Hacker News: PyWoody

New comment by PyWoody in "Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program"

PyWoody — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:35:58 +0000

I live in a touristy town that does this with J1 workers. I'll tell you why: The jobs pay $7.25/hour.

The J1s are then packed like sardines into houses where they pay rent by the week. Why by the week? To remind them they're expendable and can be deported at a moment's notice by the restaurant/hotel/amusement park/etc. they work at. The worst I've heard is 16 people living in a 3-bedroom, 1 bathroom house.

The J1s themselves are typically great people. A lot of them do everything they can to stay in the area via Green Cards or whatever. Business that treat their J1s like shit are usually blacklisted by locals, too. We'll actively tell tourists not to give those businesses any business and why.

New comment by PyWoody in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

PyWoody — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 15:04:35 +0000

Everything that could ever be said about America is in East of Eden.

New comment by PyWoody in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

PyWoody — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:02:50 +0000

I couldn't remember which Shakespeare plays I had or hadn't read, so I've spent the summer going through them alphabetically. It's been a blast!

I knew many everyday expressions and phrases come from his work but I had no idea it was so many.

I'm currently about halfway through at 3.2k pages.

New comment by PyWoody in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

PyWoody — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:38:05 +0000

I'm guessing you don't know many roofers. I've watched roofers crush tall boys at 6AM more times than I can count.

New comment by PyWoody in "Who Killed Paulina Borsook's Career?"

PyWoody — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:28:56 +0000

There used to be a politician named Richard Swett[0]. He went by Dick.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_N._Swett

New comment by PyWoody in "Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests"

PyWoody — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:02:49 +0000

Man, this comment is getting way more attention than I expected lol

Yes, they work on an affiliated model. From their About[0] page:

  How We Make Money
  GearLab is a free service that is entirely reader-supported. We select and review products objectively and independently. We only make money when you click on our affiliate links and buy products we've reviewed, which helps support our testing work.
  
  If you click on a retailer's link on our site and make any purchase, the retailer will contribute a portion of the sale to help support this site. It won't cost you anything extra, and it's a simple way to help us fund our gear reviews. Thanks for your support of our work!

[0] https://www.techgearlab.com/about

New comment by PyWoody in "Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests"

PyWoody — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:58:37 +0000

From their About[0] page:

  No Ads, No Freebies, No Promotion
  We refuse to accept any manufacturer's free evaluation units, and we do not accept any paid endorsements. Our focus is strictly on creating content for the benefit of our readers, and we align our business model to focus on our reader's interests.

Again, not affiliated; just a satisfied user.

[0] https://www.techgearlab.com/about

New comment by PyWoody in "Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests"

PyWoody — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:56:33 +0000

Because they are not a review aggregator? They purchase the products themselves, do extensive testing, and then publish their results. You can find more about their process on their About page here: https://www.techgearlab.com/about.

New comment by PyWoody in "Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests"

PyWoody — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 13:49:34 +0000

I gave up on any product related reviews on Reddit a decade ago. It can still be useful for guides that may describe what type of products you should look into, e.g., woodworking tools, skincare, etc.

For product reviews, I've been using GearLab (https://www.techgearlab.com/) for years with pretty reliable results. I have no affiliation with them.

New comment by PyWoody in "Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding"

PyWoody — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:28:04 +0000

This looks almost too good to be true! Thank you for sharing. I'm going to migrate my 600+ library over tonight.

New comment by PyWoody in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"

PyWoody — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 23:11:39 +0000

  Should they be outlawed from selling to certain classes of investor? Which?

Yes. This is already the case for law firms as they have to be owned and managed by lawyers, in most jurisdictions.

New comment by PyWoody in "EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'"

PyWoody — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:49:57 +0000

You might want to look into Gretzky's political beliefs before "importing" him.

New comment by PyWoody in "OpenAI bots knew about the RubyGems caching vulnerability"

PyWoody — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:37:35 +0000

If anyone is confused about this comment and similar others, the original title had "rouge Agent" instead of "rogue Agent."

New comment by PyWoody in "Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening"

PyWoody — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 13:05:16 +0000

  Not sure why my comment merited a downvote.

There seems to be a mass downvoting scheme on HN lately. I don't know who's behind it and what their motives are but I constantly see valid comments made within the last five minutes greyed out.

New comment by PyWoody in "A Doctor Sued 700 Patients for Debts; 81 Were Arrested. Now He's a Senator"

PyWoody — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 23:55:30 +0000

I was not expecting him to be an OB/GYN.

New comment by PyWoody in "Ask HN: Are others seeing Google's reCAPTCHA rejecting Firefox users?"

PyWoody — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:25:31 +0000

Yes, it's the Second-Chance Pool.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

New comment by PyWoody in "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"

PyWoody — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:17:28 +0000

I've been using Brave forever and agree.

I was referring to

  You don't have to turn off any crypto stuff.

being an argument in favor of Firefox. I have to use Firefox every once in a while and I'm always surprised to see the garbage they peddle on the start page. I know I can turn it off but I never use it enough to bother.

New comment by PyWoody in "Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO"

PyWoody — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 01:07:12 +0000

Instead, you just get inundated with ads and pop culture garbage whenever you open a new tab.

New comment by PyWoody in "An investigation into the state of corvid–human relations"

PyWoody — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:54:24 +0000

  It possibly helps that I have a dog that will not tolerate a cat on the property and seems to believe that birds don't exist.

Which is very odd, considering that all birds are cats. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIl1VuGTk3g

New comment by PyWoody in "The Mystery of Dark Oxygen"

PyWoody — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:11:08 +0000

You *can* escape *asterisks*.