<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: scaramanga</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=scaramanga</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:00:44 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=scaramanga" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Linux is good now"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've observed that most "enthusiasts" are really just brand ambassadors. They've been captured by some proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux, and that's the problem of Linux. The day their set of products runs perfectly on Linux is the day Linux will be ready for them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:48:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459551</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459551</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459551</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Linux is good now"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Switched in, ooh i dunno, '98 or '99. Quality is about where it was then relatively speaking. Sure things have improved, mainly just systemd, and we got ACPI and later power management stuff for laptops.<p>Prior to that windows was better on laptops due to having the proprietary drivers or working ACPI. But it was pretty poor quality in terms of reliability, and the main problem of the included software being incredibly bare bones, combined with the experience of finding and installing software was so awful (especially if you've not got an unlimited credit card to pay for "big professional solutions").<p>Every time the year of the Linux desktop arrives, I'm baffled, since not much has changed on this end.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:41:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459486</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459486</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459486</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Say No to Palantir in the NHS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Actually yes, that would be an ideal intervention of state into computing infrastructure.<p>It could even be revenue generating as, once developed, it could be sold out to the private sector, instead of essentially being taxed by foreign corporations for such basic digital infrastructure as hypervisors and key/value stores.<p>It could also act as a buffer and wage-stabiliser for people like us, who work in tech, by providing guaranteed employment when the private sector implements layoffs.<p>I don't know why anyone in our position wouldn't support that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Dec 2025 15:10:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46411601</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46411601</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46411601</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Say No to Palantir in the NHS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Billionaires have sabotaged pretty much every aspect of life by using their enormous wealth, power, and influence to hijack our public institutions. They're destroying our country and our way of life. We don't have to bend over passively to receive a shafting.<p>The insinuation is that they'll use their market position and political influence to extract funds for costly products and services that should be being spent on improving the NHS instead, happily driving the NHS towards a crisis so that they can privatise it. This is the project, and has always been the project of the billionaires. And even if all the current billionaires die and are replaced tomorrow, it will still be the project of the billionaires who replace them. The only solution is to eradicate billionaires.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Dec 2025 10:45:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46410119</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46410119</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46410119</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Another possibility not mentioned here is simply demonstrating that they can get away with not doing so.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:07:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510499</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510499</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510499</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Assuming there is even a venue where evidence would be provided for the purpose of being looked at</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:05:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510485</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510485</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510485</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>yes, ICE strike me as deeply and sincerely concerned about both agitators and bringing robust cases to courts :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:02:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510466</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510466</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510466</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Probably for the best...<p>Like, anyone who would work with some of my previous employers, are places I wouldn't want to work anyway. It's a big wide world out there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2025 08:00:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45471564</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45471564</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45471564</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Are top CEOs underpaid? (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>CEOs: the real victims of capitalism.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 20 Sep 2025 23:05:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318411</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318411</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45318411</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, the details are scattered through the article, so you've got to pay close attention. It says that the LCA that the industry produced ignored the carbon intensivity of draining wetland, creating more farmland, and fertilizing it. When that's accounted for (last 2 paragraphs, the bit of hagiography on Searchinger), biofuels isn't a climate policy anymore. Using an LCA that ignores the carbon emissions you're creating, misleads people, whether done on purpose or not.<p><a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861</a><p>"These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2025 07:47:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44708312</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44708312</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44708312</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Big agriculture mislead the public about the benefits of biofuels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's explained in the article. People aren't going to starve to fill their gas tank so you need to grow more corn to offset that used for biofuel. To do that can require destroying other carbon sinks (wetlands are the example given, sometimes dried and then burned) to turn them into fields.<p>But in any case, carbon from the ground is used to fertilize the fields to grow the corn. For every unit of energy produced by corn using carbon sequestered from the air, it matters how much carbon from oil buried underground is released in the atmosphere to produce that unit of energy. If it's greater than or equal to the amount offset by not burning gasoline, it's a net loss.<p>All of these factors have to be included in lifecycle assessments, which are the tool to use for deciding if a proposed policy is going to lead to lower atmospheric carbon in the future, rather than simplistic models. Selling someone a simplistic model instead of an LCA is basically lying.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2025 07:35:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44708218</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44708218</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44708218</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Jimmy Carter has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah the gwangju massacre definitely happened, and he definitely authorized it because the troops who did it were under the command of John Adams Wickham.<p>The agreed framework would have <i>prevented</i> North Korean nukes, had the US actually honoured it. Instead bush tore it up when he came in to office, and then John Bolton fabricated the aluminium tubes hoax to justify it, which was later wheeled out to justify the Iraq war. Then they put north korea on the axis of evil so as to have a single non-muslim state there. All of that, but mostly the Iraq war is what led north korea to develop nukes.<p>And yeah, the deal was "no nukes (they shut down their nuclear reactor for 12 years unilaterally as a show of good faith) AND no long or medium range ballistic missiles in exchange for $1Bn and fuel oil for heating." Good luck getting that deal now :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Dec 2024 22:56:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554486</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554486</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554486</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "What I Learned Reporting in Cities That Take Belongings from Homeless People"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Among the proposed strategies is to actually do such studies:<p><a href="https://www.usich.gov/sites/default/files/document/19%20Strategies%20for%20Communities%20to%20Address%20Encampments%20Humanely%20and%20Effectively_1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.usich.gov/sites/default/files/document/19%20Stra...</a><p>Most of the other suggestions are banal, and self-evident qualitative improvements (assuming you agree with the authors that homeless are people to be helped, and not a problem to be solved, which I wouldn't take for granted on HN). eg. maybe cops and sanitation workers aren't equipped to help people, so why are we sending them? Maybe housing costs are too high and we should build affordable housing? and other points which ChatGPT could probably summarize.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Dec 2024 22:42:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554364</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554364</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554364</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "What I learned reporting in cities that take belongings from homeless people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, if only the homeless were more considerate of MY needs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Dec 2024 22:30:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554258</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554258</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554258</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "X reinstates Magdeburg attacker’s account after silently removing pro-Musk posts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As you well know, because Musk is a free-speech absolutist/crusader. Actually so much so that he is constantly attacked, and vilified for his courageous position. He is also a bold defender of the light of human consciousness itself. So working backwards from there you can determine that deleting posts is actually a form of constitutionally protected speech which X (the everything app) is doing, as a public service for all of humanity.<p>There, FTFY</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Dec 2024 03:03:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42491350</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42491350</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42491350</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Palantir and Anduril are building a tech consortium to bid on defense contracts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is their job to deliver shareholder value.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Dec 2024 02:47:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42491267</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42491267</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42491267</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Yes, we did discover the Higgs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>not to nitpick, but I think "reactionary" or "aspiring crank" are probably more descriptive :)<p>"This isn't music, back in my day we had Credence"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2024 10:15:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41943843</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41943843</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41943843</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Broadcom lays off many VMware employees after closing acquisition"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Surprised their union agreed to this given the extraordinary profits being made...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Nov 2023 08:06:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38443492</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38443492</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38443492</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Reflecting on 18 Years at Google"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There's a great documentary about waco on Netflix and at the end, the guy who is was in command of the troops who massacred 80 women and children concluded (after 30 years of reflection), "you know the real victim was? Me, because the whole fiasco made me look bad."<p>It's interesting to see how those who appear outwardly evil manage to cling to a self-serving and distorted view of the world in which, if anything, they are the maligned victims.<p>You can just as easily imagine a SWAT member saying "when we were training to assault civilian homes, it was a wonderful time, everybody was competent and had the right motivations, we were there to protect the good guys and hurt the bad guys - but only as a last resort! Then when we got to the branch davidian compound we applied all of our methods and tactics and it all went downhill from there and, tragically, we ended up in a dark place."<p>When, from the perspective of even the most casual observer, it was evident from very early on that given the material, resources, methods, tactics, organization, and leadership that was deployed, the outcome that unfolded was actually inevitable.<p>Getting back on topic, it's not particularly news to anyone to find out that there can be very well run, collegiate, bubbles full of well-meaning individuals doing great work who nevertheless operate within institutions which, on the whole, are a cancer upon society. It's a wonderful privilege and a joy to find yourself inside one of these bubbles compared to all of the worse things that you could be doing to make a living.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:54:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38390129</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38390129</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38390129</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scaramanga in "Reflecting on 18 Years at Google"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also he's saying "don't be evil" was the motto, but he joined a year after gmail and in the same year when the CEO was saying "don't be evil is purely marketing" in interviews in forbes in order to allay the fears of investors who were wondering whether to take that as an admission that google is defrauding investors and neglecting its fiduciary duties, clarifying that the only "evil" that matters is that which has no impact on, or that which materially harms shareholder returns. By that definition, their philosophy is no different from that of a tobacco company or Chevron.<p>So i mean ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:30:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38389993</link><dc:creator>scaramanga</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38389993</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38389993</guid></item></channel></rss>