SLOC was a bad indicator 20 years ago and it is today. Don't tell them - once they realize it's a red flag for us they will use some other metric, because they fight for our attention.
Most of us probably knew this already, the internet had paid content for as long as I can remember, but I (naively perhaps) thought that software developers and especially Hacker News was more resilient to it, but I think all of us have to get better at not trusting what we read, unless it's actually substantiated.
I don't understand, what does that screenshot show? That there exists at least one anonymous Chinese company that has offered someone $200 to post about them on HN? Why is that relevant to a conversation about Cursor?
Who are the "they" in "they straight up pay people"?
Read the parent comment first then mine, if you haven't, and it should make sense. Otherwise; "Them" here is referring to "AI companies wanting to market their products". The screenshot shows one such attempt of a company wanting to pay someone on HN to talk and share their product in return of compensation for that. Proof that "They" aren't just "fighting for our attention" in the commonly understood way, they're also literally paying money to talk about them.
Not only that, they straight up pay people to just share and write about their thing: https://i.imgur.com/JkvEjkT.png
Most of us probably knew this already, the internet had paid content for as long as I can remember, but I (naively perhaps) thought that software developers and especially Hacker News was more resilient to it, but I think all of us have to get better at not trusting what we read, unless it's actually substantiated.