Hacker News: rmah

New comment by rmah in "Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11"

rmah — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:40:08 +0000

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.

New comment by rmah in "The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI"

rmah — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:33:50 +0000

Sounds like a good way to ensure less capital in total.

New comment by rmah in "The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI"

rmah — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:31:11 +0000

If the vast majority live at a "borderline biblical" standard of living, then there is simply not enough excess wealth to pay for the data centers (or more accurately, the industrial output necessary to build and maintain those data centers) you're talking about. Agrarian societies (i.e. borderline biblical), by definition, do not have the excess labor necessary for industrial output at any scale (here I mean anything more than a few % of contemporary levels).

New comment by rmah in "Bcachefs creator insists his custom LLM is female and 'fully conscious'"

rmah — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:25:02 +0000

Lol, you know this is sorta sad but true.

New comment by rmah in "Bcachefs creator insists his custom LLM is female and 'fully conscious'"

rmah — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:24:18 +0000

IMO, it's similar but worse. at least dogs and cats are living beings.

New comment by rmah in "11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for"

rmah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:40:12 +0000

So every time your side loses a vote is equivalent to "cannot vote for"? Interesting perspective.

New comment by rmah in "YouTube Blocks Background Listening Workaround for Free Users"

rmah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:38:16 +0000

It actually is an addition marginal expense. They have to pay for infrastructure and possibly licensing fees.

New comment by rmah in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

rmah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:18:05 +0000

People have literally started revolutions and wars over taxes. Empires have fallen because of taxes. People are often emotional and don't even want to think logically about taxes. I suspect that it's been like this since taxes were invented :-)

New comment by rmah in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

rmah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:13:23 +0000

Because, for white collar jobs, that is so rare that it's reasonable to say that it never happens.

New comment by rmah in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

rmah — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:08:17 +0000

It sorta does, that's one of the primary points of a federal system.

New comment by rmah in "Portugal: The First Global Empire (2015)"

rmah — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:31:18 +0000

Yes and no. it's not like they ever extracted taxes from most of the natives living in the amazon jungle. Saying that you rule over people that have literally never heard of you is, IMO, stretching the definition of "rule" quite a bit :-)

New comment by rmah in "11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for"

rmah — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:12:18 +0000

I see. So by "cannot vote for" you meant "did not vote for". Thanks for clearing it up.

New comment by rmah in "11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for"

rmah — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:23:18 +0000

Your statement doesn't make sense to me, perhaps you could clarify it? Did you mean that 85% of the population didn't vote for the current leader of the executive branch? If so then perhaps "that 85% [...] did not vote for" might be more appropriate. Or were your referring to the electoral college used to elect the POTUS?

For the first, 100% of citizens cannot vote for the federal government representatives (children, most felons, etc do not have the franchise), and about 1/2 of citizens who are eligible to vote do not. The vast majority of adult citizens can vote.

For the electoral college, that only applies to the POTUS. I agree that the electoral college is deeply flawed. But both senators and congressmen are elected directly. They are the ones who make the laws. The executive branch just enforces and executes those laws. The responsibility for the many vague laws that hand over power to the executive is on congress.

IMO, to say "85% of Americans pay taxes to a federal government that they cannot vote for" is misleading at best.

New comment by rmah in "Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide"

rmah — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:27:03 +0000

All of it.

New comment by rmah in "Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide"

rmah — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:10:20 +0000

Most people live in asia. thus most foods are both produced and consumed in... you guessed it asia.

New comment by rmah in "Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide"

rmah — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:01:32 +0000

I disagree.

New comment by rmah in "FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home"

rmah — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:41:19 +0000

It's like you didn't see where I agree that current enforcement is too aggressive. Why are you writing in a tone that implies we disagree when we agree? This is the sort of thing that confuses me.

New comment by rmah in "GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source"

rmah — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:34:11 +0000

Giving something away for free and then whining that people use it for free confuses me. I mean, what did you think would happen?

New comment by rmah in "FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home"

rmah — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 18:57:04 +0000

Yes, but it's essentially just a re-branded INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). They were conducting raids to catch undocumented immigrants (often at workplaces) for as long as I can remember (i.e. back into the early 1980's). IIRC, spanish speakers called them "la migra".

New comment by rmah in "FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home"

rmah — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 18:51:38 +0000

It saddens me that your rather innocuous comment has been down-voted so aggressively. Immigration enforcement is required. Illegal immigration should be discouraged. ICE's current tactics seem overly aggressive to me and, yes, seem to be used politically. But immigration laws should still be enforced. I imagine you'd agree that if ICE agents/supervisors act beyond the scope of their duties or with excessive force, they should be disciplined/prosecuted. I also have a hard time understanding people who don't agree with what I just wrote. I can only imagine those that want to disagree think I'm writing with some sort of underlying agenda and in code to push some broader political narrative (I'm not).