Whereas in larger technology firms, yes that happens to some degree, but only with the highest level specialists such as PEs, fellows, etc.

They are already so wildly profitable and valuable by the simple nature of computing itself: it scales second only to money with regards to compounding effects. Once you have software someone can use, it scales near infinitely to more users, thus value is extracted from the work of a single specialist for all time. No need to complicate it with trying to abstract work juniors can do (and fail) and then have seniors correct. What would they be doing in non-extractive firms?

Las Vegas is a 100% closed loop system. All grey water is recycled back into Lake Mead fur reuse.

Modern sewage treatment is a modern miracle.

I care about the environment and I think we can keep earthbound systems, and also reduce their impact. Making assumptions about the feasibility of launch and the economic absurdity of orbital compute, but not affording the same assumptions for what could be done for earthbound systems, is confusing?

And no, orbital compute is absolutely not far lower than earthbound in co2 cost. Because it doesn't exist at any scale. All orbital compute is solely dedicated to switching where it is best served. If you were to spitball numbers, are we even willing to assume orbital matches earthbound in compute total, dollar cost, uptime, or any beneficial metric?

The only metric I see is just slinging silicon into space.

Fwiw, I like that class names and file names must match. In python codebases I have had annoyances with this when I adopted others work.

They want to make sure they called the right person. Except they know everyone hates getting called like this, so they take "who is this?" as affirmation and then proceed to tell you their company and the call.

MAD has had its virtues extolled, yet assume it won't work with another country because somehow they are even more irrational (if true). Even though that is exactly for whom the MAD strategy is designed and operates under.

It is only the build up of Iran getting a nuclear weapon that is used to go to war.

The game theory here seems rather simple, honestly.

And if Iran is seen as hostile, we need to look at the countries for whom the USA allies with and what wars they launched in the region. And they are plausible nuclear capable where their neighbors are not.

I think Israel is currently a larger aggressor, literally flattening more towns through demolition.

Surely, he has made things uniquely worse, and in ways that would not have happened without him.

Because redfin shows that just is very clearly not true

https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...

I am wrapping this comment thread in a finally and returning.

A bad one.

I listed many other useful heuristics. Do you not find value in them? Do you find stars more valuable than them?

Take a moment to consider stars as a useful metric may only be useful for packages created prior to ~2015 when they weren't such a strong vanity metric, and are already very well established. This is preconditioning you to think "stars can still sometimes be useful, because I took a look at Facebook's React GH and it has a quarter million stars".

Sure, it's useful for that. But you aren't going to evaluate if the "React" package is safe. You already trivially know it is.

You'll be evaluating packages like "left-pad". Or any number of packages involved in the latest round of supply chain attacks.

For that matter, VCs are the ones stars are being targeted at, and potential employers (something this article doesn't cover, but some potential hires do hope to leverage on their resume).

If you are a VC, or an employer, it is a negative metric. If you are a dev evaluating packages, it is a vacuous metric that either tells you what you already know, or would be better answered looking at literally anything else within that repo.

The article also called out how download count can be faked trivially. I admit I have relied upon this in the past by mistake. Release frequency I do use as one metric.

When I care about making decisions for a system that will ingest 50k-250k TPS or need to respond in sub-second timings (systems I have worked on multiple times), you can bet "looking at stars" is a useless metric.

For personal projects, it is equally useless.

I care about how many tutorials are online. And today, I care more about if there was enough textual artifacts for the LLMs to usefully build it into their memory and to search on. I care if their docs are good so I spend less tokens burning through their codebase for APIs. I care if they resolve issues in a timely manner. I care if they have meaningful releases and not just garbage nothings every week.

I didn't mean for this to sound like a rant. But seriously, I just can't imagine in any scenario where "I look at stars" as a useful metric. You want to add it to the list? Sure. That is fine. But it should not be a deciding factor. I have chosen libraries with less stars because it had better metrics on things I cared about, and it was the correct choice (I ended up needing to evaluate them both anyhow. But I had my preference from the start).

Choosing the wrong package will waste you so much more time. Spend the 5 minutes evaluating for stuff that is important to your project.

There are many other far more useful metrics to look at first, and to focus on first, and to think about. Every time you think about stars, you'll forget the other stuff, or discount it in favor of stars.

Forget stars. They now no longer mean anything. Even if they did before, they don't anymore.

Yes...which is why I said it is an indirect variable, as caused by the other things I pointed out above. Age, quality, code, utility, whether issues are addressed, interest, etc. Or fraud. Pretty cut and dry.

FWIW, I almost never star repos. Even ones I use or like. I don't see the utility for myself.

Aim for a more concise post and don't couch your statements in doubt next time if you want a productive conversation, because I don't know what you are trying to say.

I have limited time on this Earth and at my employer. My job is not critical to life. I am comfortable with this level of pragmatism.

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.