bhelkey

the problem is that it hurts legit people too.

What hurts other people too?

Distillation is impossible to stop

Lots of things are impossible or very difficult to stop completely but measures can be taken to reduce their prevalence.

There is a brand of creatine manufactured in the US (con-cret) and a brand manufactured in Germany (Creapure). Either of those companies should address the concern around adulterated powder.

That's why I dropped creatine since I didn't notice any benefits when I tried it for a year.

Some percentage of people (~20%) are creatine non-responders [1]. It's pretty reasonable to try creatine and then drop it if you find no benefit. I personally find the gain very marginal.

[1] https://fitchef.com/shorts/creatine-non-responder/

What continent is India in? What continent is Australia in?

I linked both prebuilt and do it yourself builds. Neither resulted in a comparable machine to the PS5 for $600.

Again, I think you are missing how much the price of components has increased.

16GB of DDR5 alone costs approximately $200 [1]. I challenge you to find a new case, motherboard, NVMe SSD, and PSU for the remaining $100 in the budget after $200 for ram and after your assumed $300 for a GPU.

[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#b=ddr5&Z=16384001,...

$600 could get you a beast of a machine

Where can you get a new gaming "beast of a machine" for $600? In the past you could build a reasonable gaming machine for $600 but parts are drastically more expensive today.

If you go to microcenter and look for gaming PCs, their cheapest option is $800 [1]. PC Part Picker's entry level build is $780 [2].

The only option I found with these constraints is this computer from Walmart with a GPU released in 2017 and a CPU released in 2013 [3] (This is not a recommendation for this listing. Please don't buy it).

[1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/705867/powerspec-g530-ga...

[2] https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/fQscCJ/entry-level-amd-gaming...

[3] https://www.walmart.com/ip/STGAubron-Gaming-PC-Computer-Desk...

When buying a gaming console, I imagine folks think more about the upfront cost ($600 for PS5 vs $1,050 for steam machine) as opposed to the total cost of ownership.

The steam machine may be cheaper in the long run once you consider:

* Playing PlayStation games online costs $11/month.

* PlayStation games tend to be more expensive than steam games.

Because if they don't offer a used virtual marketplace, everyone has to buy new games directly from them.

A used game market provides downwards pressure on new games.

The US spent $2 Trillion dollars on Medicare and Medicaid in 2024 [1][2]. If the US spent this money as efficiently as Japan (or UK [3], ...) it could pay for Healthcare for every single resident with this $2 Trillion dollars.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/medicaid-financing-the-basics/#...

[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-medicare-cost-the...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7zvp5xrqo

If indeed the public is looking for dividends, why is Amazon, a company that has never paid a dividend, such a valuable company?

Amazon has ~10 Billion outstanding shares and the current market price for one of those shares is ~$240.

If folks only care about dividends, why would anyone buy an Amazon share at that price?

Fastfood apps typically offer deals to new customers.

I suspect this is an attempt to prevent folks from spinning up many new accounts to get these deals.

McDonald's app (other other similar apps) offer discounts to ordering through their app.

For example, McDonald's has a long running campaign, 99¢ for coffee. Any size, iced or hot.

I assume that is the typical Uber/Lyft prices. It would likely be a lot cheaper if another family member does drop off/pickup.

Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are being offered at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens

From their pricing page, Opus 4.8 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens [1].

[1] https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/models/over...

it's illegal for merchants to discriminate against credit cards with high fees

Do you have a source for this? Often times merchants don't accept American Express because it charges higher fees [1].

[1] https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/business/why-american-...

What I got from the linked review is:

1) Creatine is safe, "creatine supplementation is safe across a range of doses, durations, and populations according to human trials".

2) Stomach issues are a commonly reported side effect, "Gastrointestinal issues were the most frequently reported side effect... Most notably, gastrointestinal distress is a commonly reported side effect, and those supplementing with creatine may need to divide the dose into smaller boluses to alleviate it; however, it is worth noting that this side effect was not persistent"

3) It is not clear if the side effects are caused by creatine, many of the issues can be explained by baseline issues rather than caused by creatine, "No consistent or clinically meaningful dose-dependent increases in side-effect reporting were observed across models; even at higher doses and prolonged durations, reporting remained low and largely comparable to placebo at the study level"

Stomach issues are a frequently reported side effect of Creatine Monohydrate [1].

The general school of thought behind the belief 'Creatine HCL is easier on the stomach" is:

1) HCL is much more water soluble and (likely) is more easily digested.

2) less creatine HCL stays undigested.

3) the dose needed is smaller.

4) anecdotes seem to support HCL being easier to digest.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no peer reviewed studies of monohydrate vs HCL that look to establish which is easier on the stomach.

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/14/4/137

Creatine mono-hydrate which mostly comes from China and "creapure", which is a patented formula known for its purity.

Creapure sells Creatine Monohydrate not a proprietary form of creatine [1]. The higher end in creatine is Creatine HCL which is more expensive but more water soliable, easier on the stomach, and requires a smaller dose.

In terms of creatine manufactured in the Western World:

* CON-CRĒT manufactures creatine in the US, they produce Creatine HCL.

* Creapure manufactures creatine in Germany. They produce Creatine Monohydrate.

There are also a variety of brands that import creatine and run various tests to ensure quality.

[1] https://www.creapure.com/en/creapure/what-is-creapure/

I still haven't heard a solid explanation of how taxing loans as "income" is going to work.

The idea is that taking a secured loan out using an asset as collateral would be a taxable event for that asset.

That is to say, if you buy a house for $400,000 and it appreciates to be worth $850,000 then take a home equity loan out against the house, you would owe capital gains on the $450,000 appreciation.

With the current $250,000 capital gains exclusion for primary residence, this would result in ~$30,000 of capital gains tax.

I don't believe this is accurate. From the wiki:

The caps at both poles consist primarily of water ice. Frozen carbon dioxide accumulates as a comparatively thin layer about one meter thick on the north cap in the northern winter, while the south cap has a permanent dry ice cover about 8 m thick.

Maybe a dumb question, why do electric cars have issues with water?

My understanding was that ICE cars have trouble because water get's drawn into the engine. Water in the engine causes it to stall. And the engine must have air in flow and out flow.

An electric car doesn't need air in the same way (no oxygen to ignite with gasoline, no air to compress and expand).

Shouldn't electric cars to much better at driving through water?

Mars also has two polar ice caps [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_polar_ice_caps

Ollama works with Claude Code:

$ ollama launch claude --model qwen3.5 [1]

[1] https://docs.ollama.com/integrations/claude-code

I think it was a joke that 98.59% has 2 '9's: 9X.X9%.

Can't you use Claude Code without a Claude model? E.g. can't you use this with a local model?

Folks are assuming that only the $100 plan will include Claude Code access. I think a more likely scenario is that everyone will be able to use CC.

There wasn't always an external resource to go to for help. Especially for legacy pieces of software, it was easy to become the person with most context on the team.

There was not a single moment in time in which all nuclear power plants were simultaneously shut down. The shut down was gradual [1]. 2011 is relevant because it is when the German government decided to phase out its remaining nuclear power plants.

[1] https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out....

Nuclear energy was at the same time very expensive and only a very small percentage of the energy production

The Guardian reports that Nuclear power produced ~20% of Germany's electricity in 2011.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nuclear-pow...

I don't agree with your framing but let's accept it for the sake of this conversation.

The UK and Japan are not the only countries with more efficient healthcare systems than the US. We can look at a variety of countries, some of which have a higher GDP per capita than the US.

If we look at a graph of 'healthcare spending per capita' by 'GDP per capita' [1], we can see that the US is a massive outlier spending ~2x countries with comparable GDP per capita.

In fact, the US has a higher healthcare spending per capita than every other OECD country. By a large margin.

[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

Public perception is that the US is not willing to pay for universal healthcare. However, the US spends enough money, it just spends it inefficiently.

The US spends ~$900 Billion a year on Medicaid [1] and ~$1.1 Trillion a year on Medicare [2]. If the US spent this money as efficiently as Japan (or UK [3], ...) it could pay for Universal Healthcare without increasing its budget.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/medicaid-financing-the-basics/#...

[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-medicare-cost-the...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7zvp5xrqo