The origin story of Rust is classic: they got tired of Day Z and wanted to make it better, so they hired some random contractor to copy Day Z with elements of Fortnite and Minecraft, the developer complains that he's entitled to more money from the success of the game, lawsuit follows, and then Facepunch supposedly claims the original version was so buggy they have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Unclear if they were just trying to start fresh so the lawsuit wouldn't follow them forever, but it started out as just a clone of another game and they turned it into a hugely successful business (and an incredible game). Most games have a short shelf life, but I've watched at least over the past 4-ish years, and the rate that they continue to push changes is impressive.
Rust has so many compelling features as a game. It was the first game where I felt like I thought about it while I wasn't playing it, because your character remains "in the game" and your base can be raided even if you log off. I don't play a ton of online games, but that was a very new and different concept when I first discovered Rust.
The game reminds me of sitting down at a poker table in a casino. It's very unforgiving - you grind, invest a lot of time, and make calculated bets as to whether you can win or lose a raid, but you can instantly lose everything in a failed raid.
I wish someone would make a browser-based version that was fun to play, and I've thought about it for some time, but the struggle is scoping an MVP that is as compelling given the constraints (eg a 2d or top-down version makes it harder to do things like build multi-story buildings and raid them).
I pretty much use Perplexity exclusively at this point, instead of Google. I'd rather just get my questions answered than navigate all of the ads and slowness that Google provides. I'm fine with paying a small monthly fee, but I don't want Cloudflare being the gatekeeper.
Perhaps a way to serve ads through the agents would be good enough. I'd prefer that to be some open protocol than controlled by a company.
Perplexity has been one of the AI companies that created the problem that gave rise to this CF proposal. Why doesn't Perplexity invest more into being a responsible scraper?
and what am I supposed to garner from the re-read?
What did you say that relates to Perplexity being one of the reasons that Cloudflare and their customers have decided they need better protection from abusive scrapers?
Websites choose their own gatekeepers, Cloudflare is just one provider
This has been my experience more recently as well, I've finally migrated from google to Brave Search since google was just slow for me.
I also appreciate the AI search results a bit when im looking for something very specific (like what the yaml definition for a docker swarm deployment constraint looks like) because the AI just gives me the snippet while the search results are 300 medium blog posts about how to use docker and none of them explain the variables/what each does. Even the official docker documentation website is a mess to navigate and find anything relevant!
Not to mention how much worse it is on mobile. Every web site asks me to accept their cookies, close layers of ads with tiny buttons, and loads slowly with ads spread throughout the content. And that’s just to figure out if I’m even on the right page.
The horrible UX on mobile, especially when traveling to another country and having to deal with forced geo-redirects, is the main reason I have largely replaced Google with ChatGPT for my everyday search needs.
Perplexity is the problem Cloudflare and companies like it are trying to solve. The company refuses to take no for an answer and will mislead and fake their way through until they've crawled the content they wanted to crawl.
The problem isn't just that ads can't be served. It's that every technical measure to attempt to block their service produces new ways of misleading website owners and the services they use. Perplexity refuses any attempt at abuse detection and prevention from their servers.
None of this would've been necessary if companies like Perplexity would've just acted like a responsible web service and told their customers "sorry, this website doesn't allow Perplexity to act on your behalf".
The open protocol you want already exists: it's the user agent. A responsible bot will set the correct user agent, maybe follow the instructions in robots.txt, and leave it at that. Companies like Perplexity (and many (AI) scrapers) don't want to participate in such a protocol. They will seek out and abuse any loopholes in any well-intended protocol anyone can come up with.
I don't think anyone wants Cloudflare to have even more influence on the internet, but it's thanks to the growth of inconsiderate AI companies like Perplexity that these measure are necessary. The protocol Cloudflare proposes is open (it's just a signature), the problem people have with it is that they have to ask Cloudflare nicely to permit website owners to track and prevent abuse from bots. For any Azure-gated websites, your bot would need to ask permission there as well, as with Akamai-gated websites, and maybe even individual websites.
A new protocol is a technical solution. Technical solutions work for technical problems. The problem Cloudflare is trying to solve isn't a technical problem; it's a social problem.
You’re referencing an old and outdated technology that has no capability to handle things like revenue and attribution. New protocols will need to evolve to the current use. Owners want money, so make the protocol focused on that use case.
I’m not here to propose a solution. I’m here as an end-user saying I won’t go back to the old experience which is outdated and broken.
Cloudflare is a gatekeeper because they’re trying to insert themselves between the owner and the end-user. Despite all the altruistic signaling, they really just want to capitalize on AI. And they’re happy to do that even if it results in a subpar experience for the end-user. They started this with a focus on news organizations, so I’m not particularly excited about trying to block AI access and lock down the web through one private company just so we can preserve 90s era clickbait businesses.
>Cloudflare is a gatekeeper because they’re trying to insert themselves between the owner and the end-user
But they can't insert themselves without the owner directly adding them. So it's the owner that's doing the gatekeeping(regardless if it's Cloudflare or iptables rules)
I think all you AI people blaming Cloudflare are just trying to deflect from the actual problem which is more and more owners don't want AI crawlers going through their content.
If Cloudflare dissapears who are you going to blame next, the iptables developers, maybe Linus Torvalds?
I've thought about this lately. In order to do that, you need to know where people typically stumble, and then create a rubric around that. Here are some things I'd look for:
- Ability to clearly define requirements up front (the equivalent mistake in coding interviews is to start by coding, rather than asking questions and understanding the problem + solution 100% before writing a single line of code). This might be the majority of the interview.
- Ability to anticipate where the LLM will make mistakes. See if they use perplexity/context7 for example. Relying solely on the LLM's training data is a mistake.
- A familiarity with how to parallelize work and when that's useful vs not. Do they understand how to use something like worktrees, multiple repos, or docker to split up the work?
- Uses tests (including end-to-end and visual testing)
- Can they actually deliver a working feature/product within a reasonable amount of time?
- Is the final result looking like AI slop, or is it actually performant, maintainable (by both humans and new context windows), well-designed, and follows best practices?
- Are they able to work effectively within a large codebase? (this depends on what stage you're in; if you're a larger company, this is important, but if you're a startup, you probably want the 0->1 type of interview)
- What sort of tools are they using? I'd give more weight if someone was using Claude Code, because that's just the best tool for the job. And if they're just doing the trendy thing like using Claude Agents, I'd subtract points.
- How efficient did they use the AI? Did they just churn through tokens? Did they use the right model given the task complexity?
I only use 2 MCP servers, and those are context7 and perplexity. For things like updated docs, I have it ask context7. For the more difficult technical tasks where I think it's going to stumble, I'll instruct Claude Code to ask perplexity and that usually resolves it. Or at least it'll surface up to me in our conversation so that we both are learning something new at that point.
For some new stuff I'm working on, I use Rails 8. I also use Railway for my host, which isn't as widely-used as a service like Heroku, for example. Rails 8 was just released in November, so there's very little training data available. And it takes time for people to upgrade, gems to catch up, conversations to bubble up, etc. Operating without these two MCP servers usually caused Claude Code to repeatedly stumble over itself on more complex or nuanced tasks. It was good at setting up the initial app, but when I started getting into things like Turbo/Stimulus, and especially for parts of the UI that conditionally show, it really struggled.
It's a lot better now - it's not perfect, but it's significantly better than relying solely on its training data or searching the web.
I've only used Claude Code for like 4 weeks, but I'm learning a lot. It feels less like I'm an IC doing this work, and my new job is (1) product manager that writes out clear PRDs and works with Claude Code to build it, (2) PR reviewer that looks at the results and provides a lot of guidance, (3) tester. I allocate my time 50%/20%/30% respectively.
Thanks, I’ll check out Perplexity. We seem to be using a similar stack. I’m also on Rails 8 with Stimulus, Hotwire, esbuild, and Tailwind.
Playwright MCP has been a big help for frontend work. It gives the agent faster feedback when debugging UI issues. It handles responsive design too, so you can test both desktop and mobile views. Not sure if you know this, but Claude Code also works with screenshots. In some cases, I provide a few screenshots and the agent uses Playwright to verify that the output is nearly pixel perfect. It has been invaluable for me and is definitely worth a try if you have not already.
I didn’t realize screenshots worked until a few days in, that was a great discovery. And recently learned you can directly paste in copied screenshots using ctrl+v (instead of cmd+v on a Mac).
I’ve had issues with insomnia starting in college. Found out I have a slow metabolism of caffeine (it’s a genetic thing). I now sleep very well, getting 3-5 hours of deep sleep per night on about 7 hours of sleep. Things I’ve done to fix it:
- No caffeine after 12pm. I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago, but I was fine as long as I didn’t have it after 12.
- Exercise with some portion being vigorous HIIT or lifting. Running also helps. It should tire your nervous system out.
- Have a consistent sleep schedule. Don’t oversleep on weekends. I’m up at 6:30am every day, give myself 30 min to wake up. Get some sunlight to flush out the adenosine in your system (do this before you drink coffee to avoid the afternoon crash).
- AC goes to 67’f at night.
- Don’t work or study in bed.
- I bought a nice bed (Purple Premier 4 King).
- Blue light-blocking glasses about 2 hours before bedtime.
- Not being a founder helps a lot, but figuring out stress relievers otherwise.
- No alcohol. I’ve mostly stopped drinking, but this alone was the worst thing for my sleep. If I do drink, earlier is better, and only a few drinks.
- Mouthguard that prevents me from snoring at night. I don’t snore as much when I have a healthy BMI, but when overweight, I snore more.
- Stop working 2 hours before bedtime. Same for gaming. These things are too mentally stimulating.
- The things that stress you out, figure those out and make sure you’re feeling good about progress each day. For founders, this sometimes just won’t go away.
- I’ve tried prescribed sleeping medications, but the one I took didn’t actually improve quality sleep. It just made me feel tired and removed the stress. Some of these drugs are just sledgehammers on the pre-frontal cortex.
- Use a sleep tracker and figure out why you’re not sleeping well. Usually can be tracked to alcohol, large meals close to bedtime, or caffeine.
- I take melatonin at bedtime. I had fatigue that I believed was because of poor sleep since moving to Austin, but realized from a doctor that it was actually just allergies. I take Singulair, made a huge difference in my energy during the day.
The irony isn't lost in seeing a bunch of HN comments criticizing an article as condescending, only to come in and condescend the OP. We can do better on HN discourse.
We'll start when we get 10 players. We'll do a cash prize of $1 to the winner for each participating player. This is an experiment, so we're just curious to see what happens :)
Edit: thanks to those who played, we finished up the game. We'll do another one tomorrow at 2pm Pacific.
They’re not mandatory to drive. Tesla does silent over the air updates with important fixes since the car has data capabilities. Larger updates happen over WiFi.
