scrap the downloadable executable, and turn it into a saas app. Might be a bit easier for customers I'm targeting. I've been pretty busy at my day job though, and haven't had time for this in the past year or so.

jtap | 3 years ago | on: High-performance image generation using Stable Diffusion in KerasCV

Just as another point of reference. I followed the windows install. I'm running this on my 1060 with 6GB memory. With no setting changes takes about 10 seconds to generate an image. I often run with sampling steps up to 50 and that takes about 40 seconds to generate an image.

jtap | 4 years ago | on: How I took my SaaS from idea to sold in 14 months

There are a couple negative comments here. Don't let that get you down. You've done more than most. You built a product, validated, and made real money on that product. Then you exited with a positive payout. Great job!

jtap | 5 years ago | on: My wife recently passed away. I used my time off to build her a giant bookshelf

My father had a couple duplexes, and I learned to hack stuff together pretty well there. But I did take a class at Woodcraft that was pretty nicely done about 10 years ago. It was a simple course over a few nights. I learned a couple woodworking tricks that upped my game, but there were a couple beginners. Hopefully Woodcraft will start having classes again once things start opening up again. If so signup and they will teach you how to use the basic tools and more importantly you will walk away with a bit of confidence and knowledge on how to fix mistakes.

jtap | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: What did you build in 2019?

At the beginning half of this year I finished up an mvp of an idea that I had, took me a bit of time to build, where I could make it a bit easier for product managers to get analytics, and saas app feedback (https://cruisedirector.io). I was hoping to diversify my income a bit, but I've been pretty busy this year at my day job and haven't done any marketing or improvements. I have also redirected any potential customers, that I chatted with while building the app, to my competition. The competition is absolutely killing it in this space. Hopefully I can find some time this year to chat with some customers, maybe diversify a bit, and be able to do a bit of marketing.

jtap | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: What did I do wrong in my SaaS B2B startup?

I wonder, I'm not a customer so you prob shouldn't listen to me, if your problem is that you are selling something customers don't really put a value on. Security is a nice to have and only becomes a must have when a problem has already happened. Kind of like virus scanners are only purchased when someone thinks they have a virus. Is there a subset of your security tools that can help determine problem, a cause, and a possible solution to an existing problem? Maybe package up this smaller toolset with maybe a white glove cleaning/restoration service as a product.

jtap | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Which desk chair do you recommend?

I've had a couple really nice chairs, but my current chair is an old simple wooden desk chair that I had been using as a painting stool. I slipped a disk in my lower back and this chair helps to keep my posture perfect. Really an old crappy wooden chair that is almost at a 90 degree angle and short enough that my feet sit flat on the floor. Looks something like this http://www.historichouseparts.com/pdshop/images/VHP042015-01... I also have one of these pads. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003UDBWTC

I've been through a couple really fancy chairs but my lower back hurt in every single one. In a couple months I'll give it a go again, but for now I'm sticking with the crappy wood chair.

jtap | 8 years ago | on: Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

A couple years ago I was asked to dress up for the company Christmas party that was to occur later that day. On my way home to get dressed, I called up a local costume store and rented a Santa Claus costume. Showed up dressed like Santa Claus. Everyone loved it though. Told my boss that he should have chosen his words better.
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