founder @ValDotTown, spreading the joy of programming

Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
vibe coded myself a new tab chrome extension for me to fiddle with on calls without getting distracted start typing to write notes, backed up to val town
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imo codex defaults to browser-use too quickly i have to keep reminding it to use plugins/mcps instead not that i don't appreciate @AriX's magic when an mcp doesn't exist, but when it does...
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rock-paper-scissors bench lol
Replying to @modal
Here's the ranked list.
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sama quotes bret victor's "creators need an immediate connection to what they’re creating" about why super fast ai is important. super exciting!
my interview with @sama: • how he uses dots to manage @OpenAI and reduce his screentime • his default speed setting (ultrafast!) • how AI might bring about a new renaissance
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the bret victor "creators need an immediate connection to what they’re creating" references will continue until ai latency improves
ETOOMANYTHINGS: Running a bunch of agents at once to hide latency trashes your flow state. Here's what we're trying instead: blog.exe.dev/etoomanythings
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pangram's $20/month subscription is a bargain (i have two of them!) because it lets me pay money to turn my brain off from constantly trying to detect ai writing, ie have less less "epistemic vigilance" petemillspaugh.com/epistemic…
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My W for humans today: Told Astra Ultra to speed up a sqlite dashboard It came up with a convoluted caching scheme I called bullshit. Said it smelled terrible. Asked for it to explain why an elegant data model and indexes wouldn't work It then came up with a better design with super fast load times I do feel pride for my silly contribution This is the dashboard: deepseek-v41-flash.val.run/
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I'm surprised there aren't more reports of prompt injection amongst y'all in my twitter feed. Was the problem overblown or did models get immune to it?
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Tom: Amp asked for $200, so I switched to Codex Me: Please pay the $200 Tom: I'm upset at the margins they'd be making Me: I see why we have trouble getting people to pay for our $200 plan... From my upcoming play "Saaspocolpyse, a Tragedy"
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why is everyone talking about repetitive strain injury?
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Is there any moat?
So I know Cognition doesn’t care about Little Ole’ Me, and this is just my story, so take it with a grain of salt, but here’s why I don’t think all these crazy scaling revenue numbers by coding agents are going to stick: We’ve been happy Devin users for a while. Really like the product, and like the company. Still do! This isn’t shade at Cognition, and I’m not upset with them, just a sample of why I worry about the competitive landscape for these cos. Anyway, our usage grew to >$100k run rate or so. I think one or two of our users even received an email congratulating them for being Top 200 users of Devin. As usage grew, we added more capabilities and needed a BAA (layman’s terms: an agreement that says they are HIPAA compliant). This required an Enterprise contract (why a piece of paper requires extra money is a topic for another discussion, but it’s very normal…) so we started talking to their sales team. Basically, we were going to ~1.5x our spend in order to get the BAA. Honestly, that was fine with us. We like Devin! Our only request was to pay quarterly (already a big concession from our existing monthly payments, given our relatively small size). They declined, unless we committed to EVEN MORE usage. Before responding, I decided to see how difficult it would be to set up Hermes to do the equivalent work as Devin, and to see what the costs were. I’d host it in our infrastructure and only use providers we already have a BAA with. Two days. That’s it. It’s functionally 100% equivalent. Maybe slightly better in some ways, slightly worse in others. We spend a little bit of time futzing with it, but we did that with Devin, too. The cost is roughly 25% of Devin. So, two days for $100k or so per year savings. All because they didn’t want us to pay quarterly. At some point, other companies are going to catch onto this, too. So congrats on this milestone, but keep finding more ways to provide value and keep customers happy. It’s hard to compete.
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Steve Krouse retweeted
I am on the search for work trials! I have compiled some projects covering tools, libraries, graphics, Rust and JavaScript. If you have opportunities or leads, please get in contact! kaleidawave-public-pages.val…
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Steve Krouse retweeted
I'm laughing out loud. I turned Jev into an improv judge. Introducing: 'Whose Jev is it Anyway?'
typesafe's jev is fun! live demo you can play with: typesafe-demo.val.run/
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"no matter how much I try it, I just prefer water without bubbles" "still???"
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jev + kernel browser use demo pretty freaking cool! so fast! try it yourself: jev-browser-use.val.run/
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woah - maybe browser use is the first killer use-case for jev
Testing apps with @typesafeai jev & @opencode will be soooo fast small demo:
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typesafe's jev is fun! live demo you can play with: typesafe-demo.val.run/
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holy crap i've been wanting this!
AI detection, now for Gmail
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what a successful launch @CompleteSkeptic you're all over my timeline
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Shipped Deepseek v4.1 flash on Townie Crazy cheap and smart enough
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