Hacker News: matzab

New comment by matzab in "Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse"

matzab — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 06:45:00 +0000

That's a niche even among people who read fan fiction, which is a niche among people who read long texts online which is a niche among people who read the anglophone internet which is a niche among people who were on the internet when that type of "discourse" was popular which is a niche among people on the internet now.

You can (and probably will) quibble with any one of these but of course this is a niche. Thinking it isn't is commonly what people in a certain bubble end up believing, though.

New comment by matzab in "Not all 'open source' AI models are open: here's a ranking"

matzab — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:26:07 +0000

There are no family ties. These are two completely different companies.

Axel Springer is the company that bought Politico (and produces rags like Bild in Germany).

Springer Nature is majority owned by Holtzbrinck, a competitor to Axel Springer.

New comment by matzab in "Study shows N95 masks near-perfect at blocking escape of airborne Covid-19"

matzab — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:06:43 +0000

> then it is only the selfish segment of society that is being protected

But wouldn't that also protect the unselfish?

New comment by matzab in "Nvidia H100 GPUs: Supply and Demand"

matzab — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 06:25:39 +0000

It looks like they didn't scroll past the embedded video, so they didn't even get to the table of contents.

>"HN, you can do better"

- indeed.

New comment by matzab in "Oregon County Sues BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon for $51B Climate Damages"

matzab — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 06:30:29 +0000

That's a brilliant excuse: Lie about the effects of emissions, lobby (and pay) Congress to not do anything about it (or change incentives to maybe use less gas rather than more) and then, when you are getting sued, just argue that the lying didn't affect policy, so it was perfectly fine.

New comment by matzab in "SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas"

matzab — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:09:11 +0000

Well, the launch pad survived this one.

New comment by matzab in "German car makers putting out of the self driving AI-race"

matzab — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 16:22:17 +0000

And it's not even VW pulling out as a whole since Audi and others have similar programs. This whole thread is weird.

New comment by matzab in "Tesla fan sites propagate fake news of chip joint venture, but why?"

matzab — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 07:57:57 +0000

It's obviously right next to Klaus-von-Bayerische-Motorenwerke-Straße.

They didn't even try to seem legit, did they?

New comment by matzab in "Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong?"

matzab — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 19:27:36 +0000

inflation is a hidden tax on savings

That's basically Germany's state motto.

New comment by matzab in "When McDonalds Came to Denmark"

matzab — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:44:41 +0000

Some still do (it's up to the franchisee iirc) but it's not easy to enjoy a beer from one of those McDonald's paper cups.

New comment by matzab in "Why we picture bombs as round black balls with a burning wick (2016)"

matzab — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 19:15:51 +0000

...and Germans.

New comment by matzab in "Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids"

matzab — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 10:57:17 +0000

The NYT article they link to in the first paragraph does a good job providing that exact thing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/science/camels-sculptures...

New comment by matzab in "A Single Fire Killed at Least 10% of the World's Giant Sequoias, Study Says"

matzab — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 08:44:56 +0000

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-16/sequoia-...

And it's happening again as we speak.

New comment by matzab in "Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics"

matzab — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 11:48:46 +0000

Deutschlandfunk alone is worth it imho

New comment by matzab in "Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'"

matzab — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 09:57:36 +0000

According to TFA (a few paragraphs above your quotes, even) we won't stay at 1.5 degrees.

New comment by matzab in "On Apple’s “Expanded Protections for Children” – A Personal Story"

matzab — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 08:01:06 +0000

This is definitely one of those topics where going public can have immediate negative consequences for someone even if it turns out to have been a false positive.

New comment by matzab in "U.S. Population Growth, an Economic Driver, Grinds to a Halt"

matzab — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 08:01:53 +0000

The corollary is, that opposition to birth control while ignoring all the other factors you mentioned plays a huge role here - to the detriment of those involved, I would argue.

New comment by matzab in "NASA investigates renaming James Webb telescope after anti-LGBT+ claims"

matzab — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 15:25:52 +0000

Refraining from honoring someone is not the same as erasing them.

New comment by matzab in "Sub-zero water splitting marks a new dawn for solar hydrogen production"

matzab — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 06:14:18 +0000

This is explicitly aimed at producing energy in cold environments (high altitude, polar regions), so it's less of an issue (and not exactly the point). Anyway, they seem to aim at 12% STH efficiency and provide some examples (assuming 65% hydrogen fuel cell efficiency):

Then, powering a Raspberry Pi computing device (PRPi = 4W) for an autonomous measurement device year-round at the > Neumayer III station (70.68°S, 8.27°W, Tavg,y = −15.5 °C) would prospectively require a module area of 0.41 m2, whereas at Paranal observatory (Chile, 24.63°S, 70.40°W, Tavg,y = 0.4 °C) 0.18 m2 would suffice.

New comment by matzab in "The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins"

matzab — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 05:08:34 +0000

Honestly, reading comments like these and articles like the OP has convinced me that we, as humans, will not at all be prepared for the next pandemic. And the one after that.

These viruses and their potential recombinations are out there, we don't need some virologist to go out and maybe catch it. People will catch them, we'll just know even less about them when the next pandemic starts.