Hacker News: Sloowms

New comment by Sloowms in "Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia"

Sloowms — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 04:27:48 +0000

Ah yes, Venezuela famously only has lawsuits that happened to them. Maybe look up Guaido, the 3% polling self and US declared president of Venezuela.

New comment by Sloowms in "Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels"

Sloowms — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 12:58:49 +0000

They didn't even consider what you want or anyone other than the way to make profit of the app. Sometimes those goals align, many times not. The reason they show you random accounts is because they want you to get hooked and watch the ads they sell.

New comment by Sloowms in "Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?"

Sloowms — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 06:49:19 +0000

It's probably hard to prove with something from 1981 but no license or copyright doesn't mean the source is open for taking. It basically means you just haven't set a license and could do that at any time, rugpulling the code from anyone who uses it. This is why projects like Fedora and Debian make sure everything they ship has a license.

New comment by Sloowms in "The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong"

Sloowms — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 10:49:40 +0000

Throw out a made up percentage and proceed to start talking about rational markets as if they exist in the real world. I immediately know this analysis is going to be great. Older houses are obviously cheaper for some reason even though housing prices in city centers keep increasing. Poor people are the real problem for needing a place to live. With the conclusion that there is nothing that can be done and people just have to take it. That's abundance (jazz hands)

New comment by Sloowms in "EU commissioner shocked by dangers of some goods sold by Shein and Temu"

Sloowms — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 21:57:11 +0000

Manufacturing consent has a different meaning. Politicians are always going to argue for their case but that is not the same as how the media and business monopolies in the US have fried the US public on everything. The EU is of course going to start cracking down on imports of goods that do not follow EU law and the platforms that sell these products.

New comment by Sloowms in "EU commissioner shocked by dangers of some goods sold by Shein and Temu"

Sloowms — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 21:48:35 +0000

I think this is an artful position to hold in response to an article about imports from China to the EU.

New comment by Sloowms in "Some arguments against a land value tax (2024)"

Sloowms — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 07:17:32 +0000

Isn't this covered by zoning? But it also just proves a point that you can't smart regulate the market to do everything. Sometimes communities just have to make decisions about what they want the land to be used for and create the according rules and do the investment themselves.

New comment by Sloowms in "Some arguments against a land value tax (2024)"

Sloowms — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 07:12:54 +0000

It's a very weird system to own anything underneath the land anyway. That's how you get the weird oil race areas where people will be drilling from the same source next to each other. The same goes for the water underneath the land.

In some countries the property rights only go like 10 meters deep and even then if there is a need for plumbing underneath there are exceptions. Maybe the issue then becomes that you're not free to do what you want on your own property but it's not like this is a thing in home owners association single family home areas anyway.

New comment by Sloowms in "IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes"

Sloowms — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 07:15:06 +0000

Because people on hn think consumers don't have better things to do than to look up vague tech stacks they don't understand for their iot devices. The trick is that consumers don't have time to make an informed assessment because a consumer only has 24h in a day while a business has all the time to mess with the information.

As long as people keep claiming this asymmetry doesn't exist we will keep getting things like Thread

New comment by Sloowms in "Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube"

Sloowms — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 12:37:36 +0000

Point 1 is a plain lie. Point 2 is a misunderstanding of how markets work.

New comment by Sloowms in "Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube"

Sloowms — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 12:29:47 +0000

As opposed to the US? Like sending infected elderly people to elderly homes to infect more people?

New comment by Sloowms in "Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube"

Sloowms — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 12:25:18 +0000

This is correct. In the US tiktok is currently being sued for feeding kids choking game content through the algorithm that was earlier judged to be free speech.

New comment by Sloowms in "Google is using AI to censor independent websites like mine"

Sloowms — Thu, 29 May 2025 12:34:27 +0000

Google and all the other algorithm related content platforms have had this power before AI and have been using it as well. I think AI is a new layer to the SEO war.

I don't care for the grand conspiracy claims though. It's pretty obvious Google will optimize their search engine and the question answering to benefit their bottom line.

Maybe there are people actively working towards evil within Google. I think it's more likely some people recognize the implications of changes, some people don't but no one is working against those changes and ultimately the system will be capable to be used for very bad things and will do bad things naturally.

Anyway a better title would have been: Google's AI is the newest website killing feature

New comment by Sloowms in "Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge"

Sloowms — Tue, 20 May 2025 08:27:17 +0000

No visible result is the goal. The change is minimal but makes the system compatible with other EU carriages. Did the Baltics attempt this or succeed?

New comment by Sloowms in "Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule"

Sloowms — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 06:17:27 +0000

These are indeed both policies that involve thresholds and are therefore so similar that you can not argue for the one but not for the other.

New comment by Sloowms in "Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule"

Sloowms — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 05:28:31 +0000

There are European companies that are under the regulation as well.

The DSA is the part that applies to all companies in some way as well (things like the need for moderation and a way for people to reach you with complaints). The DMA is about the market and how to deal with monopolies.

New comment by Sloowms in "Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law"

Sloowms — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:43:49 +0000

*US city. I think people in my country would be able to name Craigslist (not in use) over fb marketplace.

New comment by Sloowms in "Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law"

Sloowms — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:41:36 +0000

That bubble is the EU, which this law is about. I know a bunch of European countries have their own Ebay/Craigslist websites. Marketplace has never been even somewhat popular in my country.

New comment by Sloowms in "Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law"

Sloowms — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:29:39 +0000

I'm not sure what society you are referring to but contracts have to adhere to laws in the EU.

This is also about software that is being updated. So the transaction is not completed yet. Apple could probably go the route of not providing the update to phones that were sold before the law was voted on/in place. I would guess that would lead to other legal battles.

New comment by Sloowms in "Whistleblower: DOGE Siphoned NLRB Case Data"

Sloowms — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 12:02:56 +0000

This is not about cyber security, this is about getting union activity data to the oligarchs. Russian IP's are a useful, probably unintentional, nugget that distracts people from what happened here.

Labor actions is the most powerful tool that ordinary people have and this is an effort to take that away. Citizens are already being kidnapped. Dissenter legal immigrants are being dissappeared.

Anyone that believes the administration is doing any business other than seizing more power is a useful tool.