My wife has planted an over abundance of native plants on our property, eliminating 60-70% of the turf grass. The resulting bee population increase has been phenomenal to watch. Also, using leafs dropped in the fall as mulch provides the habitat for lightning bugs and the population boom experienced in the years after we started doing this has exploded. Summer nights are magical again
In the US, Distribution costs (the separate charge outside of your energy cost on your utility bill) are also incredibly high and going to keep rising as infrastructure costs mount. In my area, my distribution costs is actually more than my energy cost so the only way I ever think about solar is if I can decouple from the grid completely and get rid of those distribution costs. Got a long lo no ways to go
There's talk about this in Australia too, to keep the power companies viable or to maintain their profit margins I'm not sure but I know to which option my opinion leans.
It's a worse deal for people who have spent the capital to reduce their ongoing expenses, and it's a worse deal for people who have very low electricity usage (likely poorer people and those who are naturally frugal). It's possibly a better deal for heavy electricity users, and I'm not sure that's who should be rewarded. No, I am sure: they shouldn't be rewarded.
HN felt like one of the last places on the internet I could have good-faith conversations with intelligent people who would form thoughtful, on-topic replies.
And now it feels like the user base here has shifted enough that the voting system no longer consistently elevates the interesting comments, but the comments that reinforce people's worldviews.
Everyone feels Eternal September sooner or later. I recommend blocking users on this site. Having hit about 800 or so blocks I find that the conversation quality has skyrocketed. You still get one or two low quality users on a thread like this (I hadn’t blocked this guy) but the truth is that it’s usually a few people.
Any time a user gives me a flash of annoyance with a nonsensical comment that’s the last time I see them. This isn’t a native feature but Claude will implement it for you in a really short amount of time. If you want a feature set to copy or a list of users to seed, you can just copy mine (in profile).
Yeah, unfortunate that it's come to that, but I think you're right.
I started to write a comment about having some (additional) ideas for a Chrome extension, clicked your profile, watched the YouTube video. Fantastic. I think it already does everything I wanted.
Everyone feels this way about HN at some point, it is normal. It is probably true that the user base has grown and so you see more low-value comments in absolute numbers as time goes on, but I still think the overall quality is decent and the community moderation solid.
It is also a Friday afternoon, and HN's weekend (and to some extent overnight) 'personality' is noticeably different than during typical business hours. I enjoy coming here on weekends but it gets a bit more wacky.
Also News I guess - People who pick up smoking again after a period of cessation, regain all negative effects of smoking that they previously experienced during that past smoking periods, eliminating the positive effects of the smoking cessation.
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