Problem is, that just having a Claude subscription doesn't make you productive. Most of those talks happen in a "tech'ish" environments. Not every business is about coding.
Real life example: A client came to me asking how to compare orders against order confirmation from the vendor. They come as PDF files. Which made me wonder: Wait, you don't have any kind of API or at least structured data that the vendor gives you?
Nope.
And here you are. I am not talking about a niche business. I assume that's a broader problem. Tech can probably automate everything and this since 30 years. Still business lack of "proper" IT processes, because at the end every company is unique and requires particular measures to be "fully" onboarded to IT based improvements like that.
Thing is, unless the order confirmations number high in the thousands, most businesses could just hire an old lady with secretary experience to crunch through that work manually for a fraction of what it would cost them to get the whole system automated.
I've seen this play out with time sheets. Every day factory floor workers write up every job they do on time sheets, paper and pencil, but management wants excel spreadsheets with pretty plots. Solution? One old typist who can type up all the time sheets every day. No OCR trouble, no expensive developer time, if she encounters illegible numbers she just cross references against the job fliers to figure it out instead of throwing errors the first time a 0 looks like a 6.
first I was like "What but why? You don't save any space or what's that excercise about" then I read it again and it blew my mind. I thought I knew everything about ASCII. What a fool I am, Sokrates was right. Always.
That’s essentially what I’ve experienced, call it 'anecdotal evidence.'
I had a long, ongoing, and very upsetting interaction with a bigger German company. Since I have experience in data privacy and GDPR, I eventually started thoroughly crawling their entire online presence for infringements.
I found a significant number of issues and compiled a very extensive report. At first, they were completely dismissive. It was only after I issued formal legal warnings that an actual lawyer contacted me and promised to fix the issues.
Most of the GDPR violations were simply sloppy, though some were genuinely ignorant. It’s wild that we are eight years past 'Year Zero,' and while everyone is constantly talking about data privacy, these gaps still exist.
Some of them eventually has been fixed after my report, silently of course. phhh...
Mom and pop businesses with limited IT skills are not collecting emails and private information. At worst they’d be using some external service (e.g. Mailchimp) which does it for them, and those have an obligation to be familiar with the law.
The GDPR really isn't that hard to follow, for a "mom & pop" business, it really comes down to:
* Limit data retention — Don't keep personal data longer than necessary
* Honor data subject rights — Allow individuals to access, correct, delete, or port their personal data
Simply, don't collect personal information if you don't need it. If you do need it, add a delete button.
That's not a good link for a list of past threads since the idea for the latter is to include only the ones with interesting comments.
However, it looks like a good article that could use a repost! Just not soon, since we want to give enough time for the hivemind caches to clear :) - if you want to repost it in (say) a month or two, email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll put it in the SCP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308).
First lesson: Don't fall for the Survivorsip Bias.
If you see people pulling things off, what you don't see is: People not pulling off. And they are the vast majority. They invest money and time and nothing happens.
To be more "philosophical": It's a mix of luck, talent and dedication where one can substitute the other to a certain degree.
(Sorry, I know not helpful in your current situation, but I was triggered to answer the first part of your post - best of luck however!)
1. Open API for rental/real estate stuff at immoscout24...
There's an API but you have to pay for it. Which I understand on one side, but then: immoscout24 is basicly the biggest player and this is not about consumer goods but one essential good: flats, space to live. So I think it should be mandatory to offer data to everyone who wants to research house & flat pricing/demand data.
2. A generic API for governmental financial transaction data! This would make research so much easiere. There are couple of open data platforms, but look at how scrambled the data is. What is a "financial transaction"? It's basically nothing else then "from, to, amount, reason, category" - I know there's more, but you can break it down, if you want. So, right now every city, district and government is maintaining their own "database". I once tried to analyse EFRE data. Turns out, while this data is basically open and free, every party offers their own weird format, XLSX, CSV and you name it.
I don't see why no one ever tooks the effort to "normalize" such a simple thing - again: I know there's more. But the big picture should simply allow you to create a generic protocol/stream for that kind of data.
A huge intro post, like a text wall. That's everything an adhd person is trying to avoid.
Started the app. A couple of "motivational speeches". Asking some questions I don't even understand. Answered randomly, just to see what the app is offering. At the end: account required.
That's where you first lost me.
So I tried the website. First sentence just some sale-pitch-speech:
> Built from lessons learned after 80,000+ ADHD coaching sessions, Indy gives you the structure you need, daily support that keeps you accountable, and momentum you can actually sustain.
On the right some nothing-saying screenshot. Scrolling down. More text. Buzzword-Bingo. "Journey". "Build a vision." "Stop dreaming about your future. Start building it."
Great, another one of those catchy, fancy offers pretending to help you. Another pretty website from the default vercel-ish website-builder.
No offense - perhaps it's my asperger. This does not seem helpful at all. Maybe it is. Then it's on me.
I need clear, focussed messages. No noise. No modern interface. Form follows function. Not the other way around.
After you sign up, you're asked to spend 10-15 minutes creating a "Lifeline." Which, despite its name, does not appear to be a lifeline of any kind, but rather a timeline of my life, except it also strips dates out, so... just a list of events in no particular order.
Unfortunately - I've got ADHD. I'm not going to spend the next 10 minutes telling the app the biggest facts about my life. Well, actually - I tried to, then I put the phone down to do something else, and when I came back the 'page' had refreshed and the four things I had entered were back down to just the first one.
(Why do you even want them? The app hasn't even explained how this will help. It's barely even tried to explain what the app will actually DO.)
This comment might seem harsh, but this feedback is gold. I agree completely, matched my experience reading through the page, and I was diagnosed in my mid-40s with ADHD.
I wonder if the folks doing marketing are neurotypical, but they are trying to target a population that's neurodivergent? Just spitballing since I have no info, but an interesting topic.
Real life example: A client came to me asking how to compare orders against order confirmation from the vendor. They come as PDF files. Which made me wonder: Wait, you don't have any kind of API or at least structured data that the vendor gives you?
Nope.
And here you are. I am not talking about a niche business. I assume that's a broader problem. Tech can probably automate everything and this since 30 years. Still business lack of "proper" IT processes, because at the end every company is unique and requires particular measures to be "fully" onboarded to IT based improvements like that.