This is a good idea. Curious about two things: this tool is not useful unless lots of people use it, how will you promote it? Add (2) assuming it does become popular how will you control astroturfing?

Do you have specific recommendations for particularly well-governed indexes? Is something like ESGV insulated from such manipulation? Or is it time for investors to start building their own direct/custom indexing with something like Frec

I have stopped doing index investing and have switched to actively managing my portfolio, so I haven't spent much time looking into it. I have seen a few posts on reddit (r/bogleheads in particular) and it looks like there are some names getting thrown out over there, as well as discussion about particular ETF's rules regarding these types of changes.

My recommendation is do not take investing advise from any post on HN. They are notoriously bad about understanding capital markets. There are a few good posters here but they are boring [factual] with 0 replies.

I have an index fund for NASDAQ with my broker. When I bought into the fund, the broker promised me that with my money, they will buy shares in companies traded on that exchange according to the specific formula that SpaceX is manipulating here. My broker is obligated to buy. They could open a new fund that has a contact like "we'll keep doing what we had been doing except for the whole SpaceX thing" but they would need my permission to move the money. And I'm only in this fund because it was recommended by my 401k provider -- I don't know anything about any of this. That's the messed up thing here -- the people being screwed are not sophisticated investors, it's nurses and school teachers who hope to retire.

Yeah basically this. These shenanigans water down the value of QQQ. The bottom line is if you don't like QQQ, then dont buy it. Buy the stocks separately or a different index. But for people who don't pay attention, or for people whose 401k's limit their investment options, it is difficult / impossible to avoid the shenanigans

If the rules used to compute the index change (as opposed to the index composition of course), are index funds obliged to follow them no matter what? I assume this is very fund dependent, but would be interesting to know what most guarantee.

and that's why sector specific indexes are not "good" - only broad market (heck, even global) indexes are worth passive investing for.

A nasdaq index is no different from any other thematic index (like an oil index, or a robotics index). Thematic indexes tend to fail the investor in the long term for capturing beta. But because of lack of knowledge of the _actual_ academic research by retail investors, a lot of clever marketeers sell the idea of a thematic index as tho it is similar to a broad market index ("safety" and diversification).

Caveat emptor.

Agreed. I was using mise to install Claude (via it's npm package) and keep it updated, and then they nagged me to switch to the 'curl | bash' method. Now I get to keep it updated manually, plus they helped train all my peers to continue just executing random scripts right off the Internet

> If this how google chooses to go out, then their death cannot come fast enough.

> Alphabet (Google) reported historic financial results for fiscal year 2025 (ending Dec 31, 2025), with annual revenue surpassing $400 billion for the first time. The company showed strong profit growth, with Q4 2025 net income at $34.5 billion, a 30% increase year-over-year. Key growth drivers were AI integration, YouTube ads, and a surging Cloud segment.

I'm not normally a fan of the NYT but this wasn't too bad. It passed the Gel-Mann test, and is clearly written by someone who knows the field well, even though the selection of quotes skews to towards outliers -- I think Yeggie for instance is pretty far out of the mainstream in his views on LLMs, whether ahead or sideways.

As a result a lot of the responses here are either quibbles or cope disguised as personal anecdotes. I'm pretty worried about the impact of the LLMs too, but if you're not getting use out of them while coding, I really do think the problem is you.

Since people always want examples, I'll link to a PR in my current hobby project, which Claude code helped me complete in days instead of weeks. https://github.com/igor47/csheet/pull/68 Though this PR creates a bunch of tables, routes, services -- it's not just greenfield CRUD work. We're figuring out how to model a complicated domain (the rules to DnD 5e, including the 2014 and the 2024 revisions of those rules), integrating with existing code, thinking through complex integrations including with LLMs at run time. Claude is writing almost all the code, I'm just steering

I've found LLMs to be extremely powerful in research projects. A lot of code related to research is very bespoke by its nature. Using Codex, I've been able to iterate on ideas that I would never had the time or courage to explore before. As for code quality/brevity, it doesn't really matter in this context as long as it works. And it's incredible to have this companion that understands broadly every aspect of tangential knowledge required to execute an idea. I do think it helps that I have over 25 years of experience in my domain (geospatial), which helps me guardrail my interactions and get good results in as few shots as possible.

Yeah, I also highly value consistency in my projects, which forces me to keep an eye on the LLM and steer it often. This limits my overall velocity especially on larger features. But I'm still much faster with the agent. Recent example, https://github.com/igor47/csheet/pull/68 -- this took me a couple of hours pairing with Claude code, which is insane give the size of the work here. Though this PR creates a bunch of tables, routes, services -- it's not just greenfield CRUD work. We're figuring out how to model a complicated domain, integrating with existing code, thinking through complex integrations including with LLMs at run time. Claude is writing almost all the code, I'm just steering

Agreed on the config. I just launch a Claude code in my vimrc directory now if I want to change anything about my setup or have any questions about how to do something.

Also, I love running a tmux pane for vim, and then like 4 or 5 more -- a few Claude code instances, one for the dev environment, one for interacting with jj/git or other random commands. So easy to switch between tasks. My main annoyance with my setup is that my Bluetooth trackball times out after a period of inactivity, and when I eventually need to use the pointer again there's a lag while it reconnects...

I appreciate both your taking an ethical stance on openai, and the way you're engaging in this thread. The parent was probably flame bait as you say, but other people in the thread might be genuinely curious.

Dean Ball made this exact point on the Ezra Klein show a few days ago. I always thought laws would get more just with perfect enforcement -- the people passing mandatory sentencing laws for minor drug offenses would think twice if their own children, and not just minorities and unfavourable groups, were subject to the same consequences (instead of rehab or community service).

But if I've learned anything in 20 years of software eng, it's that migration plans matter. The perfect system is irrelevant if you can't figure out how to transition to it. AI is dangling a beautiful future in front of us, but the transition looks... Very challenging

> I always thought laws would get more just with perfect enforcement

As Edward Snowden once argued in an AMA on Reddit, a zero crime rate is undesirable for democratic society because it very likely implies that it's impossible to evade law enforcement. The latter, however, means that people won't be able to do much if the laws ever become tyrannic, e.g. due to a change in power. In other words, in a well-functioning democratic society it must always be possible (in principle) to commit a crime and get away.

Yep, not ever being able to break a law means that whatever the current set of laws are will never be able to be changed. If people can't ever push the boundaries of the law, we can never realize that the boundaries are in the wrong place.

Take some examples of laws that have changed over time. Say, interracial marriage. It was illegal in many places to marry someone of a different race. If this had been perfectly enforced, no one would have ever dated or see couples of different races, and people would have had a lot harder of a time exploring and realizing that the law was wrong.

The same thing could be said about marijuana legalization. If enforcement was perfect, no one would have ever tried marijuana, and there would have never been a movement to legalize by people who used it and decided it was not something that should be banned.

We need to be able to push boundaries so they can move when needed.

The US has traditionally solved this problem by having dozens of political entities that can compete (at least for elites) and, since the creation of the interstate highway system, the oppressed can flee.

The people should always have the opportunity and power to behead the government.

That's tautological without the existence of cylons.

> Dean Ball made this exact point on the Ezra Klein show a few days ago. I always thought laws would get more just with perfect enforcement -- the people passing mandatory sentencing laws for minor drug offenses would think twice if their own children, and not just minorities and unfavourable groups, were subject to the same consequences (instead of rehab or community service).

The problem with perfect enforcement is it requires the same kind of forethought as waterfall development. You rigidly design the specification (law) at the start, then persist with it without deviation from the original plan (at least for a long time). In your example, the lawmakers may still pass the law because they don't think of their kids as drug users, and are distracted by some outrage in some other area.

Hmm, the problem is that judges and even police officers are generally saner than voters.

Giving the former discretion was a way to sneakily contain the worst excesses of the latter.

Alas, self-interest isn't really something voters seem to really take into account.

Judges and police officers have their own massive "worst excesses".

They do, but letting mob rule decide criminal sanction is beyond fucked. See: Any discussion thread of literally any criminal being sentenced, receiving parole, or better yet, committing any crime after being released for serving a different one.

Its almost like they are sick of people commiting crimes.

How many times have we seen politicians advocate for laws against something, then do a 180 when one of their kids does it? Even if you had that system, I don't think it would work the way you say. People are dumb and politicians are no exception.

This is of course assuming that politicians aren't largely duplicitious and actually believe in a word they say. I grew up in Indonesia, and the number of politicians who were extremely anti-porn getting caught watching porn in parliament is frankly staggering, yet alone the ones who are pro death penalty for drugs caught as being part of massive drug smuggling rings.

You raise an interesting point: One question that I think about developing countries: Most of them have higher perception of corruption compared to highly developed (OECD) nations. How do countries realistically reduce corruption? Korea went from an incredibly poor country in 1960 to a wealthy country in 2010. I am sure they dramatically reduced corruption over this time period... but how? Another example, in the 1960s/1970s, Hongkong dramatically increased the pay for civil servants (including police officers) to reduce corruption. (It worked, mostly.)

I live in a developing country. What I find is that the corruption is generally easier to navigate here that it was in the USA. The corruption in the USA is much more entrenched, in the form of regulatory capture. At the local level this can look like a local ordinance where “only a contractor with xy and z (only one of which is needed for the job) can bid, favoring a specific contractor. Here you just figure out compliance with the person in charge.

Part of how the USA got that way is hilariously enough, anti-corruption policies.

    > much more entrenched, in the form of regulatory capture

I am unsure how to interpret this comment. It is so broad that it dilutes the effect. Are there any wealthy countries that you feel do not suffer from the same issue?

Idk, I’ve not lived in any wealthy countries besides the USA.

Corruption is eliminated by properly aligning incentives. Capitalism is also all about properly aligning incentives. Moving to a more capitalism-heavy system usually causes countries to get much richer.

Eastern Europe went through a similar transition. Before the iron curtain fell, the eastern bloc operated on favors more than it operated on money. This definitely isn't the case any more.