Hacker News: englishrookie

New comment by englishrookie in "IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video]"

englishrookie — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 10:22:33 +0000

I agree with the spirit of your comment. 20261209 Is a much better way to express the date than the 9/12 Americanism.

New comment by englishrookie in "NL govt blocks DigiD takeover by solvinity"

englishrookie — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:56:37 +0000

The fear is that the US will use control of critical infrastructure as leverage. Given the Greenland debacle, I'm inclined to agree.

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

englishrookie — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:40:04 +0000

Well, there are also noises about the SaaS company preferably not being American. Apparently there's a US law that compels US companies to divulge data on their users even if the data is hosted outside of the US. (I'm not sure this wouldn't happen anyway, without such a law.)

New comment by englishrookie in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

englishrookie — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:53:39 +0000

Almost everything about societies except cities is just pretty words. Countries and most borders are just an abstraction. We fight for them because someone convinces us with words to do so. We could do the same for the UN and it would be a much nobler cause in most cases.

New comment by englishrookie in "How far back in time can you understand English?"

englishrookie — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 19:30:02 +0000

I don't have a voice in my head when I read. Knowledge of West-Fries helps though.

New comment by englishrookie in "How far back in time can you understand English?"

englishrookie — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:48:39 +0000

Well, for a native speaker of Dutch who doesn't speak English at all (not many left since my grandmother died in 2014), I'd say old English is actually easier to read than modern - starting around 1400.

Around 1000, English and Dutch must have been mutually understandable.

New comment by englishrookie in "Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright"

englishrookie — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 14:33:14 +0000

I'm in the Netherlands and I DO find it bad. Probably also has to do with my age (early fifties) - your eyes adjust with more difficulty the older you get, it seems.

New comment by englishrookie in "European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft"

englishrookie — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 17:13:02 +0000

Do you really believe Europe would devolve into actual internal warfare, without the US? What about the EU? I believe it has successfully kept the peace ever since its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created - specifically to avoid another war.

Your example is very on point: the member states are talking - not fighting - to protect their own interests.

New comment by englishrookie in "European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft"

englishrookie — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 17:08:13 +0000

Right now, Russia's hands are conveniently tied by their incompetently fought war in Ukraine.

In the mean time, most major EU countries have increased their defense budgets. Some of the larger ones, most notably Germany, are considering to reintroduce conscription. Within about five years, the EU will be able to withstand Russia without any aid from the USA.

In fact, right now, Poland would be able to withstand the Russians on their own. Mind you, they would not be able to defeat the Russians, but they would give them a beating and repel any invasion of Poland.

New comment by englishrookie in "EuroLLM: LLM made in Europe built to support all 24 official EU languages"

englishrookie — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:58:54 +0000

I would certainly call it a Germanic dialect.

New comment by englishrookie in "EuroLLM: LLM made in Europe built to support all 24 official EU languages"

englishrookie — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 07:59:38 +0000

By your reasoning, English isn't a Germanic language since over half of its vocabulary comes from Latin or French.

New comment by englishrookie in "History of the Gem Desktop Environment"

englishrookie — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 13:16:16 +0000

Cool! I may have used some of your applications on my Atari 1040 ST back in 1988. Which ones did you work on?

New comment by englishrookie in "Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?"

englishrookie — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 06:26:22 +0000

Would you mind sharing your setup (LLM model, IDE, best practices)? Personally, I'm struggling to get value out of Continue.dev in VSCode (using Gemini 2.0 Flash by default, with the option to switch to more advanced models). I still revert to pasting code into ChatGPT chat window (using the website), frequently.

Are you using agentic features, given that you have not just one but two PMs?

New comment by englishrookie in "The FBI's Leaders 'Have No Idea What They're Doing'"

englishrookie — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 06:46:17 +0000

You do that by voting people into power who pass laws which provide a framework for these agencies to operate in. Putting these agencies under direct control of a central government (the federal government in this case) will inevitably erode civic society. See Hungary, Poland (until recently) and Turkey.

New comment by englishrookie in "Killing the Mauna Loa observatory over irrefutable evidence of increasing CO2"

englishrookie — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 15:12:12 +0000

Don't Look Up...

New comment by englishrookie in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

englishrookie — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:26:00 +0000

Introduced into English most likely through Nieuw Amsterdam / New York.

New comment by englishrookie in "Netherlands Daft Visa for Americans"

englishrookie — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 16:25:13 +0000

I would give all US passport holders the advice to think more carefully about who they vote for...

New comment by englishrookie in "Ask HN: Is it wrong not wanting career progression beyond senior?"

englishrookie — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 18:24:05 +0000

You might consider hiring yourself out as a contractor. This is especially interesting if you're specialized in some vertical where you can bring consultancy skills to the table. Be the guy who's brought in when there's a problem, replace some proverbial screw, and then charge a week's salary for it. Because nobody else knew exactly which screw to replace.

Also, this path allows you to delegate work to other contractors that you have vetted. After all, your clients care about the results, not who does the actual job.

New comment by englishrookie in "Seiko Originals: The UC-2000, A Smartwatch from 1984"

englishrookie — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 13:50:17 +0000

> Rich person toy.

The Mac, yes. But my father was a construction worker earning a below median wage (definitely not middle class) in 1988 when we bought our Atari 1040 ST. This was in the Netherlands, Europe.

(Although admittedly we were rich by world standards.)

New comment by englishrookie in "To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)"

englishrookie — Mon, 27 May 2024 10:04:42 +0000

Then the language area in your brain is activated separately for the comment parts.