Hacker News: mgrunwald_

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 23:56:53 +0000

You have all the info you need in the article. Technically, Amazon's basic commission is ~15%, and that is in line with other marketplaces.

The issue is that when you pay only that basic referral fee, you won't make a lot of sales. You have to pay more to actually make those sales, which amounts to ~46%. Advertising, fulfillment, and other fees. You have to pay for all of this while being required to keep your price "fair," so you have to raise prices on other platforms to stay afloat.

You could just ignore selling on Amazon altogether, but in the US that's rather unrealistic at this point, and they know that.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 23:22:41 +0000

The issue is that those policies drive prices up globally, and the article touches on that exact point. Sellers have to absorb Amazon's fees while being required to keep the same price. As a result, their sales outside of Amazon have to factor in those expenses, which drives up prices for those products in general. Even if someone could sell that product at a lower price outside of Amazon, they won't lowball themselves and would rather improve their own margins.

Then, in the EU, you have to factor in fluctuating currency exchange rates and sales tax/VAT set individually by each country. This is another issue altogether.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 17:19:16 +0000

This specific policy mostly benefits Amazon and its shareholders.

If you think this exists for your benefit, please feel free to bask in the illusion of your wild runaway success.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:00:47 +0000

You would have a point if not for Amazon's exorbitant fees which it expects to be absorbed by the seller and then requires that seller to set the same prices everywhere.

This is clearly manipulative and is regulated outside the US.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:35:43 +0000

It's absolutely insane that this is legal in the US.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Ask HN: Can we please limit the AI news flood?"

mgrunwald_ — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:21:22 +0000

This. Simple tagging and/or a dedicated AI news section would be very welcome.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Shutting down our public encrypted DNS"

mgrunwald_ — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 19:36:58 +0000

https://controld.com/free-dns

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Nvidia's Risky Business"

mgrunwald_ — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 14:27:29 +0000

Nice trolling.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts"

mgrunwald_ — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:37:45 +0000

But they actually took some of the risk trying to develop models for Apple Intelligence, and that attempt ended up as a meme. Do you really believe that was a strategic play?

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts"

mgrunwald_ — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:10:54 +0000

Apple failed in their efforts to build their own models, but they got lucky.

China is doing all the R&D for free and the whole thing turned out to be unprofitable anyway.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide"

mgrunwald_ — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:01:27 +0000

For older hardware: Void Linux, Xubuntu or maybe Linux Mint Xfce. If you want something up to date that needs to be online.

AntiX and Puppy Linux are a bit too rough, in my opinion. I'd rather leave the machine with some fully updated old Windows version designed for that hardware, offline. Works very well for retro gaming, ripping CDs and stuff like that.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers"

mgrunwald_ — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:12:13 +0000

Chrome is the new Internet Exploder.

Use anything with built-in adblock-rust.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Tell HN: Meta is down"

mgrunwald_ — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:53:13 +0000

Ironically, their Ad/Business tools are the worst offenders.

I need to use them but I feel like I'm in a perpetual state of fighting their software.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "ASML Becomes Europe's Most Valuable Stock Ever on AI Boom"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:15:09 +0000

And the valuation is completely justified in this case.

Remedy's Control sequel launches in September

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:58:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/games/942113/remedy-control-resonant-release-date-trailer

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48385009

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

mgrunwald_ — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:13:59 +0000

I've seen too many of those privacy-respecting alternative social networks. Problem is that you'll post things only for yourself, which may be cool if you don't care about actually having friends there.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup"

mgrunwald_ — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:00:08 +0000

I don't think it's only marketing. OpenAI had the advantage of being first to the market, and in the beginning of the race it seemed that the future belongs to them. Then came the bad PR and unpredictable quality of their main product.

For general use, ChatGPT's answers have gotten worse over the last year. I abandoned it.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Disagreement among frontier LLMs on real-world fact-checks"

mgrunwald_ — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:14:33 +0000

I ran this multiple times through GPT-4 and every single time it arrived at the same conclusion. The data was readily available and pretty clear. GPT-5 insisted that the objectively inferior option was better until I gave it my own benchmark data and it was like "Oh okay nevermind".

Gemini's answer was very opinionated and factually correct, whereas Claude gave a more nuanced answer, which was also very good.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Disagreement Among Frontier LLMs on Real-World Fact-Checks"

mgrunwald_ — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:37:09 +0000

As an example, 2026 GPT doesn't even agree with its 2025 self. Last year I asked it to make a hardware comparison and it correctly identified the objectively better option. Recently I asked again and this time it got everything completely backwards.

New comment by mgrunwald_ in "Ask HN: When and why did you start believing in God?"

mgrunwald_ — Wed, 27 May 2026 19:33:12 +0000

I think it depends on how you define god. Personally, I believe in pantheism. It's a philosophical stance which equates god to the universe and nature itself. It's hard not to believe in something that actually exists.