4,734 karma · joined October 1, 2009
Gall notes that the universe naturally trends toward complexity and unintended consequences and therefore complex designs should be assumed to already be full of these unintended consequence “bugs”. He proposes that systems should be designed:
- with less scope to reduce unintended consequences,
- with less rigidity to allow for workarounds when unintended consequences arise, and
- to take advantage of “momentum” to reduce the required energy to use the system correctly. In other words make the right thing the easy thing, remembering that the easiest thing to do is nothing, thus systems will halt if operators get too busy with other tasks.)
The only claim here is that there’s a report that tracks GitHub star growth that is that is presumably read by VCs:
>> Union Labs is the most consequential case. It was ranked #1 on Runa Capital's ROSS Index for Q2 2025 - a widely cited VC industry report identifying the "hottest open-source startups" - with 54.2x star growth and 74,300 stars. Our analysis found 32.7% zero-repo accounts, 52% zero-follower accounts, and a fork-to-star ratio of 0.052. The StarScout analysis flagged it with 47.4% suspected fake stars. An influential investment-sourcing report that VCs rely on was topped by a project with nearly half its stars suspected as artificial.
Again, the claim here is that the report is “influential”. Maybe?
Union Labs is the most consequential case. It was ranked #1 on Runa Capital's ROSS Index for Q2 2025 - a widely cited VC industry report identifying the "hottest open-source startups" - with 54.2x star growth and 74,300 stars. Our analysis found 32.7% zero-repo accounts, 52% zero-follower accounts, and a fork-to-star ratio of 0.052. The StarScout analysis flagged it with 47.4% suspected fake stars. An influential investment-sourcing report that VCs rely on was topped by a project with nearly half its stars suspected as artificial.
i.e. Nursing jobs mostly go to women not because men can’t do them because “nurses aren’t men”, per our current cultural norms.
Cofounders and founding engineers just don’t talk enough about how they model the financial risk of investing in a high risk asset like a startup, and how they make sure that they’re not taking on more risk than they can personally manage if things don’t work out. Approaches will vary by person and personal circumstances, so it’s also helpful to know what constraints they’re working with (like needing to house and feed their family).
> Net income from assets denominated in euro rose by EUR 2 billion, driven by an increase in outstandings. Income from assets held for own account rose by EUR 12.2 billion as a result of an exceptional item. In 2025 and at the start of 2026, while the volume of gold reserves remained unchanged, the Banque de France had to align a residual portion (5%) with technical guidelines, resulting in a significant realised currency gain. This exceptional foreign exchange income totalled EUR 11 billion for 2025.
> Net operating expenditure remained under control, falling to EUR 831 million from EUR 888 million in 2024. Since 2015, net operating expenditure has fallen by an average of 4.1% in volume terms.
> Overall, after transferring EUR 5 billion from reserves and booking a corporation tax charge of EUR 1.5 billion, net profit for 2025 totalled EUR 8.1 billion.
> A total of EUR 0.4 billion of this amount has been allocated to the special reserve, in accordance with regulations, while the remainder has been used to clear the deficit in retained earnings (EUR 7.7 billion) that was left after the allocation of the net loss in 2024
> After clearing these past losses in their entirety, the Banque de France’s net equity – comprised of own funds plus unrealised capital gains on asset holdings – is now extremely solid at EUR 283.4 billion, up from EUR 202.7 billion in 2024. The Banque de France’s net equity includes a revaluation reserve of state gold and foreign exchange reserves (RRRODE) of EUR 11.4 billion, to cover future monetary expenses
I assume that this increased equity makes selling bonds a bit easier?
From: “Net profit of EUR 8.1 billion, enabling the clearing of losses carried forward” https://www.banque-france.fr/en/press-release/net-profit-eur...
> I found that in my hosts file the other day too, and I investigated to find why they're doing it at all.
> They're using this to detect if you have Creative Cloud already installed when you visit on their website.
> When you visit https://www.adobe.com/home, they load this image using JavaScript: https://detect-ccd.creativecloud.adobe.com/cc.png
> If the DNS entry in your hosts file is present, your browser will therefore connect to their server, so they know you have Creative Cloud installed, otherwise the load fails, which they detect.
> They used to just hit http://localhost:<various ports>/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.
I think using LinkedIn is pretty much agreeing to participate in “fingerprinting” (essentially identifying yourself) to that system. There might be a blurry line somewhere around “I was just visiting a page hosted on LinkedIn.com and was not myself browsing anyone else’s personal information”, but otherwise LinkedIn exists as a social network/credit bureau-type system. I’m not sure how we navigate this need to have our privacy while simultaneously needing to establish our priors to others, which requires sharing information about ourselves. The ethics here is not black and white.
Edit: Newspapers have a long history of using headline editors who add “spin” otherwise reasonable stories handed in by journalists. This story was built by talking to a few entrepreneurs who offer line-sitting to see if they’d served any customers for airport security waits. Only one had.
Perhaps, but the question to ask is not “how to apply some pressure” but “how to apply pressure in the place where it’s most effective.
There is always a conversation, but it is often not the popular one and gets drown out by whatever everyone is excited about at the moment. You can find it if you seek it out.
Lawrence Lessig’s book “Code” (1999), for example, talks about how a completely unrelated internet is an anomaly, and that regulation will certainly be necessary, and advocates that it be done in a thoughtful manner.
> … it’s not typically like no taxes get paid.
This is why I asked for elaboration: The poster was unclear about how, say, making capital improvements (and getting taxed on those over time) would somehow look suspicious to the IRS, as it seems like this is an extremely common practice. I assume it’s not that then, but something else which I’d love for the poster to share.
As an interviewee it’s important to try and identify whether the group you’re interviewing with operates this way, literally: How will they get the money to pay for your salary? That way you avoid giving nom-starter answers to interview questions.
> This appeal is not about the merits of the workers’ claims, but rather whether England or Malaysia is the appropriate forum (ie. the proper place) in which the claims can and/or should be determined. The first and second Appellants, Dyson Technology Limited and Dyson Limited, are English companies. The Respondents commenced proceedings against the English companies in England. However, the English companies sought a stay of proceedings on the grounds that England was not the appropriate forum to determine the claims. The third Appellant, Dyson Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian company, was joined to the proceedings on the basis that it is a necessary and proper party to the claims. The Respondents have also indicated their intent to join the Malaysian employer, ATA/J, to proceedings.
The BBC article didn’t say, but this is presumably a civil (not criminal) case and, should the plaintiffs have prevailed, would have resulted in a financial award. The settlement basically gets to the same outcome, just faster.
I’m not certain that allowing the plaintiffs to sue the parent company directly is really that big of a logical leap. The court should be an accessible venue for dispute settlement in general. Supposedly the plaintiffs would have had a chance to argue that the parent company had insufficient oversight of labor practices at their suppliers. We didn’t get a ruling on that.
[1] “Limbu and others (Respondents) v Dyson Technology Limited and others (Appellants)” https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2025-0019
“Save webpages to read later in Safari on iPhone” https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/save-pages-to-a-readi...
Your claim here is that humans can't hallucinate something random. Clearly they can and do.
> ... that will logic through things and find the correct answer.
But humans do not find the correct answer 100% of the time.
The way that we address human fallibility is to create a system that does not accept the input of a single human as "truth". Even these systems only achieve "very high probability" but not 100% correctness. We can employ these same systems with AI.