Hacker News: garte

New comment by garte in "In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue"

garte — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:35:35 +0000

As I said below:

Cozy small time agriculture in the west is a small part of your general food supply. The rest is in places you do not want to live and is called monoculture. A huge part of your food supply is not produced "in the countryside" in either Denmark or most of the West.

It all starts with oil and energy. Nothing else matters as much. So getting off oil and producing energy in other ways is at the forefront of our struggle as a species and if you deny this progress because it hinders the view from your detached house porch I get the impression you have not really realized the situation we are in.

New comment by garte in "In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue"

garte — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:52:02 +0000

Cozy small time agriculture in the west is a small part of your general food supply. The rest is in places you do not want to live and is called monoculture.

All "raw materials" you mentioned are not produced "in the countryside" in either Denmark or most of the West.

New comment by garte in "In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue"

garte — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:44:17 +0000

Thanks for your thorough response, I appreciate it.

My point was less that "everything comes from the city" but that living in the countryside has massive externalities that get deposited elsewhere as I mentioned.

So it would be kind of fair to at least start accepting some externalities - like energy - to be actually part of your living reality.

In essence: you need energy, get it yourself and don't NIMBY your way out of the consequences of "living in the countryside".

New comment by garte in "In Denmark, the spread of solar panels has become a divisive issue"

garte — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:53:07 +0000

You know that all that "nature" you desire is synthetic? Living in rural areas without actually working there is as far from a natural state as it can be: the whole lifestyle is based on subsidies by cities and technology: your concrete, your car, your heating, your power, groceries... it's all getting brought to you by fossil fuels and plastics.

So maybe accepting some part of that technology to stand on your "natural" grass in your front yard might be necessary to at least offset _some_ of the costs you're imposing on the environment living your lifestyle.

New comment by garte in "Why do we tell ourselves scary stories about AI?"

garte — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 07:54:22 +0000

Great article, most of all the latter parts about what autopoiesis means regarding computers.

New comment by garte in "Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident"

garte — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 07:13:42 +0000

I mostly agree. In a technological society jobs and money are kind of virtual. The productivity gained by technology in the last 150 years made lots of work redundant and we've been managed by economists to still organise around wage labour. This is nothing new with AI. We could have abandoned wage labour 50 years ago during the 70ies and got neoliberalism instead. So we'll get more of the same with AI I guess.

New comment by garte in "Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics"

garte — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:33:48 +0000

Look up on fish and the consequences of microplastics on water animals. From starvation to sex change, microplastics wreak havoc there.

Just because you as a single consumer may not seem impacted by microplastics does not mean it's alarmism to suggest that it's a really bad phenomenon.

New comment by garte in "A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era"

garte — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:11:47 +0000

> This MSN "article" seems oddly out of place on HN.

Maybe there's something sinister going on: I suspect the shoe sole industry what with these huge foots and all. It'd make sense since Covid people are walking less. Maybe the sole industry caused the lab leak?

I'm just asking questions.

New comment by garte in "Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion"

garte — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 11:28:05 +0000

Maybe it's like that. But they're drunk. Which means they are very supportive but quite unreliable and have a short memory.

I've caught Claude making the gravest anti pattern mistakes using Elixir and trying to get it to correct them makes the whole thing worse.

It's ok for smaller scoped stuff but actual architectural changes come out worse than before more often than not.

New comment by garte in "China's 450kmph bullet train is the fastest ever built"

garte — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:34:47 +0000

This is how you start something and get progress.

More lanes on the highway are not progress.

New comment by garte in "Decided to fly to the US to buy some hard drives"

garte — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:19:36 +0000

so fossil fuel is too fucking cheap. this is arbitrage with our environment, it fucks me up.

New comment by garte in "Facebook is cooked"

garte — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 08:06:12 +0000

what the poster mentioned did not sound like a balanced exchange of ideas was about to happen...

New comment by garte in "There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming (2024)"

garte — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:24:37 +0000

thats a wild take... isnt this exactly the purpose of a dictionary: to reflect the words used in general language usage?

New comment by garte in "U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office"

garte — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:55:46 +0000

It gives you more things to buy, doesn't it? That does not necessarily translate to a better life.

New comment by garte in "U.S. Formally Withdraws from World Health Organization"

garte — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:46:29 +0000

Look up why it was called SARS-2 in the beginning (and most of all what SARS was) and you're going to understand a lot more why they reacted how they did...

New comment by garte in "210 IQ Is Not Enough"

garte — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:00:26 +0000

You took those trillions literally, it's not meant like that. It's a general observation on how abstract the measuring is.

New comment by garte in "My gf thinks videogames cannot be art. What to show her?"

garte — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:40:33 +0000

Ask her if a banana taped to a wall is art.*

If she says no she has no idea what art is, apparently. Or there is no actual concept what constitutes as art and what doesn't. ;)

*https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/nov/21/maurizi...

New comment by garte in "Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules"

garte — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:37:14 +0000

You must be bummed out that your party didn't get a candidate that follows your morals and values and on top of all that is a convicted felon.

Wouldn't you have wanted a better candidate?

New comment by garte in "Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits"

garte — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:52:58 +0000

the last bit is only true under individualised consumerism. its when everybody is like a spoiled child is where solidarity goes to die.

New comment by garte in "They Thought They Were Free (1955)"

garte — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 20:05:13 +0000

For starters, Germany does not give a single person the right to be king with decrees and military leadership.

Also (though not an issue with the law itself) it's really dangerous only having two parties at the helm.