Hacker News: wilkommen

New comment by wilkommen in "Google removes "Doki Doki Literature Club" from Google Play"

wilkommen — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:44:52 +0000

None of these cases destroyed any of the defendants' monopoly status, so while there have been some "actions", there certainly haven't been any effective ones.

New comment by wilkommen in "Google removes "Doki Doki Literature Club" from Google Play"

wilkommen — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:40:40 +0000

We need a cleansing forest fire of aggressive, effective antitrust enforcement. All we gotta do is enforce the laws that are already on the books, and do so in the spirit of the existing body of case law precedent.

New comment by wilkommen in "Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?"

wilkommen — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:54:12 +0000

Only anti-trust action against big tech to break their ad monopoly (to make journalism profitable again) and breaking up media conglomerates (to reduce concentration of power in the journalism industry) can save journalism from becoming just a mouthpiece for the powerful. These things can only happen through politics. We need a political solution to save journalism.

New comment by wilkommen in "SpaceX files to go public"

wilkommen — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:47:04 +0000

I like that, I think your method is better than mine - it's simpler so it's harder to game. It punishes the right thing.

New comment by wilkommen in "SpaceX files to go public"

wilkommen — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 14:22:03 +0000

I agree - I think there should be a rule that prevents anyone who buys a stock from selling it inside the following 2 years or so. And another rule that says every stock must pay a dividend that is a fixed percentage of the company's profit, modifiable only rarely and only by the board of directors. Then anyone buying stocks would have to price them more by the actual present-day dividends and strength of the company in the present day than by what someone else might buy the stock for tomorrow. It would curb speculation and reward responsible companies that are building strength for the long term.

New comment by wilkommen in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

wilkommen — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:13:24 +0000

There's only so much land in the places where people want to live. You can't increase the housing supply enough to stop housing from being an asset in a society where wealth is sufficiently unequally distributed. By virtue of its unique scarcity, land (and therefore housing) will always be an asset, and in a society with increasing wealth inequality, the price of assets will always be going up.

New comment by wilkommen in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

wilkommen — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:38:51 +0000

I think that building more housing helps, but a lack of supply is not the only cause of high housing prices. Wealth inequality is also a huge driver, possibly the primary driver. If wealth is allocated in a society in a sufficiently lopsided way, then a small number of people can buy up literally all the assets in the society. Regular people are bidding against a small cadre of ultra-wealthy people who can't possibly spend all their money on consuption, so they use it to buy assets like other people's homes. In the aggregate, increasing the housing supply won't bring down housing prices if wealth inequality is also growing above a certain rate.

New comment by wilkommen in "What Drives Stock Market Returns? (2018)"

wilkommen — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:37:47 +0000

I find it reassuring. More people are waking up from our collective trickle-down, "free market hypothesis" fever dream and are starting to understand that there's nothing natural or rational about the stock market - it's just an elaborate wealth allocation machine that showers wealth on those who already have wealth (and showers more wealth on you, the more you already have). The stock market is about as natural or rational as the most Communist land redistribution program, except it runs in the other direction. Money is political, and politics is about power! Too many people are still brainswashed by elite propaganda to think a machine designed to increase the power of the rich is somehow a mechanism as natural as the sun and wind.

New comment by wilkommen in "What Drives Stock Market Returns? (2018)"

wilkommen — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:28:48 +0000

I think in the short to medium term, they will continue expanding the availability of credit and expanding the money supply when crashes happen in order to keep asset prices high. At some point there will be a breaking point, but I think 2009-style "Quantitative Easing" and 2020-style fiscal spending can and will happen again. So I'm still in, but this game won't last forever.

New comment by wilkommen in "What Drives Stock Market Returns? (2018)"

wilkommen — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 16:46:02 +0000

Idk how people write posts like this anymore. Clearly the stock market isn't rational, and prices of stocks are not tied to financial fundamentals. Stocks are essentially a deflationary alternative currency that only people with disposable income can afford. The rich (and to a smaller extent, the middle class) take the currency which devalues every year (USD) and use it to buy the currency which increases in value every year (stocks and other digital assets), and this is part of the funnel that increases the wealth of the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. People who think valuations of stocks are tied to fundamentals are smoking medical-grade copium. I too wish that the backbone of our financial system was a not a corrupt, rigged game that benefits a small and decreasing number of people every year, but it is.

New comment by wilkommen in "Who smeared Richard Feynman? (2014)"

wilkommen — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 14:45:49 +0000

nominative

New comment by wilkommen in "The Great Unwind"

wilkommen — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:24:56 +0000

The entire stock market basically functions as a funnel of wealth from the middle class to the rich right now. When OpenAI and Anthropic IPO, they'll be megacap stocks and 401ks and pension funds the world over will invest in them. Then insiders will cash out, and the AI bubble will collapse. USD will have transferred from the retirement accounts of middle-class people to the rich. This is how all stock market crashes work. This one is especially interesting because the middle class is already so squeezed - how many more times can they pull this trick off? Seems like it can't go on many more times.

New comment by wilkommen in "Ask HN: Junior getting lost"

wilkommen — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 21:13:15 +0000

College-taught "best practices" and especially "software development patterns" can pretty much go straight into the trash bin when you start your real software development job. They're not inherently bad, they're just usually not relevant inside the context of whatever applications you end up working on after college. If you try to fit whatever you're doing at work into the patterns you learned in school, it will probably not be helpful. If you do find a chance to apply a pattern you learned in college to something you're doing at work, that's great, but don't try to force it when it's not fitting. It's more important to match the existing patterns inside the software project you're working on than to apply best practices and patterns you learned in school.

New comment by wilkommen in "How do I make $10k (What are you guys doing?)"

wilkommen — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:47:00 +0000

Too many people try to find work in competitive fields where there are fewer jobs than applicants and spend years tearing their hair out trying to make it happen without success, and all for nothing. Go where you're wanted, especially if you're already broke. Find a job in construction, they'll hire anyone who can show up on time every day and can work hard, or is smart, and the pay isn't even bad. Join the union if you can, and figure your path out from there. Maybe you'll make it back to tech, maybe not, and maybe it's ok either way.

New comment by wilkommen in "Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance"

wilkommen — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:57:50 +0000

The FTC defines monopoly, the courts define monopoly when private litigants bring monopolization cases and via precedent, and Congress defines monopoly via lawmaking. Of course it's subjective, everything is subjective when it comes to the law. The US needs to do it if it wants to maintain its status as a world power instead of becoming a banana republic where the law is a joke.

New comment by wilkommen in "Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance"

wilkommen — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:39:58 +0000

Solution is to prosecute private monopolies out of existence, by enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act and the Sherman Act.

New comment by wilkommen in "Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance"

wilkommen — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:45:20 +0000

Not true - the fix is to start enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act, the Sherman Act, and every other piece of legislation already on the books which was written and passed by congress for the purpose of eliminating private monopolies. Walmart and other monopolies are using their monopoly power to put small businesses of all kinds out of business and raise prices at the same time. Here's some info on exactly how they do that: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-secret-scam-drivin...

New comment by wilkommen in "Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance"

wilkommen — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:29:44 +0000

The existence of monopolies is a political issue, and it is a political problem that must be resolved in order to restore any semblance of a free market in the United States.

New comment by wilkommen in "Ask HN: Anyone else finding it impossible to land a job?"

wilkommen — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:58:38 +0000

Also, leverage recruiters - give your resume to as many professional recruiters as you can. They're often better than applying directly now. Also apply at staffing companies, that's a good way in.

New comment by wilkommen in "Ask HN: Anyone else finding it impossible to land a job?"

wilkommen — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:51:41 +0000

Make multiple versions of your resume, each of which emphasizes a different aspect of your skillset, and use the one that most closely matches the job description when you apply. When I am really interested in a job, I usually make a new version of my resume just for that one job application. It's not as much work as it sounds, because I just include or exclude different bullet points depending on the main skills required in the job description, so that when the person reviewing my resume reads it, they will say "I'm looking for an experienced C# developer... and this is an experienced C# developer! It's a match!". If I include too much info about my other skills, then they wonder if I'm much of a C# developer at all. It's about reducing what the hiring manager would see as "noise" so that they clearly receive the "signal" that they are looking for.