Hacker News: vmchale

Utopia and Historical Actions

vmchale — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:25:46 +0000

Article URL: https://vmchale.com/static/serve/utopia-historical-action.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48148308

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by vmchale in "2SLGBTQQIA+ Sub-Working Group MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ National Action Plan Final Report"

vmchale — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:03:06 +0000

Might be ridiculous but at least they're not parading kidnapping victims on Instagram to advertise as one sees in Israel. https://x.com/trackingisrael/status/2039724748309930448?s=20

Humanity is always beset by annoying people but at least Canada is blessed to be dealing with frivolities.

Utopia and Historical Actions

vmchale — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:58:42 +0000

Article URL: https://vmchale.com/static/serve/utopia-historical-action.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717458

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by vmchale in "What game engines know about data that databases forgot"

vmchale — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:50:30 +0000

kdb does two of those by default—columnar and it uses memory mapping (no serialization/deserialization)

Not entirely forgotten in the database world!

New comment by vmchale in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

vmchale — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:13:27 +0000

"long term storage" for CO2 is to spew it into the air where it remains forever... free for Germany, not so much Australia, California, Florida, etc.

New comment by vmchale in "BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech"

vmchale — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:30:06 +0000

Cool, we can be like Cuba except we did it to ourselves

New comment by vmchale in "BYD's cheapest electric cars to have Lidar self-driving tech"

vmchale — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 21:58:39 +0000

> The US car manufacturers are cooked.

Biden put a 100% tariff on Chinese cars and then Trump added tariffs on inputs.

Americans are getting screwed!

New comment by vmchale in "Ford CEO on his ‘epiphany’ after talking to factory workers in 2023"

vmchale — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 15:12:41 +0000

> When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation.

Ford's profit margin was 1.7%. Lots of innovative/productive American companies since 1970 for workers to aspire to = the enterprise can't continue.

New comment by vmchale in "The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)"

vmchale — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 15:18:38 +0000

> no social democrats in sight

The US already has social security, medicare, medicaid. It is often just plain worse/more brutal than Western European countries but the difference isn't a radical reimagination of the social order.

> barring the occasional Bernie

Western Europe has likewise not imagined any new government welfare since the 1970s.

New comment by vmchale in "The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)"

vmchale — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:32:26 +0000

> only have use as propaganda

Propaganda helps you ascend to power and then constrains what you do with that power.

Ultimately if you want to look objectively, you have to look at the concrete, at history. But propaganda matters: history would unfold differently without it!

New comment by vmchale in "The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)"

vmchale — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:29:31 +0000

> These words have more conventional meanings.

Kondylis disputes the typical interpretation of "conservatism." Historically it was a backwards justification of feudalism. Easy to see why someone would talk up "history," "tradition" when they're at the top of the social order and an upstart comes on to stage.

The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991)

vmchale — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 13:29:50 +0000

https://web.archive.org/web/20250915141229/http://vmchale.co...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249500

Points: 37

# Comments: 130

New comment by vmchale in "Use Your Type System"

vmchale — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 17:57:33 +0000

ATS does this. Works quite well since multiplication by known factors and addition of type variables + inequalities is decidable (and in fact quadratic).

New comment by vmchale in "Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future"

vmchale — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:21:15 +0000

Xerox was when the US was on the up-trend, not committing economic suicide at the whim of a mad king.

New comment by vmchale in "Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future"

vmchale — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:20:09 +0000

Given the changes to R&D taxation and cuckoo tariffs I don't think private research will want to start a lab in the US like Bell did.

New comment by vmchale in "Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future"

vmchale — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:18:47 +0000

France is explicitly trying to poach researchers. UK is committing higher-ed suicide though it has a better reputation than the US in many ways.

New comment by vmchale in "Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future"

vmchale — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:16:18 +0000

For engineers, maybe. But with immigration restrictions, employers can no longer create a workplace where "work with the best in the world" is an attraction.

New comment by vmchale in "Trump's NASA cuts would destroy decades of science and wipe out its future"

vmchale — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:14:58 +0000

Before Trump/Vance nuked US reputation the interest on US bonds was low and provided a safe asset to investors. Spending on scientific research was a no-brainer.

New comment by vmchale in "Why the Poor Vote for the Right (and Stop Demanding More Equality)"

vmchale — Tue, 13 May 2025 13:13:53 +0000

>The heart of the model is simple and radical: people choose the identity they feel is most relevant to the social conflicts of the moment.

A lot of this is in Kondylis (30+ years old)

New comment by vmchale in "Python Is Dynamically Typed"

vmchale — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:03:43 +0000

the negative and positive use of types (gating inputs vs. witnessing implementations) get confused when talking about programming languages. It seems to me the positive aspect is overwhelmingly where programmers find frustration.