Hacker News: nabla9

New comment by nabla9 in "Is school worse for your kids than social media?"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 21:47:07 +0000

Just remember that Tyler Cowen sings the song of funders of Cowen's Emergent Ventures: Peter Thiel, Schmidt Futures, Fast Grants (The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative)

Cos goes FOSS The sorry state of scientific publishing and how we could

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 21:17:50 +0000

Article URL: https://jekelylab.github.io/COS_goes_FOSS_publishing.html#/title-slide

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46816732

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by nabla9 in "Tesla is committing automotive suicide"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 19:31:16 +0000

Their revenue is flat for last 4 years. They have established their status outside top 10 manufacturers and losing EV market share to Chinese and Europeans.

  Car revenue: -11%
  operating margin: 3.86%
  Free cash flow -30%

Tesla PE > 280 is magic. Now they are "pivoting" to Cybercab, humanoid robots and investing billions into xAI. Jumping from hype-trend to next without any problem is impressive. Fair valuation always in the future.

I've reported on UFO sightings for decades – and come to this conclusion

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:31:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2026/ufo-upa-sightings/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46811514

Points: 9

# Comments: 4

New comment by nabla9 in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:14:21 +0000

The specific cited anti-competitive behaviors (from DOJ and EU Commission is) are related to violating anti-steering provisions (companies forbidden for directing towards other payments methods), tying and bundling (in-app purchase requirements), self-preferencing (obvious), "tap-to-pay" monopoly, and blocking third party app-stores.

New comment by nabla9 in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:36:04 +0000

No. This is a result of a market failure caused by monopoly power. Regulators must make sure market capitalism works.

I'm not sure what is the basis for your question but using market definition where Google Play and Apple Store are in the same market is not correct (market definition is essential part of any monopoly regulation).

Markets are defined by choice of practice, not by choice in principle.

New comment by nabla9 in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:48:11 +0000

There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.

New comment by nabla9 in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:38:12 +0000

The operating cost is the maximum Apple can come up with when their accountants attribute everything they possibly can to digital sales for the sake of legal argument. R&D shouldn't really be included, and Apple uses those same tools and APIs themselves. I think the actual profit margin is closer to 90%, and Apple could maintain a 20% margin with just a 3–4% fee.

New comment by nabla9 in "Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app"

nabla9 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:13:39 +0000

Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales

    Revenue          $32 B
    Operating Costs   $7 B [1]
    Estimated Profit $25 B 
    Operating Margin ~78%

[1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs.

Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.

Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were so high that even Apple's own executives were sometimes surprised by the internal financial reports.

---

edit: There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.

New comment by nabla9 in "A Year of Work on the Arch Linux Package Management (ALPM) Project"

nabla9 — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 12:07:35 +0000

This is not improving anything. Overly complex and starting from scratch. They should have picked dome existing package manager instead and contributed to it. Yet another package manager is not justifiable anymore. Always starting new package manager from scratch is the bane of oss it seems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag...

New comment by nabla9 in "A Year of Work on the Arch Linux Package Management (ALPM) Project"

nabla9 — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 10:52:39 +0000

This is a waste of Sovereign Tech Fund money. That money is supposed to fund the digital sovereignty of Germany and Europe. Yet, they put €500,000 into this. It seems open-source developers have their own way of performing their own version of corporate capture.

Creatine is the one supplement repeatedly shown to better your brain and body

nabla9 — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:32:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/supplement-creatine-brain-body

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567821

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11

nabla9 — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:36:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eteknix.com/microsoft-may-have-created-the-slowest-windows-in-25-years-with-windows-11/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567138

Points: 346

# Comments: 378

New comment by nabla9 in "What happened to WebAssembly"

nabla9 — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 10:21:16 +0000

Technical details only verify Wasm's potential. Wide adoption is not a technical matter.

Just like with JVM and other better options before and after it, it's politics, interests and momentum. JVM in the browser was not killed by technology, it was killed by Microsoft. Similarly, we should look who gains and loses relative to other if Wasm becomes mainstream.

Easy portability and less platform dependence. Who wants it, who does not? Apple, Microsoft, Google, ...

Just like with JVM the Wasm can be killed with wrong embrace. Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (MSJVM) was named in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust civil actions, as an implementation of Microsoft's "Embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy. Adopt JVM, remove portability with extensions.

New comment by nabla9 in "AI misses nearly one-third of breast cancers, study finds"

nabla9 — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:09:19 +0000

As it was retrospective study, I really hope they made sure that test images were not in a training set of the algorithm. If they were, the whole study is meaningless.

New comment by nabla9 in "Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela"

nabla9 — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 22:12:30 +0000

The US attack had no intent to control territory. It was to nab one guy. Second paragraph establishes that after intent, there must be de facto control of the territory.

1. Attack intent to control did not happen.

2. De facto control of Venezuelan territory did not happen.

New comment by nabla9 in "Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela"

nabla9 — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:55:59 +0000

That's not what it says.

New comment by nabla9 in "Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela"

nabla9 — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:51:36 +0000

The bet uses it's own definition.

It's written there.

I'm looking at it right now but not copy pasting it here.

New comment by nabla9 in "Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela"

nabla9 — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:48:16 +0000

US did not invade Venezuela by the definition of the bet.

>This market will resolve to "Yes" if the United States commences a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela between November 3, 2025, and January 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".

>For the purposes of this market, land de facto controlled by Venezuela or the United States as of September 6, 2025, 12:00 PM ET, will be considered the sovereign territory of that country.

>The resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible sources.

German Secret Service allegedly wire-tapped US President Obama for five years

nabla9 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:04:30 +0000

Article URL: https://brusselssignal.eu/2026/01/german-secret-service-allegedly-wire-tapped-us-president-obama-for-five-years/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504041

Points: 2

# Comments: 0