That sum is ridiculous, but not everyone is only programming for bigcorp. I've had Cursor Pro for something like 3 years on my own dime. So yes hundreds of hundreds of dollars.
How do you own Cursor for 3 years, when even ChatGPT is not that old? The earliest Cursor submission to HN was on October 15, 2023 --- not even 2 years old [0].
Pro since Aug '23 based on my invoices. Sorry, dang can update my wildly wrong timeline if wished :). Not sure when my account was created but feels like forever.
I don't see why cursor or their affiliates would be above the practice. It seems generally accepted that many discussions online devolve into, or were initiated as, marketing campaigns. It is probably particularly effective on software developers that claim to be blind to advertisements.
You said automated marketing. I mean I can get why you think I could be a shill for Cursor given my horrible sense of time. But for it to be automated is an interesting claim.
I definitely wouldn't be surprised if a small startup was engaging in their own posts, something I do find shameful. But that's quite a far shot from a wildly successful startup with 100M ARR engaging in some kind of scheme where accounts with active history are making automated comments. Just seems not only unnecessary but also unlikely given the risk and effort involved.
I think it's much more likely that out of the 300k users or whatever they have, a lot of them are on hackernews and have good things to say about the product and a 1.0 is a significant event.
