welshwelsh (u/welshwelsh)

welshwelsh commented on Spain’s LaLiga has blocked access to freedom.gov twitter.com/Pirat_Nation/... · Posted by u/akyuu

isodev · 20 days ago

I know that’s how it works and I also know it’s not a zero sum game. That’s why every law or policy gets time for comments and debate and sometimes policy gets revised. It’s how governance works.

But if you feel you have the perfect solutions, then by all means get yourself on the ballot so we can finally see the light.

welshwelsh · 20 days ago

What websites a person is allowed to access should not be a matter of debate, it is for the individual to decide. Other people's opinions are not relevant. Even if 99% of people think a person should not be able to access a website, it is still their right to do so and they have no need to justify it.

Democracy is for deciding what to do with taxpayer money. It shouldn't be a mechanism by which people can vote to take away other people's freedoms.

welshwelsh commented on UK's Ofcom fines porn site £800,000 for not rolling out age checks bbc.com/news/articles/cz6... · Posted by u/tokyobreakfast

chrisjj · a month ago

> It places a restriction on government power.

...and only US govt. power. UK is outside US, right?

That's not the only thing confusing this US lawyer.

"America will not tolerate Ofcom's behaviour for much longer... Every time they send one of their unenforceable enforcement notices into our country, it adds fuel and urgency to law reform efforts here in the United States," Byrne added.

So urgent law reform to counter unenforceable enforcement notices. Law makers surely have better things on which to waste their time.

welshwelsh · a month ago

Legal reform is needed to prevent American companies from complying with foreign censorship laws.

What happens if a tech company decides to follow EU law worldwide, just because it's more convenient than blocking some stuff just in the EU? That shouldn't be allowed.

welshwelsh commented on Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants blog.ncase.me/on-depressi... · Posted by u/mijailt

isoprophlex · a month ago

Because it's common to hate on antidepressants, I've always personally had a bias against them.

For the past 15-20 years, november thru february are basically a writeoff due for me due to seasonal affective disorder. Cold showers, exercise, no alcohol, strict sleeping rituals. Vitamin d. I can still sleep 11 hours and feel like reheated cat shit.

Enter citalopram. "It will take up to six weeks to dial in" they said. Within four days I felt like the inside of my head was designed by Apple in their glory days. My mind became an orderly, well lit, tastefully designed space... instead of a dimly lit crack den. I'm more emotionally available, no longer tired, less cranky. I felt cozy. I could cry with joy because I could finally understand emotionally why people like the Christmas season.

I won the SSRI lottery I guess, the side effect are sweaty feet, vivid dreams and a dry mouth. That's all.

This just goes to show that for me, they're extremely effective.

welshwelsh · a month ago

How do you know it was the SSRI?

To cherry-pick a quote from a review of SSRI studies:

>the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants and about 30% with placebo.

That tells me that antidepressants have some effectiveness, but placebos work shockingly well. You can give someone a sugar pill with no medical properties whatsoever, and a good portion of people will recover, likely crediting the pill for their recovery.

welshwelsh commented on Our approach to age prediction openai.com/index/our-appr... · Posted by u/pretext

owisd · 2 months ago

The EFF are fighting a losing battle:

> we hope we’ll win in getting existing ones overturned and new ones prevented.

All the momentum is in the other direction and not slowing down. There are valid privacy concerns, but, buried in this very article, the EFF admit that it’s possible to do age-gating in a privacy-preserving way:

> it’s possible to only reveal your age information when you use a digital ID. If you’re given that choice, it can be a good privacy-preserving option

If they want to take a realistic approach to age-gating they should be campaigning to make this approach only option.

welshwelsh · 2 months ago

The fight is not just about privacy, it is about freedom. Age-gating websites violates the freedom of people who are under a certain age. Young people have the same rights to free expression and information access as anyone else.

welshwelsh commented on Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026? · Posted by u/meridion

rkuodys · 3 months ago

I am honestly curious about your point on productivity boost. Are you saying that you can write tests at the same speed as AI can? Or is it the point that tests written by AI is of much lower quality that is not worth using them? I am at the role of solo-preneur now and I see a lot of benefit from AI. But then I read posts like yours that experienced devs don't see much value in AI and I start to doubt the things I do. Are they bad quality(possibly) or is it something else going on.

welshwelsh · 3 months ago

Try giving this prompt to your favorite LLM:

"Write unit tests with full line and branch coverage for this function:

def add_two_numbers(x, y): return x + y + 1 "

Sometimes the LLM will point out that this function does not, in fact, return the sum of x and y. But more often, it will happily write "assert add_two_numbers(1, 1) == 3", without comment.

The big problem is that LLMs will assume that the code they are writing tests for is correct. This defeats the main purpose of writing tests, which is to find bugs in the code.

welshwelsh commented on If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? english.elpais.com/techno... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

fzeroracer · 3 months ago

> How about the rich say that 50% of the economy should pay their fair share?

How exactly do you propose that they pay their fair share when they literally do not have the money or assets to do so? Are you proposing modern day slavery? Perhaps people selling their family? I'm curious what happens if you take this line of thought to it's actual conclusion.

welshwelsh · 3 months ago

How about instead of taxes, we have a $10,000 per year subscription fee to live in society.

Maybe different depending on area, like $20,000 a year to live in NYC but only $2,000 per year to live in a rural village.

If you can't afford the fee that's OK, it just means you have to live outside of the developed areas and don't benefit from any services provided by the government. But you are free to set up a tent in the woods and live off the land.

welshwelsh commented on Has the cost of building software dropped 90%? martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald

stocksinsmocks · 3 months ago

Which is the better value:

Hundreds of tests that were written basically for free in a few minutes even though a lot of them are kind of dumb?

Or hundreds of tests that were written for a five figure sum that took weeks or months, and only some of them are kind of dumb?

If you’re just thinking of code as the end in and of itself, then of course, the handcrafted artisanal product is better. If you think of code like an owner, an incidental expense towards solving a problem that has value, then cheap and disposable wins every time. We can throw our hands up about “quality“ and all that, but that baby was thrown out with the bathwater a very, very long time ago. The modern Web is slower than the older web. Desktop applications are just web browsers. Enterprise software barely works. Windows 11 happened. I don’t think anybody even bothers to scrutinize their dependency chains except for, I don’t know, like maybe missile guidance or something. And I just want to say Claude is not responsible for any of this. You humans are.

welshwelsh · 3 months ago

Neither. Tests should be written by developers only when it saves them time. The cost of writing them should be negative.

Instead of writing hundreds of useless tests so that the code coverage report shows high numbers, it is better to write a couple dozen tests based on business needs and code complexity.

welshwelsh commented on Has the cost of building software dropped 90%? martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald

jf22 · 3 months ago

I don't know why you'd think that.

200 decent unit tests are better than zero unit tests.

welshwelsh · 3 months ago

The main benefit of writing tests is that is forces the developer to think about what they just wrote and what it is supposed to do. I often will find bugs while writing tests.

I've worked on projects with 2,000+ unit tests that are essentially useless, often fail when nothing is wrong, and rarely detect actual bugs. It is absolutely worse than having 0 tests. This is common when developers write tests to satisfy code coverage metrics, instead of in an effort to make sure their code works properly.

welshwelsh commented on How private equity is changing housing theatlantic.com/ideas/202... · Posted by u/harambae

TheChaplain · 3 months ago

I've had the same idea, but with no property tax on ownership of a single dwelling place.

If the burden is lessened to have your own place, hopefully we could see less homeless on the street or living in cars when times are tough.

However if you have more than one, then you pay significant property tax on all of them. I would hope that could free up more places for more people getting a home.

But of course if you earn more than $180k a year, I guess you could afford some property tax.

I am also thinking foreign ownership of property should be taxed heavily. I know that is not popular, but honestly if you not living full time in the country then you are effectively taking up a spot for someone who needs a place to live.

welshwelsh · 3 months ago

That sounds like it would penalize renting in favor of homeownership. I'm not in support of that, renting offers people flexibility and is not inherently worse than owning.

welshwelsh commented on Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure rosalux.de/en/news/id/539... · Posted by u/robtherobber

pjc50 · 4 months ago

That certainly happened, but at the same time the ticket prices have consistently gone up above inflation, so what we're missing is the causal link - why did journeys go up so much? Was it in fact other transport policy to get commuters out of cars?

welshwelsh · 4 months ago

Ticket prices going up is actually good for mass adoption. If they are too low, you will see people riding the train who are only using the train because they are too poor to afford a car. That makes middle class people want to avoid the train.

Also higher revenue often means better service, which for most people is more important than the price.