Hacker News: wsng

New comment by wsng in "Kubernetes on Oxide: How customer needs shaped our integrations"

wsng — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:10:55 +0000

There is no one-size-fits-all, but I would say NFS is nowadays not a preferred option for most modern distributed datastores. They are fine with local storage only, and achieve coordination with higher-level protocols. Running them on top of NFS kills their performance.

New comment by wsng in "Making"

wsng — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:01:23 +0000

Photographs now are presented in museums as work of art, and their creators are considered as artists.

And me skribbling an illustration on a piece of paper doesn’t make me an artist the same way taking a selfie doesn’t make me an artist.

That shows that something being art and someone being an artist has nothing to do with the medium and the used tools.

New comment by wsng in "OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court"

wsng — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:55:18 +0000

As explained in the judgement, being well-known is irrelevant. This is not about consumer protection, but about brand protection.

You are right that the decision has the potential to confuse consumers. However, that is on Open AI, they should have consulted trademark lawyers earlier, and should have rebranded after shifting from open AI to commercial AI.

New comment by wsng in "OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court"

wsng — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:36:51 +0000

Open AI has an independent descriptive meaning as composite term. You would practically trademark a whole class of products, not only a brand name.

In contrast, open text is not descriptive in the sense of being a category of things. Therefore there is no risk that competitors would run into trademark issues by just describing their products.

Also, trademark decisions are always contextual to their time. Today’s meaning of ‘open’ in the context of software and data was not even coined in 1991, at that time people used ‘free software’ as term. Today I am not sure if ‘open text’ could still be trademarked.

New comment by wsng in "European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"

wsng — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:13:08 +0000

The app is open source, and it doesn't do that.

I agree that governments should minimize collection of their citizen's data. I just don't see where it is supposed to happen in this case.

New comment by wsng in "European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS"

wsng — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:32:51 +0000

They have this information anyway if you have an EU passport or an identity card. The government app allows you to share selected properties of these documents with third parties.

New comment by wsng in "Chatto is now open source"

wsng — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 19:52:35 +0000

You receive permission to use and modify a piece of software under conditions set by the creator. It is a license, not a gift. If you don’t like the conditions, use something else or create your own thing.

I will never understand these complaints. Not only do you want stuff for free, you also want to impose your preferred usage conditions on the creator. Where does this entitlement come from?

New comment by wsng in "Elastic lays off 7% of employees"

wsng — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:34:22 +0000

booking.com is in NL, and Spotify in SE. Both outcompeted quite some US competitors.

I would add Hetzner as an example that EU labor laws are no obstacle to being competitive with US companies.

New comment by wsng in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

wsng — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:33:26 +0000

The harm was not done to the readers of the AI generated response, but to the defamed companies.

And yes, it is ok to remove choice if the existence of that choice violates other person’s rights.

Google can continue offering that choice if they make sure nobody is defamed.

New comment by wsng in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

wsng — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 07:25:31 +0000

The ones who were defamed are companies, and the ones who don’t check the AI generated response are their potential customers which won’t buy from them.

It is obvious that the defamed companies are the ones having a problem, not the ignorant viewers.

Why should those companies not hold Google liable for that outcome?

New comment by wsng in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

wsng — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:03:40 +0000

> Just like 1.3 million global road traffic deaths per year are the price society pays for having cars, and believing that people should still be able to freely own and drive cars doesn’t make someone a “car absolutist”.

Car traffic is heavily regulated to reduce the harm being done by cars/drivers.

New comment by wsng in "Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence"

wsng — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:58:58 +0000

In German law, any contract, including bets, is void if it is “sittenwidrig”. For example, if your wager in a bet is to become one’ slave in case you lose, this bet is void.

New comment by wsng in "How to convert between wealth and income tax"

wsng — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:20:34 +0000

It's ok if they pay their taxes in shares, in case they ran out of money.

New comment by wsng in "Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment"

wsng — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:59:31 +0000

Lagarde is not a convicted criminal. She was convicted for negligence, but this is not a criminal conviction.

New comment by wsng in "Anthropic acquires Stainless"

wsng — Tue, 19 May 2026 11:21:04 +0000

The regulation is enforced if someone uses it as title, e.g “Diplom-Ingenieur Max Mustermann”. I am not aware of a court ruling for any other kind of use.

That being said, in Germany there is no official degree named Diplom-Ingenieur Softwareentwicklung, it is always Diplom-Informatiker. Also, the Expression “Softwareingenieur” is not used, the straightforward translation of software engineer would be either Informatiker (emphasizing the degree) or Softwareentwickler (emphasizing the skill).

This is no legal advice: As far as I know, the regulation is strictly about German titles, so putting “software engineer” in your LinkedIn CV is out of scope of this law.

New comment by wsng in "Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’"

wsng — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:13:06 +0000

It's different with services. If you close a mobile phone contract and use it for spamming, the supplier can cancel your contract.

New comment by wsng in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

wsng — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:41:59 +0000

It was not a flawed idea, but flawed execution. The law should have mandated to adhere to the user's "do not track" setting in the browser.

That being said, it was very early regulation in this field, and more recent approaches are already better, e.g., GDPR, DMA.

New comment by wsng in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

wsng — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:16:43 +0000

As part of a smalltalk training, we had to go out and approach strangers in the public. I entered a tram to try my luck. As soon as as I sat down, someone else started to talk to me, and we had a nice conversation. I didn't even need to break the ice myself. So I can (anecdotally) confirm that people can perceive if you want to connect or rather want to be left alone.