Hacker News: Scarblac

New comment by Scarblac in "The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news"

Scarblac — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:05:06 +0000

Because you're doing it voluntarily.

New comment by Scarblac in "Chess puzzle I found in my dad's old book"

Scarblac — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:34:30 +0000

You can only be in check or checkmate when it's your turn though.

New comment by Scarblac in "I moved my digital stack to Europe"

Scarblac — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:42:30 +0000

Even if that fantasy was true in any way, the US can do enough damage to European digital systems to utterly cripple society on day 1.

New comment by Scarblac in "I moved my digital stack to Europe"

Scarblac — Wed, 13 May 2026 14:55:48 +0000

And actual war, given the threats to Greenland.

But especially that Microsoft blocked the work email of the ICC lead prosecutor for political reasons, that has all alarm bells ringing.

New comment by Scarblac in "EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing""

Scarblac — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:56:51 +0000

Nice thing is we can render names in English however we want too!

New comment by Scarblac in "Talking to strangers at the gym"

Scarblac — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:34:45 +0000

That said, it also has all the self help faults. It repeats itself a lot, is full of happy anecdotes that repeat the same thing yet again, and could have fit in a chapter.

New comment by Scarblac in "As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating"

Scarblac — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:06:12 +0000

No, we're very resilient bastards, we're going to let the huge majority of species go extinct before we go ourselves. We're already in a mass extinction event and we're just getting started.

New comment by Scarblac in "All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027"

Scarblac — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:53:29 +0000

I don't think so, this was the first time it happened like that.

New comment by Scarblac in "All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027"

Scarblac — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:00:33 +0000

I had to replace my previous phone because my banking app dropped support for that Android version, and was going to stop working. The hardware was fine.

(I always buy phones in the cheapest tier, so that happens sooner)

New comment by Scarblac in "CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome"

Scarblac — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:53:13 +0000

But it's only possible for them to lead good lives when their parents basically dedicate the rest of their own lives to caring for them, I think?

New comment by Scarblac in "1D Chess"

Scarblac — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:58:20 +0000

The rook doesnt attack the king because N6 is in the way.

So black is not in check and has no legal moves, so stalemate.

New comment by Scarblac in "We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git"

Scarblac — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:50:19 +0000

The initial version of Git was written in two weeks, what do you need $17m for?

New comment by Scarblac in "Show HN: 41 years sea surface temperature anomalies"

Scarblac — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:48:28 +0000

In general I think the sea warms slower than land, so you'd expect land everywhere to warm faster than the global average.

New comment by Scarblac in "Proton Meet isn't what they told you it was"

Scarblac — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:57:22 +0000

But don't they have both the encrypted data and the decryption keys? I don't remember giving them my keys to use, and I can look at my stuff from multiple devices so the keys aren't stored on my device.

So they must have the ability to look at all that encrypted data anyway?

New comment by Scarblac in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

Scarblac — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:52:26 +0000

Kyiv is pretty close to the Russian border to its north, even Moscow itself is less than 1000km away.

I think the furthest hits Ukraine has been able to achieve with drones were on a refinery about 1300km from Ukraine controlled land.

New comment by Scarblac in "Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem"

Scarblac — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:48:02 +0000

We know that chess can be solved, in theory. It absolutely isn't and probably will never be in practice. The necessary time and storage space doesn't exist.

New comment by Scarblac in "Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem"

Scarblac — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 07:46:22 +0000

Is that so different from brains?

Even if it is, this sounds like "this submarine doesn't actually swim" reasoning.

New comment by Scarblac in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"

Scarblac — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:00:20 +0000

It's not hard. Tax the amount the stocks are valued at at january 1.

Make exceptions for investments in illiquid things.

New comment by Scarblac in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"

Scarblac — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:52:43 +0000

Right now blue collar work can pay much better than white collar work (in the Netherlands).

Not all of course, but construction work and electrician type work, certainly.

The labour shortages in construction and the energy transformation are huge. And it can't be solved with immigration because there is no housing.

New comment by Scarblac in "Italy, Belgium set to lose gas supply after biggest LNG plant bombed"

Scarblac — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:08:13 +0000

Nuclear takes like 15 years to build, it's being worked on but it won't be much more relevant soon.

Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.