Hacker News: abenga

New comment by abenga in "New York passes pied-a-terre tax"

abenga — Fri, 29 May 2026 08:32:37 +0000

If your wealth/income increases x1000, their spending will not increase a thousand-fold. It's not like you can eat a thousand burgers in a day. All this leads to is poorer people paying a larger proportion of their income as taxes than the richer.

New comment by abenga in "YouTube to automatically label AI-generated videos"

abenga — Thu, 28 May 2026 03:51:21 +0000

It's not created any cure or solved crime though. The times it's been applied to those problems, it's either regurgitated stuff that's already in the data or led to the arrest of innocent people.

Also, re: music, if I was fine with listening to AI music, why would I listen to the output of someone else's prompt instead of creating my own?

New comment by abenga in "Googlebook"

abenga — Wed, 13 May 2026 12:26:27 +0000

That one now should not exist (like in plain Gnome).

New comment by abenga in "Let's Buy Spirit Air"

abenga — Tue, 05 May 2026 09:28:02 +0000

But the air travel system (airports/atc/etc) would not exist, because taxes were needed to bootstrap it.

New comment by abenga in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

abenga — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:50:13 +0000

Why do you need to control production? Why not over provision and store?

New comment by abenga in "Google banks on AI edge to catch up to cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft"

abenga — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:01:28 +0000

I use Google products. Between YouTube premium and uBlock origin, I don't really see any ads at all.

New comment by abenga in "The tech jobs bust is real. Don't blame AI (yet)"

abenga — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:23:39 +0000

Why is it important that Google (or any of these large companies) only hire Americans for their jobs in the first place? They are global companies now, they make money from everywhere. Why is the insular "Americans only" idea worthy of consideration at all?

New comment by abenga in "Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack"

abenga — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:44:39 +0000

> a country that's never had to fight for relief from tyranny

Do you have an example of such a country?

New comment by abenga in "Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack"

abenga — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:41:02 +0000

The billionaires will blanket the airwaves with bad-faith argument ads and you will lose.

New comment by abenga in "Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead"

abenga — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:16:47 +0000

Really? Having other cultures around you makes one unhappy now?

New comment by abenga in "Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead"

abenga — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:06:59 +0000

Articles about two countries cannot be more true than the lived experience of actual residents of Africa. I am Kenyan as well, that article describes something very specific to individual communities in some countries in West Africa, it is foreign to me. The largest expense of funerals that I've experienced in my life is usually paying the medical expenses of the deceased (if the person had been ill for a long time) and feeding the funeral attendees (we do usually get a huge crowd and they generally get lunch).

Another data point: maybe 35-40% of people in Africa identify as Muslim. They usually bury people the same day they die or at worst the next day, and there is no elaborate coffin, usually just a cloth sheet.

New comment by abenga in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

abenga — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:48:08 +0000

Is that because of some heritable presence/lack of intelligence or because scientists feed their children well early in life, have books in the home, and take the time to follow up on their children's education?

New comment by abenga in "Ubuntu now requires more RAM than Windows 11"

abenga — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:54:35 +0000

Gnome 50 and its auxilliary services on my machine uses maybe 400MB.

The culprit is browsers, mostly.

New comment by abenga in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

abenga — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:30:13 +0000

If you need to heat/cool your home, is that really mild?

New comment by abenga in "Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom"

abenga — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:59:24 +0000

They are experts in their products.

New comment by abenga in "Iran war sparks renewables boom as Europeans rush to buy solar, heat pumps, EVs"

abenga — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:11:13 +0000

If a participant in a war, in good faith, wants to negotiate long-term cessation of hostilities, they wouldn't kill the leaders of the other side. Because who the fuck will you negotiate with after? Who surrenders? That's why historically people don't do that in wars. Israel/The US just want to destroy Iran as a nation state. Thinking that there are going to be any talks with someone with a mandate from the Iranian people in weeks or months is misguided. This is a decades-long thing. We better buckle up.

New comment by abenga in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

abenga — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:24:22 +0000

> Secure Iraq's oil fields and resources, "which belong to the Iraqi people"

The cynical read of this statement (extract resources from the invaded countries in order to enrich the American capital class) is the primary aim for all these conflicts.

New comment by abenga in "Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing"

abenga — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 11:39:43 +0000

If the Covid shutdown didn't trigger this, what makes you think this time it's different?

New comment by abenga in "‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms"

abenga — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:49:21 +0000

You have 20 years after buying them to set up a local supply chain.

New comment by abenga in "Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features"

abenga — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 02:31:36 +0000

I remember the 2010 Olympics were aired on pre-enshittified Youtube (in a few countries). You could click on icons to go to a live stream of different events, zero ads, no cutting to studio announcers (stayed on the fields), zero fuss. It was glorious.

I feel like living in a country advertisers don't care about makes your digital life better. For example the NBA league pass is very cheap in my country, all teams. For an amount I'd be glad to pay per month, I can watch all games for all teams on demand, without blackouts. And during game breaks we either watch the stadium feed, an animated NBA logo, or highlights and countdowns of other games.