Hacker News: mamonster

New comment by mamonster in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

mamonster — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:50:27 +0000

>Nobody forced Iran to build all these missiles

Saddam did.

Their missile program is a direct response to the section of the Iran-Iraq war where Saddam flew long range bombers for terror raids (hmm who does this remind me of?) and Iran had no answer beyond shelling border cities with 155m.

New comment by mamonster in "US reputation hits 'depths not seen this century' – and 'may never recover'"

mamonster — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:09:02 +0000

No they didn't. They stopped exporting diesel and gasoline, not oil.

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

mamonster — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:37:03 +0000

Where is the actual OSINT though? No geolocation where the refueling is taking place, no timestamp on photo, no suggestion where the bomb is dropped.

By your logic an OSINT account can show a picture of a SU-34 in the air with 4 UMPK bombs, write "On its way to Odessa" and people will think Russia has air supremacy over Odessa.

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

mamonster — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:23:43 +0000

There is literally nothing in this image suggesting they are flying over Iran with this loadout except the account just saying it.

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

mamonster — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:43:15 +0000

>The US can fly not only F-35 but even B-52

There is, at this point in time, literally 0 evidence B-52s are flying over Iran with JDAMs. Every single photo we saw of B-52s literally shows them with AGM-158, which means they are launching outside Iran aerospace.

The biggest evidence for B-52s not flying over Iran is that there have still not been any losses. Go look at attrition rates in Linebacker 2 for comparison.

New comment by mamonster in "Trump Tells Aides He's Willing to End War Without Reopening Hormuz"

mamonster — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:55:31 +0000

It's actually not that much money in terms of price for end consumers, if the figures are around 2mio USD per ship as reported then it's like a 0.5-2% tax (depends on ship type and cargo).

That said, obviously it's a huge amount of money for Iran.

New comment by mamonster in "Like Putin, Trump is a megalomaniac. In Europe, we can shield ourselves"

mamonster — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 10:45:36 +0000

> In my view, the high prices were only the second-biggest problem. The biggest was whether there would be enough energy at all.

This is a perfect summary of why Habeck is an imbecile. It's the exact same problem.

New comment by mamonster in "Missile defense is NP-complete"

mamonster — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:13:53 +0000

>The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Has there been a study on this? What is the GDP loss of having however many Israelis go to bunkers due to incoming ballistics instead of working ?

If a trash cluster missile that costs 100k USD to build causes 1mio USD worth of GDP to not be produced (numbers completely made up) then it's very worth it.

New comment by mamonster in "Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance"

mamonster — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:56:57 +0000

I only did these types of interviews when applying for internships in uni, but I really don't think you would get away with using an inbuilt binary search (via bisect left) in a question that is basically "binary search with a quirk".

New comment by mamonster in "Trump Postpones Iran Energy Strikes for Five Days, Citing "Productive" Talks"

mamonster — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:49:11 +0000

TACO Tuesday comes on Monday.

My take: He wants "pauses" because he wants to resupply the strike group and/or wait for the Marine unit to transfer. I have my suspicions Iran isn't gonna fall for this trick.

New comment by mamonster in "I built an AI receptionist for a mechanic shop"

mamonster — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:15:13 +0000

Well presumably 150 is what you pay to use the service, and they have like 100+ companies using it.

The model is exactly like Planet Fitness or similar gyms: It doesn't work if everyone visits at once, but you plan on most people using it once a week.

New comment by mamonster in "I built an AI receptionist for a mechanic shop"

mamonster — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:01:06 +0000

>and he’s losing thousands of dollars per month because he misses hundreds of calls per week. He’s under the hood all day. The phone rings, he can’t answer, the customer hangs up and calls someone else. That’s a lost job — sometimes a $450 brake service, sometimes a $2,000 engine repair — just gone because no one picked up.

How much does it cost to have an outsourced receptionist? Even if it is 500 a month if we are really talking about thousands of dollars per month lost your ROI is still crazy.

New comment by mamonster in "Iran attack wipes out 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity for up to 5 yrs"

mamonster — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:16:52 +0000

>State-owned QatarEnergy may have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China due to the two damaged trains, Kaabi said.

The inflation that we are about to get will severely hamstring the EU joint borrowing plans. If rates are above 4% the fiscal capacity will not be where it needs to be.

New comment by mamonster in "Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland"

mamonster — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:44:35 +0000

>I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along.

Every single French president since Mitterand (with a brief exception for Iraq that was more than made up by Libya) spent a large part of their time liquidating Gaullism.

New comment by mamonster in "Ask HN: What breaks first when your team grows from 10 to 50 people?"

mamonster — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:42:01 +0000

From my personal experience, if I take your categorization as a guideline, 15-50 headcount is where "Power Culture" is going be a huge issue like 80% of the time. It can very quickly devolve into brown nosing and putting off high performing new hires.

New comment by mamonster in "The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why"

mamonster — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:30:17 +0000

>China, Tehran’s largest remaining economic partner, cannot receive Iranian crude while the strait is shut.

We have literally had like 5 headlines from major news agencies over the past few days confirming that Iran is exporting its own oil with what looks like close to 0 problems.

New comment by mamonster in "Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies"

mamonster — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:36:34 +0000

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. As a simple example of practical biology in USSR, the Eastern Bloc basically invented modern doping programs.

New comment by mamonster in "Why the World Still Runs on SAP"

mamonster — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:52:06 +0000

SAP is like BB Terminal: If someone is pitching you on replacing it, chances are they don't know even 50% of what it can do.

New comment by mamonster in "US- and Greek-owned tankers ablaze after Iran claims 'underwater drone' strike"

mamonster — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:33:14 +0000

>But the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and long list of other countries could make this crisis have zero effect on local prices.

The US Government cannot force US companies to sell at a lower domestic price if they can get a higher price exporting. I know that God-Emperor Trump pretends that he can command the oil sector to make less money, but he can't.

>For example, Saudi Arabia and Russia don't do that

2 countries famous for being beacons of free-market capitalism.

New comment by mamonster in "Iran tells world to get ready for oil at $200 a barrel"

mamonster — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:30:38 +0000

Iran has an MLRS mining system.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2025/breaking...

It won't take out a military ship but its more than enough for tankers to not cross the straight.