Hacker News: antiford2049

New comment by antiford2049 in "Fire at Starlink site in Bulgaria after suspected sabotage in Poland"

antiford2049 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:58:05 +0000

Well, if they are just glorified repeaters, perhaps european union can hurry the fuck up and build their own network, because at the pace of events we are seeing in about 1 year from now, the USA and Russia will tell us how Ukraine and EU are responsible for starting the war and they need to learn a lesson.

Oh wait, we are already here as if few days ago. Never mind.

New comment by antiford2049 in "DeepSeek pause fundraise after comments on compute gap to US leaked (transcript) [pdf]"

antiford2049 — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 11:07:57 +0000

is this similar to Meta starting to rent out own compute as they cant seem to do much with it and monetising it is much better ROI?...

New comment by antiford2049 in "Future euro banknote design proposals"

antiford2049 — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 10:24:32 +0000

looks cheap. i want my money to look fancy, not like a brochure from an airline.

New comment by antiford2049 in "EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing""

antiford2049 — Sun, 10 May 2026 05:16:03 +0000

You havent said anything wrong about immigration. People who misunderstood you are racist themselves as they have dismissed cultural issues of your country and tried to impose their own views. So dont listen to them, they are just ignorant at best.

New comment by antiford2049 in "EU Parliamentary Research Service calls VPNs "a loophole that needs closing""

antiford2049 — Sun, 10 May 2026 05:01:52 +0000

I think you are confusing democracy with anarchy. There is tons of free speech in Europe, and it is the most democratic of all countries that are alternative. UK is still very democratic country. The generation of politicians from zero rate era had gotten carried away on certain topics (defence, immigration) and now we have to deal with this. they also have undermined public trust by acting the way they did in covid, to an extent that any new pandemic is likely to be way worse just because no body will trust the government again for a long time.

But there is a problem with kids today having pretty easy access to all kinds of nasty shit on internet, and it isnt like it was in 90s and 00s. 10 year olds on social media is fucked. I dont really care for blocking internet on anything, yet it does appear that simple age verification is necessary for access to certain services.

most people are just super mad that they wont be able to watch porn or their favourite show thats on netflix or whatever. BUt thats not what the article was about. Read a little bit. Comparing EU to fucking Russia is insane here.

New comment by antiford2049 in "Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter"

antiford2049 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:38:42 +0000

when companies go public usually the easy money has been made, and for the growth to come back a lot of time might pass.

frankly i dont know why would one go public today unless money is needed badly. Quarterly calls, filings, are one thing, dealing with vest bros asking "so how should we think about" questions on round tables or "whats an incrimental margin" musings as they clack away at their mini keyboards filling out their model no body can make sense of.. and then someone will publish a blog saying their company is gonna be extinct because of AI ... this is not for everybody thats for sure...

New comment by antiford2049 in "Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter"

antiford2049 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:33:41 +0000

the valuable part is with a caveat though. Klarna and Figma were very valuable. i find these comparisons a little pointless (private vs public company). they process similar volumes, but one is in hyper growth mode (imagine quality of it) while the other has been scaling down growth and focusing on profitable growth. Has spooked investors but I understand that Adyen are pretty focused and they are scaling nicely their capital offering. But Stripe has good focus on stablecoins, more product focused and aggressive (as all US firms are). Both have like single % of the global payment market, and if you have issues with Adyen look at others in the market - nexi, paypal, etc. I believe both stripe and adyem will grow market share at expense of others over next decade. Plenty of growth for both, and Adyen has a unified platform solution which is smth stripe doesnt. So all have advantages, and the gap in valuation isnt' something id read too much about.

Besides, if AI replaces all white collar jobs, and crashes high spending consumer economy, all payment vols will go down.

New comment by antiford2049 in "Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter"

antiford2049 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:24:17 +0000

this number is a little misleading, to put it mildly.

New comment by antiford2049 in "Stripe valued at $159B, 2025 annual letter"

antiford2049 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:22:42 +0000

Adyen is behind Stripe when it comes to small enterprises but ahead on large enterprises and especially global merchants. They also have scaled back on digital merchants which you can lose easily and focus more on unified commerce, their growth is a lot higher quality. They also report growth differently - ex fees to schemes and banks. Stripe will be on the hook if banks and schemes raise their fees. You also dont know what margin stripe has, just say robust which is enough for the crowd on wallstreet of course but I digress. The fact is Stripe is a good company, but its valuation is set in a room while Adyen's valuation is set on the market 80% of which is pods trading back and forth.