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I’m the author of one of the most popular mermaid renderers in Confluence. People spent huge sums of money on this. Feel free to message me if you have questions about the space.


Thanks, very kind offer. When people paid real money for this, were they paying to make diagrams look good, or for convenient source-editing and rendering in the page? Line9 is built around the first and doesn't have an ideal solution for the second yet.


I think the main thing people paid for was avoidance of change. Devs already use mermaid (by preference or policy) and therefore they wanted to keep using it. When I first build the Markdown Macro in 2012/2013 my thesis was that people would want to keep using Markdown in place of WYSIWIG, and that there was value to having a file in git be a source of truth and updating it there would keep Confluence automatically updated thereby reducing work to keep docs accurate. The first half proved true for devs, the second half did not, the stats showed that almost everyone would paste the markdown source into the in Confluence editor. When we added Mermaid, we saw more of the same. I am not sure how much I can say without violating NDAs, but I would encourage anyone working in this space to work to understand the ratio between how often content is authored vs consumed and by whom in each category. The idea that 1% of people author the content for 99% of consumers that we see on the internet does not translate to corporate environments and this has important product implications.


Hey Dylan, long time. The solution we landed on was that the skills should be authored by a small set of people who know what they’re doing and made available to non technical team members “magically”. This means either use your IT systems to push the configs, or embed them into an agent that doesn’t live on the desktop. We’ve gone the latter route and are building a whole company around solving this for regulated customers.


Hey man! Yeah, many of the non-techincal folks I've spoken to are using claude.ai or chatgpt.com. But I've been amazed at how many are using Claude CoWork or even Claude Code.

The theme seems to be wanting the same set of knowledge across any and every tool they use, without having to worry much about the mechanics of the how.

I agree that for security and governance conscious orgs a more robust server-side solution is probably what's needed. We've built that vault for sx as well. However, I am seeing that many larger orgs have decided to just build it themselves. There was a post from Mike at Gusto the other day saying as much.

The cost for build has just gotten so low now...


Yup I agree with the consistent access across surfaces ideal. WorkOS has some cool piping to support this and uses it for their internal version of the same thing. I think everyone experimenting here is a good thing. I expect we’ll end up with a few good commonly use OSS approaches, a few tech companies with NIH syndrome versions for their needs, and commercial options like we have with past technologies. These are more reflections of culture amongst buyers than anything else.


It also wouldn't surprise me if the model companies ship a strong version of this to try to lock us all in a bit more.

I hope that's not the case, or at the very least one storage and distribution system will work for all harnesses.


The use cases I care about is roughly:

1. GoPro on my face for “action” activities like gokarting

2. Portable speakers + glasses + voice control for audio while running

3. Audio triggered camera for when hands are full. This one sounds dumb, but it’s one specific object in hands that matters. Your own kid. It’s a less intrusive way to capture moments from your perspective that you have with them. I am surprised that this isn’t where they focused ad dollars.


1) You can't use a GoPro like everyone else?

2) You can't use Bluetooth earbuds like everyone else?

3) I'm sure your infant child will appreciate their representation in Meta's training data.


I would never use a product from that company for any purpose.


Allow users to opt into you injecting referral links. If they opt in, when they land anywhere, you rewrite amazon links to your referral code. Costs users $0, it's opt-in, and you make money.


I've considered this. I just feel like I need to be really careful on that front.

Right now I'm dealing with a dude that requested his own brand be added. Which is totally cool. But looking at said brand. I am reeeaaallly struggling to tell if hes 3dprinting his stuff to sell, or if hes drop-shipping it and trying to get on the list.


In the current age of AI, deepfakes, etc this is a very hard problem and I don't envy you. I think asking vendors to go through a paid verification process is fair. There are a slew of KYB vendors out there who can help.


I think you're going to have to standardize what you consider to be knock offs and what's not, or you're going to end up in continuous quagmires like this trying to make a determination based on vibes.

You might even end up getting together a team of volunteers to look through them or it'll probably get overwhelming.

What determination did you use to make the original list?


So the original list is very specifically about no-name dropshippers. I very specifically state in the readme that the list isn't a measure of quality. So in the case where this guy is 3D printing stuff and selling it. That's good enough for the list if he's been doing it long enough. But looking at the details of this one, he's dabbled in crypto. He apparently sold crystal tubes... So like he sorta feels like he might be a state-side dropshipper.

I am sorta leaning towards just adding his brand. The list isn't append only, we can remove stuff if people feel the need.


Well, he closed the pull request himself I guess. Know it doesn't matter, but I say it's printed personally.


How did you determine who was a no name drop shipper though? Based on what criteria?


Have him send you a sample piece, with his name embossed in the print. Easy to do in most slicers.


Could you ask him for a video of himself 3d printing it?


Am I understanding your point correctly as you hoping that an increase in tax rates drives property values down enough thay aggregate tax amounts are reduced?

The practical rental math in NYC is simple. Buy a $1M coop in a building with near zero costs. HOA will be at least 2k per month with the majority of that being property taxes. Thats your base rent. If you have a loan, add that to the base. You will not get cheaper rent until you drive aggregate taxes or interests rate down. There isn’t a huge profit margin on rents in NYC. I looked at a unit next door, and if we wanted to have rents break even on mortgage we would need to offer 85% cash up front. Im on the board of our coop, so I see how all of our financials function and same for prior buildings.


Your coop building is on the unfair side of the "eclectic sometimes regressive" property tax calculation the parent comment mentions. Large (10+) multi-family rental properties are taxed at a much higher rate than single-family and 2-4 family properties. Correcting this imbalance would lower property taxes on your coop building while still raising overall tax revenue for the city.


We have 36 units in our coop iirc, so we are “large”. Generally I think our taxes are fairly reasonable. I just don’t think there is any reasonable solution here that isnt focused on a simple triangle:

- Build more, destroy short term value of existing owners

- Lower taxes, hurt short term city functioning

- Lower interest rates, drive up inflation

The only “fun” solution IMO is cut taxes and cut jobs programs that don’t deliver city value. DOE is a welfare scheme at this point.


NYC is home to ~half of the co-op housing in the United States. This is a relatively unusual arrangement. Co-ops generally forbid renting / subletting, they practically ban REITs, new resident-owners go before a board to get approval. They should be considered the same as owner-occupied housing, and for long-term owner-occupied houses where the asset value isn't a big deal, higher property taxes are on average a wash - they pay higher amounts for higher levels of public services. Perhaps your $2k/month goes to $3k/month but transit becomes free, trash collection becomes effective, and the schools become better. Or in the alternate universe your $2k a month goes to $3k a month and then we hand residents a $12k check at the end of the year.

Either way, vacancy gets punished, landlords can't treat the city's housing like gold boullion, and the price of housing is fractionally more tied to the cost of living than the future economic outlook in potentia.

Picture a conventional Ponzi scheme operating in the Lower East Side, which has scaled to be 30% of the city's economy. Whole industries have risen up around this scheme, it's essentially printing money in a way that seems like it might be legal if you squint, and you're not trying to regulate/tax it. It's growing so fast that it's actually causing problematic inflation for the rest of the city.

Can you afford to let it grow unchecked, indefinitely?


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We're helping non technical users adopt AI by making usage visible. Power users become role models and people can upskill to gain value rather than lose their jobs to AI.

It's a complex problem because we need to balance trivial UX, with a slew of security and compliance requirements.

This is the first non founder developer role on the z0.ai codebase. We need someone who can own the full stack end to end: product surfaces people enjoy using, services that stay correct, and the taste to make both feel like one product.

We're funded and are live with our first customer already. We expect to onboard our next customer later this week and are actively ramping up sales efforts.

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I have a hard time with the idea that Wikipedia is unbiased when the main source in most cases is news reporting. Wikipedia is a societal form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.


This is not entirely fair. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources.

The phenomenon you are referring to usually happens in areas where there is ideological or political friction. Sure, some articles can be biased, because staying perfectly factual in the middle of an active political debate or social change is difficult for most people. But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion.

If something is created by a community and editable by anyone, then yes, you can safely assume that certain topics will not be perfectly unbiased. But the fact that you can see the sources, edit history, and discussions that led to a given decision is already a major advantage.

Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”


> But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion.

Honestly, I think on any politicised topic, that’s a waste of time - there’s a large contingent of Wikipedia editors with a shared deeply ingrained perspective that will reliably back each other up. There are better uses of one’s time than fighting such a losing battle.

> Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”

I tend to use AI to surface sources and concepts, and then go read the sources for myself to verify the AI’s claims. AI has a strong tendency to e.g. misrepresent what journal articles say, but (if they are open access or otherwise available-and they generally are if an AI is citing them) you can then read them yourself and make up your own mind.

AI has genuinely taught me things I didn’t know before about topics of interest to me-e.g. Islamic history-but I’m careful to verify its claims with reliable sources rather than just trusting them-which of course one should do with Wikipedia too


>I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”

I guess that was a few years ago? Because now he also has Grokipedia ("from the guy that brought you X")...


It was few years ago indeed. I honestly do not give Grokipedia much credibility because it was created solely after Musk got political and someone edited wiki saying that he aligned with "right" or "far-right" politics. He saw that and created it as an "facts based" alternative purel out of spite.


To what extent does Grokipedia reflect Musk's personal ideological biases?

I haven't paid that much attention to it, to be honest.


According to https://www.npr.org/2025/10/29/nx-s1-5588695/wikipedia-groki...

> Musk is positioning Grokipedia as an alternative to Wikipedia, which he called "Wokepedia" in an X post last December.

> Grokipedia also says Wikipedia is the subject of "persistent criticisms regarding factual reliability, susceptibility to vandalism and hoaxes, and systemic ideological biases — particularly a left-leaning slant in coverage of political figures and topics.

...which is consistent with what the right side of the US political spectrum keeps saying about media outlets that dare to disagree with them.


> The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources.

This is true of good articles, but the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia tends to lack citations or, worse, cites sources that don't actually support the stated facts.

If an account in good standing adds a cited sentence the likelihood that anyone will actually go and check the source to confirm it supports the sentence is low. It's more likely that the edit will be reverted for other reasons.

Citogenesis is also a real problem, and wildly under-documented.

And most people who read Wikipedia do not take the time to examine all of the sources (if they're even able to - just cite a book if you want to make something up), read through the edit history, and get up to speed on the article-specific politics playing out on the talk page.

Still, it's better than everything else out there.


> Personally, I do not know a better alternative.

For a long time, traditional encyclopedias had a much better track record on topics related to politics and society, simply because their editor selection process largely eliminated single-issue crusading. You wouldn't be picked to lead a particular domain unless your academic track record made it clear that you're level-headed.

But I think that AI, just like your X friend anecdote, actually illustrates an interesting point: most of the time, when we consult some sort of an online reference, we're not doing anything important, so the accuracy is not critical. Quite often, we're just trying to validate our beliefs or win online arguments. An LLM that's 90% accurate but sounds 120% authoritative (and almost always willing to support your priors) is perfect for that.


> For a long time, traditional encyclopedias had a much better track record on topics related to politics and society, simply because their editor selection process largely eliminated single-issue crusading

That's a bit debatable. Traditional encyclopedias also had articles that were far from perfect, some of which had biases (not to mention there wasn't just one traditional encyclopedia. Different ones were of different quality). I think more research would be needed to figure out which is better.


> stated facts backed by decent sources.

Like WW2-era articles backed by books wtitten in 2003 from an obscure author. And only this author.


Where did you find that?


Articles where almost everyone agrees on the facts are not interesting for discussing whether a particular encyclopedia is unbiased - it's precisely the contented topics where that distinction matters.


[flagged]


The worst part is when they cite an article that says the opposite of the citing sentence.


So fix it dear Henry.


i'm not sure you're why you're being downvoted, relying on journalism is the weakest part of wikipedia, far and away, because it affects accuracy, which is what gell man amnesia is about, not bias. in comparison bias, in general, seems to happen regardless of sourcing.


He got done voted because that's an exaggerated claim. With no proof. Most of the articles on Wikipedia are just facts about nature, geography, history, etc and they don't need a newspaper as a source.



"Gell-Man" is an unfounded toy theory invented by an author without any research, using a colleague's name without permission to make it sound more authorative. It's hokum.


I got hit with a fraudulent chargeback (claim was the purchase was unauthorized and the person showed up in person to a class) and it was doubly bad because they paid via Link which means that Stripe actively verified them via 2FA.

Can someone explain to me why Stripe (or a competitor) doesn't offer a setting "refuse transactions for cards that have filed > x chargebacks with <acquirer> merchants this year"?


I don't know this is the reason, but if I were asked to build such a system, I'd be pretty worried that it constitutes a consumer report under the terms of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Certainly I wouldn't want the inevitable news drama about it. "I'm just a poor innocent grandma, I'm a trusting person when it comes to Facebook ads, and Stripe punished me for getting scammed by banning me from half the stores on the Internet!"


If your card is actually stolen then you should have the card number changed to prevent additional fraud and then the disputes would be against the old card number rather than the new one, right?


If your card is stolen you should, but not necessarily if you fall for a Facebook ad that ships you a pile of rocks or a paper photo of the product you thought you bought.


Isn't that exactly when you should have your card number changed? You gave your card info to a blatant fraudster. If they're willing to ship you a pile of rocks then there's a significant chance they're willing to use the card info you gave them to make fraudulent purchases.


Yeah, though this rule sounds a bit tricky. Like what if someone legitimately had their card abused.

The thing that gets me is that Stripe boasts about their machine learning radar rules etc etc, but somehow can't feed it actually valuable data.

Stripe support saw the emails from the customer boasting about defrauding me, they completely agreed that this is a clear case of friendly-fraud, but did nothing with this info.


Stripe can’t do anything per the way CCs work. Asking for that to change is a big ask. Asking my vendor to help me not do business with people who are likely to scam me is a smaller one.


100% agree. They cannot reverse the dispute. I already lost the money. I understand.

But Stripe is exactly in a position to at least use the evidence I provided (in this case, the evidence included the customer clearly admitting to friendly fraud), and feed it into their fraud-prevention system in some way. This way, lots of signals can help protect merchants from friendly fraudsters. So yes, I see it as a pretty small and legit ask from Stripe.


claim was the purchase was unauthorized and the person showed up in person to a class

Certainly a person showed up in person to a class, but how do you know it was the person whose credit card was used?


It matched their LinkedIn photo.


[flagged]


While funny, I literally just used my LinkedIn picture in a legal case of mistaken identity on behalf of a US state.

Not kidding.


Do you imagine someone got a stolen credit card, made a linkedin with that name, used the card to attend a live class under the fake ID, or are you just doing the classic hacker news aaaaactually?

Comments like this have ruined this site. We all know that’s never happened once in history.


If you care about the quality of the site, consider the guidelines about not responding to a bad comment with a worse one and not griping about how HN has gotten terrible or turned into reddit or what there you. Downvote, flag, and move on to better discussion, and you'll spend a lot more time engaging and contributing to good discussions.

Contributing to good discussions is the highest leverage way to promote the quality of the site. Spending time in poor discussions is what makes it feel like HN has gone to crap.


Fair point. I think we’ve all tried that and it isn’t working, and pointing out to people they’re being annoying could help.

But probably won’t, so you’re probably right.


The odds that someone meaningfully reflects on their behavior when you tell them they're what's wrong with HN are pretty slim. You can substantially increase those odds by being more neutral about it.

It's entirely possible HN is dying, HN won't last forever and dang has said he is very concerned about the direction he sees the commentary going. But it's also entirely possible that the quality waxes and wanes primarily due to internal factors and that political tensions, AI bots and slop submissions, etc are external factors straining HN that will eventually be resolved.

Either way, the "real HN" I find is still here if you look for it, and I have always seen people on here who complain about the quality of the site but when you go to their comment history (I have not looked at your comment history to be clear) you see they're constantly getting into arguments and architecting a miserable experience for themselves. One's experience on HN is largely what they make it.

At any rate I appreciate you considering.


Their business model is to allow as many possible "valid" transactions, not to serve their "clients". They're a PSP...


Only if it has access to exfiltrate data. We deny by default and the company has to allowlist each individual destination.


> Only if it has access to exfiltrate data.

Or if it has access to a tool call which allows it to exfiltrate data.

In the example identified, the AI agent never accesses the exfiltration URL.

The agent sends an innocuous-looking message to a user via a teams message.

MSTeams previews the link, accessing the exfiltration URL.


allowlisting breaks once the agent has messaging tools. you can deny all outbound from the agent, but if it can post to teams or slack or email, link previews will fetch whatever URL the injection puts in. messaging is usually the first tool anyone adds to an enterprise agent so you end up with strict network controls that don't actually prevent anything.


I've built something similar to this internally and absolutely agree that timing is the real challenge.

Getting an AI to navigate a process is now easy. However, the difficult problem is having it understand: 1. How to screenshot or, even better, capture a GIF of exactly the right points in time 2. How to move the mouse and pause at the right points in time such that a human understands it


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