<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: welzel</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=welzel</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 23:44:24 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=welzel" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The much more interesting projects from Europe are created by <a href="https://schwarz-digits.de/en" rel="nofollow">https://schwarz-digits.de/en</a><p>3 Reasons:
- a significant investment from the Schwarz Group
- not just a marketing stunt, but a company with a long term vision to compete with big US tech
- clearly targeted at B2B with strong ties into EU politics</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 05:43:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421942</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421942</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421942</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The real issue is that you can´t disable this CRAP.<p>Why can´t Apple allow for a setting to 100% disable this bad idea of an UI/UX experience? How much drugs do you need to consume, in order to assume that people who use a computer for professional work want this interface?<p>What was the user requirement for it? 
"lets waste as much UI as possible and make it very, very hard to work on Mac OS!"<p>Who approves this kind of bad UI/UX?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2025 11:39:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45567250</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45567250</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45567250</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What did people expect to happen? Nobody seems to ask the question why military is being deployed to US cities. What would be your assumption if the same happens in Africa or South America? Seriously, how stupid can people be ...<p>I have many friends who already left the US or prepared to leave at a moments notice. None of them are actually political, but they are aware that 1984 is already fully implemented and at any point in time it could get very, very ugly very quickly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 Oct 2025 21:46:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562239</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562239</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562239</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just to be clear: Russia has invaded Ukraine, has declared that the country has no right to exist and ukraine people will be exterminated, but it is NATO that is the aggressor?<p>This is textbook russian propaganda.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2025 05:21:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44363051</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44363051</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44363051</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am sorry, but this question shows how deep you are in the bubble.<p>People don´t care, never did.<p>Example: after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, people still suck up to MbS. Money rules the world.<p>After what we learned about Guantanamo Bay, nobody should be allowed to call the US a democratic country. But we all decided to ignore the facts, as watching Netflix is way to nice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 23 Feb 2025 17:45:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43151317</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43151317</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43151317</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Indiana police are seizing FedEx packages containing cash"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is standard practice in basically <i>every</i> country. Try to cross a border with a pile of cash and see what happens. Police finds a box of cash in your car? You better explain where it came from and why you drive it around.<p>There is so much weird hate for the government in the comments, but please provide a single sane scenario where you need to send cash instead of a bank transfer that is not about avoiding laws/taxes.<p>There are NONE. You send the cash because you did something against the law.<p>So by all means, the police should keep the money until you simple prove the non-existing totally legit reason why you could not use a bank transfer. I understand the problem with this, but you don´t prove that you are innocent; but large amounts of cash are <i>usually</i> connected to crime and it is your job to explain why not.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2024 06:29:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41564837</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41564837</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41564837</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is a simple solution for this problem: increase the payout for people who are affected by overweight vehicles.<p>Have a law, define a target weight + speed and then make it REALLY expensive to insure or kill people with your car.<p>Also in the law: if you drive around without insurance, the car is instantly taken away from you, as it is a weapon to conduct a crime :-)<p>Still people will drive big cars around, but the market will limit the number of people who can pay for it. And of course: new cars only and when ownership is transferred. No additional tax for existing owners.<p>The market would solve this problem VERY VERY quickly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2024 13:57:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41425418</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41425418</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41425418</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Every company should be owned by its employees"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The article has a clickbait title. It is also wrong.<p>NOT every company should give stock options to its employees, because
... it only makes sense if long term success of the company can be significant influenced by its employees. Also, those stock options can be a barrier to growth and become a liability if needed adjustments are blocked in order to protect "stockholder"<p>NOT all employees should get stock options, specially not the ones who contribute very little to the value generated.<p>NOT all employees want stock options, as people just want to take the actual money and be free to switch companies. The stock options are a way to control employees.<p>employee stock options are interesting when the allow to vote on the board. THIS is amazing - and almost nobody does it, because it would actually shift power to the employees.<p>In most companies, giving stock options is almost a scam; you save actual money for salaries, pretend to share revenues (you don´t) and lock-in high value employees. Also you spread your stocks so you are more protected against hostile takeovers.<p>Stock options are a great way for the actual owners to save money and actually become <i>more</i> powerful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jul 2024 10:34:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41077484</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41077484</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41077484</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "EU: Users who refuse scanning to be prevented from sharing photos and links"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We should all support this law, just with one addition:<p>All data shared by politicians, public servants and all of their family members within the EU has to be shared, analysed for corruption + stored <i>forever</i>.<p>If we are all considered pedophiles, 
then all politicians are criminals.<p>Yes, a few people will be wrongly accused and we all loose our freedom.<p>HOWEVER, with every election we will get a small chance that the previous administration will get audited and corruption and other crimes will get uncovered.<p>Seems to be worth it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Jun 2024 12:52:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40562180</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40562180</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40562180</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Daylight Computer – New 60fps e-paper tablet"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One feedback on the webpage: it is impossible to find any spec on the device. It is pure emotion and marketing bull$hit, zero information.<p>If you want to copy Apple & Co on this, please remember to also bring the tech specs.<p>Like: Operation System, Ram, Storage, Battery Life, Format Factor, Weight, I/O.<p>My assumption: you have a less crappy display with a outdated compute unit, made from leftover Shenzhen parts.<p>Sorry, but every year hundreds of startups fail with a "big promise bad product" strategy.<p>It is nothing against this product, i just have trust issues if a company cannot even create a basic webpage that delivers relevant information.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2024 16:35:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476078</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476078</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476078</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I created a startup 2 years ago around a gigantic rabbit hole: understanding cause-and-effect and how you can move towards the outcome you want in a consistent way.<p>In case you want to have unlimited fun yourself, ask yourself: "What is the purpose of X?" and then "how can you measure/assess the fit-for-purpose of it?"<p>Possible Side-effects: 
#1 you might get disgusted and even angry with the self-declared "experts" who have not even understood the basic concepts.<p>#2 you might learn how little you understand yourself and how deep the rabbit hole goles.<p>Example in Software Development: Understand the quality dimensions for a "definition of ready" and what impact a good/used DoR has compared to a bad/not used DoR for the efficiency and effectiveness of a software development process.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2024 07:19:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40141589</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40141589</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40141589</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Ask HN: How to manage phones and PCs for elderly parents?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is amazing to see that the recommendation "put them on Apple, enable parent control, it just works" is countered with an argument from an Android user who does not understand the point: using Apple vs. Android / Windows is about how the product make you feel.<p>Hypothesis: Android UX is more inconsistent compared to IOS and some inexperienced users get anxiety because of that.<p>Hypothesis: on Android and Windows it is much simply to get maleware etc. then on Apple, because Apple can be closed down completly (and this is great!)<p>Hypothesis: on Android and Windows you can damage the account/system very easily with a non-admin User, on Apple this is much less likely<p>Hypothesis: on Android and Windows the amount of admin work needed to keep the device alive is much higher then on Apple</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2024 06:36:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40141347</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40141347</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40141347</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I wonder if a "modern" probe from 2024 could ever have a similar lifespan.<p>With systems hundred times more complex and build by a NASA that is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago, i guess a modern day Voyager will not even make it to the edge, let alone continue to function.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2024 15:59:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133463</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133463</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133463</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "I spoke with a Google worker fired for protesting $1.2B Israel contract"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Google is not a social movement, it is not a democratic social structure or a family.<p>It is a business with the purpose of generating value.<p>Firing activists who are delusional enough to challenge senior management in public is a good move. Ensure to fire anybody even remotely involved with this activists. Make sure that people understand that their job is not to have political opinions during working hours and even of the clock that they cannot opposite the official position of the company without running a risk of getting fired.<p>If you belief that google is "fascist" or "undemocratic" are are delusional; google cannot be "fascist" or "democratic" because it is a company. You do not elect the CEO of google and you are not a citizen of google. It is a company, nothing more, nothing less.<p>If you belief that a company should be democratic: you are free to create your own company, take your own money or find investors who share your beliefs. Put your money where your beliefs are. Activism is incredible cheap and it is long overdue that companies like google stop pretending to be a "family" or "democratic".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:59:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40116264</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40116264</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40116264</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>To get some context on this, you have to look into the local administration of munich in bavaria. They messed up the switch to OpenOffice on the desktop by not supporting all use-cases and then it seems Microsoft used the opportunity to reverse the change by use some "convincing".<p>Anyhow, it would be extremely simple for all of Europe to role out OpenSource: just ban the transfer of critical user data to the US. Microsoft Windows is technically a gigantic NSA backdoor, therefore installing it on a government PC should be considered treason. So, maybe we should start to put politicians on trial for treason and see how quickly MS gets kicked out of Europe...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:18:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934643</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934643</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39934643</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Someone has been attempting to DDoS us for weeks and we do nothing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is so cute. The webpage could be fully static, served from a raspberry as it is hiding behind a CDN anyway and the DDOS is not even trying.<p>Anyhow, doing the same with a high traffic application would be a very very different animal, specially when the app has 100k+ active daily users and is doing actual stuff. The advice is not bad, but it sounds so silly. From experience every time a commercial web application was build as a monolith it became very hard or even unmaintainable in a few years, specially when 15+ Teams are constantly contribution. So pick the right hammer for the problem you have, but pretending a simple marketing webpage + payment/subscription is a good example for architecture is just a bit much.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 31 Mar 2024 20:40:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887890</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887890</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887890</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I like to encourage you to go on this adventure to learn why a toaster made in USA could be the single most horrifying idea a founder can have. I would like to encourage you to become a founder and milk every insight out of this idea you can get. Don´t walk away now, go all in and learn in order to protect you from sinking years of your life into a bad idea (Spoiler: your next idea might be even worse)<p>1. research the cost of producing a production-ready physical product. You need millions of up-front investment and a couple of years of funding.<p>2. research how a toaster is sold. Spoiler: you need attention and access to a target audience. What would be your customer acquisition cost to sell 100K units?<p>3. what is the customer lifetime value of a person who bought your toaster? Spoiler: your competition might be a 10 USD made-in-china piece of crap, so people a willing to spend 25 USD on something that is not dead-on-arrival. How much do you need to charge for a made-in-USA toaster? 99 USD? 299 USD?<p>4. how much do you need to spend on branding and marketing to get the value of "made-in-USA" attached to the toaster? 10M? 50M?<p>5. how will your life look like, when you manage to pull this off to sell 10K toasters? My assumption: it will be a constant nightmare/living hell, as you now have a mountain of dept, high running costs and many people asking you to sell the next 100k toasters...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jan 2024 12:10:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39012411</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39012411</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39012411</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Scrum Sucks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am using Scrum since 2006 and have worked with 30+ Teams so far. I don´t care for Scrum or any other framework, i only care about creating great organisations that empower teams to generate value.<p>In 2022 + 2023 i conducted about > 220 insight interviews with Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Product Owners for a product i am currently developing.<p>There was a VERY VERY clear pattern:<p>1. almost all teams where using Scrum or Kanban or some mixture of it
2. less then 1% of teams actually had a product vision, product goals or a sprint goals
3. nobody was actually doing "inspect&adapt"<p>My assumption #1: it is not the framework or the people<i>, the failure is within the system.<p>My assumption #2: every company is different, a company is a complex system and many many factors contribute to the outcomes, nothing is clearly black or white. Any framework needs to be adopted with the core concepts in place; with Scrum the core concepts are usually not implemented and therefore Scrum fails.<p>(</i>) Site note: training standards of people seems to be very low; a lot of Sscrum Masters and even "Agile Coaches" cannot explain even the basic concepts of Scrum and Kanban.<p>Example: What is the purpose of Daily Standup? How can you assess the quality of Standup? How can you improve the Standup?<p>So what is wrong with the system?
- company does not have a product strategy, only tasks like "develop feature X"
- company does not have strategy management processes in place
- there is NO collection of meaningful data regarding process health and performance and specially Scrum Master work against creating transparency (out of fear)<p>What is the solution? Implementation of a framework without robust performance monitoring is pointless and failure is certain.<p>The issue? It seems that Scrum Masters push the most against performance monitoring out of fear to become transparent. Also, being transparent in an company with low (psychological) safety might be professional suicide.<p>People forget that Scrum was developed by observing successful (senior) teams, but if they don´t understand how value and waste it generated it is meaningless to follow any framework.<p>Example: Having a lot of meetings does not generate the waste, it is only the symptom. The root causes of many meetings are inefficient management and communication structures. In order to avoid the waste you don´t need to remove the meetings, but first resolve the underlaying issue(s) and then the need for the meetings disappear. Removing the wasteful meetings might actually create more waste/harm, as the company might perform even more badly afterwards.<p>So yes, individual developers might get more working hours but generate less value over time. The purpose is not to maximize the working hours of developers, but to maximize the value generated by the team. The assumption that "more development hours = more value generated" assumes that alignment with product goals, teamwork and cross-functional collaboration is in place.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jan 2024 08:46:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010965</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010965</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39010965</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Copyright is not a moral right, it's a monetization strategy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The current Copyright is broken - literally everybody except some evil cooperations and their corrupt politicians agree to that.<p>We all have ideas how to fix it - very simply could be to go with Authors life and when the art is sold it goes down to 10-25 years. Thats it. Simple.<p>What seems to be unsolved is HOW we actually get to this point. It seems to be impossible to get enough money to outspend the evil cooperations in buying politicians, so what do you suggest?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jan 2024 17:56:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833696</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833696</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833696</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by welzel in "Website search hurts my feelings"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have worked on very large e-Commerce sites and it seems there are 2 common issues:<p>#1 a lot of teams are understaffed, overworked an not aligned, improving search is simply not a priority (at the same times, a lot of people are bored out of their mind, because of inefficient allocation of capacities). And of course, usable analytics data on search does not exist as it is hard to collect...<p>#2 search might be actually ok, but the quality of the catalog data is a nightmare - and the catalog is maintenance by a tiny team that overworked and underpaid. To add injury to insult, there is also no clear accountability established and 5 departments and a couple of vendors play the "not my problem" game. Sometimes 10-30% of the catalog is renewed every year and people gave up a long time ago to report problems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 Dec 2023 23:48:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777359</link><dc:creator>welzel</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777359</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38777359</guid></item></channel></rss>