Hacker News: fallingbananna

New comment by fallingbananna in "EU Commission: addictive design Instagram and Facebook in breach of the DSA"

fallingbananna — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:01:53 +0000

To me it felt no different from socialising nowadays as an adult.

Some weren’t on social networks at all, and thus missed out on some of the socialising. But also saved themselves from many cringey trends, FOMO, etc.

While some others were on social media 24/7 and basically acted like early influencers.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Show HN: Getting GLM 5.2 running on my slow computer"

fallingbananna — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:41:16 +0000

Good catch! Disk reads do generate writes to cache. But the cache itself is in RAM, not on disk. So it shouldn’t cause additional wear of SSD.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Muse Spark 1.1"

fallingbananna — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:50:42 +0000

Meta isn’t right now on the radar for most folks picking models.

If they have a really good model, it makes sense to subsidise it, to gain users, before they align prices with competitors.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:00:45 +0000

I don't know about you, but I don't treat people worse just because they dress differently.

And similarly, I don't think it's reasonable to suggest OP is the wrong one for being treated worse for wearing clothes from their culture.

If you look out of place, you will get more looks, and that's it, that's where the line should end.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:50:23 +0000

The point about correct use being a status thing is such a good point, that you almost never see mentioned, but definitely feel it.

Recently I saw a discussion on Reddit where the author made a minor mistake in the title, that sounds perfectly fine and understandable to me, as a non-native speaker. They used "Mit was" instead of "womit". And more than half the comments were people pointing out the mistake and making fun of the person due to it, rather than engage in the topic that was raised in the first place.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:28:27 +0000

AFAIK a lot of the highly skilled German emigrants go to Switzerland.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:17:16 +0000

You don't magically get language skills by living in the country. You still have to put in the time and effort.

The utmost basics, A1, you could learn very quickly and those will get you through basic interactions (buying groceries, greeting neighbors, etc.)

At work, doctors, apartment search etc. you can use English.

For contracts you can use translate, since B1 wouldn't get you far there anyway.

But to get to B1, you would have to make language learning your hobby for at least a year... and that is not for everyone. Especially given that there aren't interesting media to immerse yourself into in German, compared to other languages like Japanese or Korean.

The only thing that I find puzzling is that OP didn't learn it, when they plan to stay in the country and obtain permanent residency. I would understand not learning the language if they planned to move out in 1 year.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:12:08 +0000

I live in Austria, and from my experience it's the higher management that is almost exclusively native Austrians. But the highest (C-level) and lowest (IC-level) staff is international.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:08:41 +0000

I was under the impression that English speaking countries are by far the most desirable for immigrants.

Most people don't care that the current US, or UK governments are a mess, because grass isn't exactly greener back at home.

And there are quite a few more English speaking countries that have their own issues, but don't get so much negative press online. (Ireland and Canada have housing crisis, but sound fine otherwise. Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand surely have their own issues that I don't know about)

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:31:04 +0000

It's less of a basic decency if you're in a country where almost everyone is fluent in English, you get by your life just fine in English, speaking the local language doesn't open new doors, as you're not going to be "native level" speaker no matter how much you study (and many would prefer to speak English with you if you have less than native level of German), learning the local language would take many years of continuous time and effort that could be spent elsewhere, and in the end you're not even sure how many more years you want to stay before leaving.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 22:01:39 +0000

With how much cultural weight law of Jante has in Denmark, I would hope so.

New comment by fallingbananna in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

fallingbananna — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:44:45 +0000

You might be thinking of immigrants.

Emigrants are those that left the country... so by definition, no emigrants stay in Germany.