Hacker News: yawboakye

New comment by yawboakye in "Is Ireland the worst run country in Europe?"

yawboakye — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:48:02 +0000

cont: compare the speeches and comments of other leaders at the just ended wef summit to the comments of the irish prime minister at the same summit. it’s as if ireland is insulated from the threats facing europe. we’re not, but that’s how oblivious and non-chalant our first citizen is. it’s heartbreaking to watch.

New comment by yawboakye in "Is Ireland the worst run country in Europe?"

yawboakye — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:43:46 +0000

i’ve observed with trepidation how terribly ireland has been run in the last 5 years or so. that’s when i’ve been on the ground. with that experience it’s easy to understand why the country is the way it is and will remain so for the foreseeable future. in private conversations, i’ve lamented with rigorous arguments based on both the history of the island, their hatred for the english, the number one priority of their struggle for independence (ie for the expulsion of the english and not a maturity into statehood), etc.

ireland, like all independent african states, doesn’t know what statehood is, its people (aka elite) not practiced in statecraft. but its the configuration of the world that they also get a god-given right to atrociously run and mismanage some god-given resources. it’s a terrible thing to experience from within. a nightmare!

Is Ireland the worst run country in Europe?

yawboakye — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:34:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/04/11/david-mcwilliams-ireland-has-too-much-money-and-is-fiscally-incontinent/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47730044

Points: 6

# Comments: 6

Umeshism

yawboakye — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:41:23 +0000

Article URL: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=40

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47728753

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by yawboakye in "Using go fix to modernize Go code"

yawboakye — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 11:25:03 +0000

battle of my life. several times i’ve had to update my agent instructions to prefer modern and usually better syntax to the old way of doing things. largely it’s worked well for me. i find that making the agents read release notes, and some official blog posts, helps them maintain a healthy and reasonably up-to-date instructions on writing go.

New comment by yawboakye in "Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists"

yawboakye — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:50:41 +0000

> paying a few people to not work

not in this case though. as explained elsewhere, the artist is a dying career choice in ireland owing to economic reasons. no artist == drub society therefore the incompetent government intervenes the only way incompetence approves: free money. making the state function is much harder, and that’s not what these politicians signed up for. reducing electricity bill by 50% is a herculean task so how about jacking up taxes in one place and giving it back as free money in another? this is the modus operandi of the irish government.

New comment by yawboakye in "Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists"

yawboakye — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:26:21 +0000

the irish government is adept at misplaced priorities, (very) short-term thinking, pursuers of feel-good vibes, basically everything besides running a state. incompetence here has bred the need for more and varied welfare programs just so we can have a variety of careers that cater to the needs of life. of course, necessity of the arts is undisputed. but can the artist make a career here when the money you make from a show, including tips, can’t pay your utility bills? when your income can’t afford you decent accommodation?

New comment by yawboakye in "We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports"

yawboakye — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:22:05 +0000

worked well for a bit. but then the program became popular and that’s when it hit the curb. terrible loss, imo. it was a brilliant idea to encourage open source work with a token reward. it relied heavily on good intentions, which quickly disappeared with the popularity.

New comment by yawboakye in "The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis"

yawboakye — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:57:34 +0000

spain isn’t a great example here. it has some of the most racist fans football has ever seen and yet there’s no action. only italy probably compares. if there was a government agency going after black and brown people (ie non-white) i wouldn’t bet on the spanish population to come to their rescue. lamine yamal, a young footballer of moroccan descent hasn’t been spared the vitriol of the spanish hooligans even though he was top 3 best player at the recent euro (where he helped spain to victory).

point being, given that ice is going after non-whites and is getting by, a spanish ice will get by too, with probably more ease.

New comment by yawboakye in "I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue"

yawboakye — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:59:24 +0000

i’m not associated with temporal, nor does the link above have any referrer nonsense in there. i don’t profit from referring to it here. in fact it may well be a household name in the hn community. that out of the way, it’s not wrong to point to a proper resource that can explain and demonstrate my argument better than a couple of words could. temporal is open source[0] so maybe a github link would have been more palatable?

[0]: https://github.com/temporalio/temporal

New comment by yawboakye in "I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue"

yawboakye — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:55:40 +0000

that’s setting yourself up for trouble, imo. intermediate states solve this problem, and economically. for mature production system see temporal[0]. their magic sauce is good intermediate states.

[0]: https://temporal.io/

New comment by yawboakye in "I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue"

yawboakye — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:53:05 +0000

state machines to the rescue, ie i think the nature of asynchronous processing requires that we design for good/safe intermediate states.

New comment by yawboakye in "I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue"

yawboakye — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:29:41 +0000

got it. is it necessary, then, to couple queue db with app db? if answer is no then we can’t make a necessity argument here, unfortunately.

New comment by yawboakye in "I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue"

yawboakye — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:39:16 +0000

schema migrations will save our careers! \o/

New comment by yawboakye in "I’m leaving Redis for SolidQueue"

yawboakye — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:35:01 +0000

the problem i see here is that we end up treating the background job/task processor as part of the production system (e.g. the server that responds to requests, in the case of a web application) instead of a separate standalone thing. rails doesn’t make this distinction clear enough. it’s okay to back your tasks processor with a pg database (e.g. river[0]) but, as you indirectly pointed out, it shouldn’t be the same as the production database. this is why redis was preferred anyways: it was a lightweight database for the task processor to store state, etc. there’s still great arguments in favor of this setup. from what i’ve seen so far, solidqueue doesn’t make this separation.

[0]: https://riverqueue.com/

New comment by yawboakye in "Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines"

yawboakye — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 18:41:55 +0000

> i’m italian

unfortunately this preamble doesn’t add the weight you assume it should. what has being italian got to do with having an opinion on this? this and all the other “italian here” takes below. fwiw unless eastdakota is being intentionally malicious, he, with the cloudflare legal team, understands the situation and its implications for cloudflare better than any random italian.

New comment by yawboakye in "Grokipedia by xAI"

yawboakye — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:01:30 +0000

patiently waiting for grokipedia’s article on grokipedia. it seems to not be available at the moment. i’m interested from a philosophical perspective: on the completeness of self-description. for example, here’s wikipedia on wikipedia[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

New comment by yawboakye in "Grokipedia by xAI"

yawboakye — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:52:04 +0000

the pursuit of truth doesn’t work by keeping so-called falsehoods up while a debate rages on about their veracity. especially given that there’s no indication on wikipedia of contested facts. i may not be involved in the debate but i’d love some indication and perhaps a hyperlink to where the debate is happening.

the proper discussion you want will never happen. it’s an exercise in persuasion ie trying to move people from one entrenched position to another, and there’s nothing more impossible than that. the only way out is to offer competition, and that’s what grokipedia seems to be doing. check the history of christianity, heresy, reformation. when the catholic church set itself up as the object to be won over persuasively it successfully stifled doctrinal progress. until the intolerants exited.

New comment by yawboakye in "Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study"

yawboakye — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 19:03:13 +0000

there are many ways to account for the fall of the roman empire, and everyone chooses their favorite (usually depending on where their interest bends). for example, it could be explained by the increased usage of mercenaries in the roman army. i like this theory because the fall was brought by losses to renegade forces. it could also be explained by bad leadership.

New comment by yawboakye in "The U.K. closed a tax loophole for the global rich, now they're fleeing"

yawboakye — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:08:30 +0000

if the wealth isn’t inherited then it obviously requires extraordinary effort to amass. i’m not a billionaire and it’s not from a lack of trying to be. the fact that my efforts over the years—which are non-trivial btw—haven’t made me one is a clear signal.

starting and running a successful business is extraordinary effort. my life is better thanks to founders of all the companies whose good and services i depend on. i’m full of gratitude for their extraordinary efforts because they’ve made life worth living.