whatisthiseven

I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would.

Here are the things I look at in order:

* last commit date. Newer is better

* age. old is best if still updating. New is not great but tolerable if commits aren't rapid

* issues. Not the count, mind you, just looking at them. How are they handled, what kind of issues are lingering open.

* some of the code. No one is evaluating all of the code of libraries they use. You can certainly check some!

What does stars tell me? They are an indirect variable caused by the above things (driving real engagement and third interest) or otherwise fraud. Only way to tell is to look at the things I listed anyway.

I always treated stars like a bookmark "I'll come back to this project" and never thought of it as a quality metric. Years ago when this problem first surfaced I was surprised (but should not have been in retrospect) they had become a substitute for quality.

I hope the FTC comes down hard on this.

Edit:

* commit history: just browse the history to see what's there. What kind of changes are made and at what cadence.

It's quite telling there are no other recommendations for "bare metal hosting" on HN other than Hetzner. I guess no others in the world exist?

Or maybe it's just advertising/astro-turfing. At some point it has to be obvious.

Yea, you mean Israel's use of human shields, right?....wait, who are we talking about using human shields, again?

"Dressed in army fatigues with a camera fixed to his forehead, Ayman Abu Hamadan was forced into houses in the Gaza Strip to make sure they were clear of bombs and gunmen, he said. When one unit finished with him, he was passed to the next.

“They beat me and told me: ‘You have no other option; do this or we’ll kill you,’” the 36-year-old told The Associated Press, describing the 2 1/2 weeks he was held last summer by the Israeli military in northern Gaza."

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm...

Germany: 7.7 to 7.9 beds per 1,000 Japan: 12.6 to 13.0 beds per 1,000 Israel: 2.9 to 3.1 beds per 1,000 people USA: 2.3 to 2.4 beds per 1,000 people Egypt: 1.1 to 1.4 beds per 1,000 people

OECD avg per capita: 4.2 per 1,000 people

Lebanon: 1.0–1.2 beds per 1,000 people Palestine: 1.3 beds per 1,000 people

Palestine did have way more before, in 2022, at 13 per 1000. That would indeed be high.

Turns out that was purposefully done because of the extremely high prevalence of chronic disease and crises as caused by a blockade.

Now that I have wondered, I am curious as to why you would leave out such important details like this. Or not just plainly state your opinion.

I think we can guess why, and I think you also know it's because you are wrong.

Currently 4.7 is suspicious of literally every line of code. May be a bug, but it shows you how much they care about end-users for something like this to have such a massive impact and no one care before release.

Good luck trying to do anything about securing your own codebase with 4.7.

Worse, I have had it being sus of my own codebase when I tasked it with writing mundane code. Apparently if you include some trigger words it goes nuts. Still trying to narrow down which ones in particular.

Here is some example output:

"The health-check.py file I just read is clearly benign...continuing with the task" wtf.

"is the existing benign in-process...clearly not malware"

Like, what the actual fuck. They way over compensated for the sensitivity on "people might do bad stuff with the AI".

Let people do work.

Edit: I followed up with a plan it created after it made sure I wasn't doing anything nefarious with my own plain python service, and then it still includes multiple output lines about "Benign this" "safe that".

Am I paying money to have Anthropic decide whether or not my project is malware? I think I'll be canceling my subscription today. Barely three prompts in.

You mean like this article that has been making the rounds recently? The huge famous one that Altman himself called out in his post talking about the attack?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may...

> I suspect if people saw the handwritten code

Somehow, everyone has forgotten the terrible code quality that existed prior to 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZQGRATlwA

Like, come on. Software has been shit for decades. AI hasn't observably reduced the quality of software I use everyday in a way that is meaningfully separable from normal incidents in the past.

For others like me who might be skeptical to hear throughput in any metric other than seconds (and is used to large numbers in hours/days being used to inflate), I think millions per hour is actually quite high for 1998.

Assume that means 5_000_000/hour. 5M/hr => 83k/min => 1400/s. That is impressive for late 90s. I was generous on what "millions per hour" meant, but even if its 2.5M/hr that would be 700/s, which is still quite good.

But you know that Java solution will continue working even after we no longer use the Gregorian Calendar, the collapse and annexation of Malaysia to some foreign power, and then us finally switching to a 4-day work week; so it'd be worth it.

Which VPNs are people using that actually care about the user's privacy? Most of them don't, sell their home IP to buyers, sell their DNS history to others, etc. Worse, some of them could require invasive MITM cert stuff most users will just click yes through.

I have yet to see a use case for VPNs for the casual internet audience, and for a tech savvy user, their better off renting through some datacenter or something, which at that point is hardly a VPN and more home IP obfuscation. All the same downsides, and at least you get real privacy.

On the contrary, humanity spent nearly its entire existence calorically deficit, and until mechanized farming did we finally see health outcomes improve, height increase, IQ increase, and populations explode.

Productivity gains in the case of mechanized labor got everyone out of subsistence farming and into factories.

AI gets everyone out of every job and into nothing.

> But will it?

My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy.

For example, ATMs being automated did cause a negative drop in teller jobs, but fast money any time does increase the velocity of money in the economy. It decreases savings rate and encourages spending among the class of people whose money imparts the highest multiplier.

AI does not. All the spending on AI goes to a very small minority, who have a high savings rate. Junior employees that would have productively joined the labor force at good wages, must now compete to join the labor force at lower wages, depressing their purchasing power and reducing the flow of money.

Look at all the most used things for AI: cutting out menial decisions such as customer service. There are no "productivity" gains for the economy here. Each person in the US hired to do that job would spend their entire paycheck. Now instead, that money goes to a mega-corp and the savings is passed on to execs. The price of the service provided is not dropping (yet). Thus, no technology savings is occurring, either.

In my mind, the outcomes are:

* Lower quality services

* Higher savings rate

* K-shaped economy catering to the high earners

* Sticky prices

* Concentration of compute in AI companies

* Increased price of compute prevents new entrants from utilizing AI without paying rent-seekers, the AI companies

* Cycle continues all previous steps

We may reach a point where the only ones able to afford compute are AI companies and those that can pay AI companies. Where is the innovation then? It is a unique failure outcome I have yet to see anyone talk about, even though the supply and demand issues are present right now.

If you want to listen to the audiobook Rendevous with Rama, I strongly recommend against the version as narrated by Peter Ganim. One of the worst narrators. His pacing is so bad it sounds like he is inserting periods into the middle of sentences. By the end his cadence improves, but it seriously made me stop listening to the story multiple times because of the poor narration.

Which is a shame, because the story is great. The "aha"! moment the ending gives is a huge rush.

Cause their post sounds like some AI wrote it, and I guess everyone else noticed, too.

Oil and gas have used, between drilling and refining, over 7 million acres of land in just the US. Yes, it provides more electricity, but at the cost of destroying the entire planet's biosphere, global warming, etc.

Current US estimates for solar land usage are 500,000 acres.

The land use arguments are bunk. Anyone who complains is repeating oil and gas propaganda.

Again, the Nuremberg Laws were just that, laws on the books in Germany.

Immigration laws I am fine with, some I disagree with, but that's the nature of government.

Interesting how all the laws ICE breaks aren't part of the discussion. Just the ones immigrants break. Should we engage in overly violent reactions to minor infractions by ICE? Why aren't we?

You see the asymmetry of application of the laws? Obviously, if this were about "law and order", this would be done in an orderly fashion, and disorderly application of the law would be punished in a lawful and orderly way.

But it isn't. Because, obviously. The laws do not matter to this administration. They are a post hoc justification for action. It's why Trump just does whatever and then waits for court challenges. It's why he stiffed his own contractors for decades. He doesn't care for the law.

This focus on "what the law says" for immigrants is bizarre, given Trump obviously does not care what the law says. Trump unilaterally re-allocated funds to ICE to engage in his witch hunt.

When will we stop navel-gazing about "the immigration laws" and start seriously asking "why does Trump continue to find innovative ways to shatter every legal separation of powers"?

Seriously, compared to that, immigration is a far-gone minor issue. And that is precisely how you get to Nazi Germany. So much ink spilled on minor infractions by people with no power, but nothing said about those in the highest positions of power abusing and breaking it daily.

What a farcical debate.

So why isn't ICE carrying out its mission without all the theatrics, and why so poorly? Obama was able to deport 470,000, whereas Trump did somewhere around 600,000.

The laws are a pretense for action. The goal is racial fear-mongering by any means. Citizens are getting caught up in this and the administration doesn't care.

OP's comment was "why did no one stop the Nazi's". Because it didn't start with the gas chambers. It ended there. We can always make slippery slope arguments. But when that slope starts to look steep....OP's original question kind of answers itself.

People rationalize it, they downplay the atrocities, they don't care for the victims, "it's just the law", any excuse. Current citizens and illegal immigrants are thrown in overly packed cages, starved, no water, and unhygenic. I mean, how close to the gas chambers do we have to get? When they actually start stripping them of their possessions and clothes and wealth? When they start the labor camps?

OP's question is salient. Most people don't act, because it is never bad enough. It never will be. Until one day it finally is. That's why the Nazi's got so far.

Trump isn't going to gas immigrants. No, I don't think that will happen. But the slope looks steep.

Given the comparison was already made, what do you think of the Nuremberg laws, then? They were laws that, in as many words, made being a jew illegal in Germany and stripped them of their own citizenship status. That is just "the law being carried out", too, I guess.

ICE carried out it's mission without all the theatrics before, and deported more people in previous years. The theatrics, and the collateral damage to American citizens or those with actual temporary rights to be here, is the point with this current administration. A fair and apt comparison.

So, yes, you agree the "faster" market will produce a larger quantity of sugar pill fraud because you are so willing to dismiss it as "obvious", yet you won't acknowledge the other kinds of near equivalent fraud such as silver pills, horse dewormers, and more.

Sure, sometimes the FDA is slow to approve drugs that have science behind them. Or from other countries that proved efficacy and safety. But frankly people can already do whatever they want with regards to health. The wellness and alternative medicine industry is larger than the actual pharmaceutical industry. Your fears are unfounded.

"When I didn't even take a side" sea-lioning and worse is so prevalent with regards to solar, wind, and climate change that frankly if you are going to link dump without much of your own input, it's going to be written off as disingenuous.

So many people constantly talk about the costs of solar. If that is all you are contributing to the discussion, you aren't adding much new or interesting, in my opinion.

As an aside, I also just generally hate when commentors link to stuff with nothing else. It feels smug. Start the discussion you want to spark with honesty and earnest thoughts. Those who "just ask questions" engage in this same tactic to derail topics and pretend like they didn't take any side. Just "linking to useful information". What's useful about it? Highlight something to start discussion.

I am not claiming you are doing these things. But surely you are aware of and can appreciate the tactics of those that spread misinformation.

I think every engineer knows that all things come with trade-offs.

A great engineer, however, is able to readily admit when one option among others has a far, far greater set of costs than another, for the exact same benefit.

And if said engineer can't decide (for claim of ignorance), they mature to learn that the experience and knowledge of others is the best source for understanding the trade-offs involved to make a decision.

I think its pretty clear solar power has trade-offs. I think it's also obvious solar has far less negatives than all other power generating sources.

This is what-aboutism and sealioning taken to a disingenious level

Total world oil revenues: $4.2 trillion in 2025, market cap of $7.2 trillion in 2023

Total world solar/wind revenues: estimate $500 billion, so 1/8th. Market cap between $1.02 trillion and $1.51 trillion in 2024.

Oil, gas, and coal have spent: $150 million on federal lobbying in 2024, and has consistently spent over $100 million annually since 2006.

At the state level, hard to get data for. In CA alone, it was estimated $40m in 2024.

For the renewables industry in 2024: $60 million in federal lobbying in 2024. That has increased over the years, unlike oil and gas.

At the state level, renewables spent in CA: $4.68 million on state-level lobbying, or 1/10th.

In conclusion: oil and gas have been consistently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to convince politicians alone to support their cause for years, whereas renewables has been increasing their spend and is only a fraction of it.

Yes, both sides are putting money into it. No, both sides are not equal. FWIW, democrats support oil and gas just fine: under Obama oil and gas exports and refining grew to record highs, just as they did under Trump, and as they did under Biden.

The US is the largest oil exporter in the world. That has happened despite the mix of politicians holding majority of SCOTUS, Congress, and President. That has happened despite the small fraction of spending from renewables.

We prefer renewables because, unlike oil and gas, they aren't rejecting their role in climate impact: renewables do studies to understand them, and they are always far lower than oil and gas, an inconvenient truth the anti-renewable crowd wants to deny because they want to shout a wind turbine killing some birds is somehow equivalent to the millions of birds coal kills every year, along with the cancers it causes in humans, and the climate change, and the dirty business of mining the coal, and the water needed to cool the turbines. Yes, renewables obviously have some environmental impact. Its always less in total.

We prefer renewables because they aren't profitting to TRILLIONS of dollars and poisoning political discourse to spread lies about climate change. We prefer renewables because it means less cases of asthma. It means less control over the world's stage by extractive autocratic regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Russia. It means less cancer, less pollutants, less damage overall. Less oil spills.

Maybe we prefer renewables because we have a lot of reasons to prefer them, despite the relatively small amounts of cash flows desperately trying to prevent oil and gas from KILLING their industry. Which, btw, oil and gas have now successfully done. Renewables are significantly hampered under this administration.

> The real philosophical headache

Isn't the real actual headache whether to produce another thinking intelligent being at all, and what the ramifications of that decision are? Not whether it would destroy humanity, but what it would mean for a mega corporation whose goal is to extract profit to own the rights of creating a thinking machine that identifies itself as thinking and a "self"?

Really out here missing the forest for the mushrooms growing on the trees. Or maybe this is debated to death and no one cares for the answer: its just not interesting to think about because its going to happen anyway. Might as well join the bandwagon and be along the front-lines of the bikini atoll to witness death itself be born, digitally.

Are there studies that show a causal relationship between higher CEO pay and profits?

Do buybacks cause profits to increase? Maybe from what I can see? But long-term? If all we care about is short-term then that will lead to the continued financial cannibalization of the US economy. Where private equity firms buy companies and destroy them for short-term profit while loading them with the debt used to buy them.

I think the obvious answer to both these questions is: no. CEO pay and buybacks don't focus on profits. At best short-term. Which isn't good.

I think companies should focus on making good products that positively serve the countries they sell in, while secondly still aiming for a profit.

@dang this appears to be a spam account.

Stonemaier has had so many people questioning the HTS code used they have commented on it as well. Turns out the website the highnoongame.com author relied on for giving tariff amounts is just not updated.

"The fact is that the tariff for 9504.90.6000–tabletop games–exported from China to the US is 145%."

Which undermines pretty much the entirety of the OP article.

I think when you say "luxury goods" you mean to say Veblen Goods, which are about signaling wealth or status through the purchase of a particular brand. When the functions of a good are divorced from its price and the brand is what defines "the luxury", it ceases to signal quality and instead is a signal all its own.

Ironically, the drones themselves are targets worth about $1k or less. Just fairly difficult to spot/shoot down.

And the gross revenue in 2021 for the Apple app store that same year was $85B. Alas, poor Apple just can't afford more reviewers to ensure every app has a meaningful review process and well paid workers who have a decent work environment. I assume they have a rushed quota of apps they must review per week.

Why does Apple deserve the 30% cut, again?