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markvdb commented on Panjandrum: The ‘giant firework’ built to break Hitler's Atlantic Wall   bbc.com/future/article/20... · Posted by u/rmason
inkyoto · 6 months ago
Instead of shifting the goalposts, please do yourself a favour and read up on the Untermenschen and the convoluted hierarchy of the sub-humans in the Nazi racial ideology. As an example, since the Nazis harboured particular hatred towards the Poles, the Poles were at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and only complete obliteration of the Polish ethnicity was deemed acceptable.

One joins an alliance of convenience, sometimes in very unfavourable circumstances, to avoid the worst – the demise of one's own people and to guarantee their survival. Making a deal with the devil is a well-known adage that aptly describes such an unfortunate event.

Nazis considered the Finns (and the Estonians by extension) to be racially pure, with Latvians and Lithuanians being somewhere in between either redeemable or tolerable (frankly, I can't recall the exact details).

> WW2 was a complex war.

WWII was no more complex than the WWI, and it had a single, overarching objective – the repartitioning of the world. The main difference between the two was that the WWII was infused with a vile racial ideology, used to justify the pursuit of Lebensraum and the total annihilation of peoples whom the Nazi Party targeted with hatred, based on their crackpot so-called racial studies.

markvdb · 6 months ago
A clear view of WW II in all its complexity is important. The current tense geopolitical context makes that even more so. Have you noticed how the current head war criminal in Moscow is glorifying his WW II predecessor?
markvdb commented on Show HN: PinSend – Share text between devices using a PIN(P2P, no login)   pinsend.app... · Posted by u/avovsya
markvdb · 7 months ago
Some feedback:

- Superb domain name.

- I'd clean up less relevant bits as much as possible. The subtitle for example says "Share text and images instantly and securely across all your devices". I'd s/and\ images// and s/across\ all\ your devices//.

- There is a strong use case for sharing just text. I'd encourage you to focus this app on just that. If tempted to add file/image/whatever sharing, I'd break that out into something separate.

- Shortening the url would be an expression of focus. Think https://pinsend.app/sessioncode .

- The copy functionality for each text string shared is great.

- Why not make the qr code visible by default?

- Let your audience decide how they want to use string sharing functionality. Don't presume on their behalf. What if two technicians on either side of a theatre want to use this to share secret streaming strings? You'd want to make sure your messaging is welcoming to them too.

markvdb commented on Denmark to raise retirement age to 70   telegraph.co.uk/world-new... · Posted by u/wslh
tmnvix · 7 months ago
> This projection came true. You can live with a 1930s living standard while working 15 hours per week at a median wage.

Maybe not if you want to own a home. Asset price inflation is real. If you already own a home, sure.

markvdb · 7 months ago
- Asset inflation can be tackled with flexibility. The level of flexibility my acquaintance showed is not required. He bought a fixer-upper two apartment building with a garden in a livable small walkable eurozone city for 5k€.

- The productivity growth really has had incredibly strong deflationary effects. So much more, more diverse, tastier and healthier food for example, for so much less money.

- The growing affluence has really created incredible opportunities for scavenging from the waste stream. A practical example. About half of the food I eat is leftovers from a nearby school. I'm proud to be saving good food from going to waste _and_ it lowers our expenses quite significantly.

markvdb commented on Denmark to raise retirement age to 70   telegraph.co.uk/world-new... · Posted by u/wslh
jampekka · 7 months ago
It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system.

In 1930 Keynes projected that by 2000 their grandchildren could work 15 hours per week¹. Now the projection is that we will work more and longer in the future.

And what is this labor supposed to even do? How much of even current work really increases wellbeing?

Graeber's thesis of bullshit jobs becomes increasingly more convincing: work isn't about production, it's about social control².

[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

[2] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

markvdb · 7 months ago
> It's utterly insane that people need to work more and longer as technology increases productivity. A truly dystopian economic system.

Keynes was almost right. He underestimated the ability of future generations to consume conspicuously. Also, the need for many to fit in by working, but I digress.

Many don't _have_ to work more and longer. I'm speaking of a large class, very much overrepresented on HN, of smart, healthy westerners with no dependents to care for. We have only one major problem. We live in this bubble nudging us towards conspicuous consumption - gently or less so.

My job closely resembles Keynes' 1930's prediction. Sometimes I work (much) more. Not because I need money, but because the job is interesting. Interesting as in, me learning, contributing something positive to other people's lives, growing my family's financial resilience and robustness, or just enjoying the flow.

markvdb commented on Denmark to raise retirement age to 70   telegraph.co.uk/world-new... · Posted by u/wslh
deanc · 7 months ago
Sure. But is that the society we want to live in. Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more? I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.
markvdb · 7 months ago
> Do we not have ambitions to have people work less, enjoy what little life they have more?

Isn't that something for the individual to decide, not the collective? Many derive from work a lot of meaning in life. If working is what makes some people happy, it would be nice to not punish people for working until they die.

> I'm not saying this is an economically easy problem to solve, but we focus so much on economics and so little on policies that make people happy.

Absolutely!

markvdb commented on How to live on $432 a month in America   shagbark.substack.com/p/h... · Posted by u/cactusplant7374
markvdb · 7 months ago
I've seen better publicity for a simpler life. Jacob Lund Fisker[0]'s ERE comes to mind.

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

markvdb commented on Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students   nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us... · Posted by u/S0y
markvdb · 7 months ago
Wouldn't it be easier for Harvard to move to where it can function as a university, instead of putting up with this? It's not entirely unprecedented. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_University .
markvdb commented on Building my own solar power system   medium.com/@joe_5312/pg-e... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun
apexalpha · 7 months ago
> I found three companies and gave them my PG&E usage for the past year (about 16,000 kwh) and got three quotes ranging from ~45 — 55k.

Wow these rates are crazy. A 10kW setup costs you maybe €10.000 all-in here in the Netherlands.

What's going on with these rates? Do they already include the ridiculous tarrifs?

A new battery setup for a 20kWh LFP battery + 10 kW inverter + installation is €7000 now.

And dropping, fast.

Assuming batteries and PV come from China, someone in California is making a lot of money or the government is straining the process with bureaucracy costing $30.000 per setup.

markvdb · 7 months ago
I see 7k€ for 12kWp, retail, for a diy ground install set for our summer house. That's before 4k€ in subsidies. No net metering, and feedin compensation is capped at 0.02€/kWh. But at 3k€ net, who cares? Even with the low electricity rates here, this makes sense. Even for a summer house!
markvdb commented on Building my own solar power system   medium.com/@joe_5312/pg-e... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun
brnt · 7 months ago
And over here in NL we're going to be _charged_ when returning power to the grid in 1.5 yr... I'll be running my airco to burn off those kWh's :P
markvdb · 7 months ago
Already happening in Flanders for those on dynamic pricing.
markvdb commented on Solar grants held hostage in Pennsylvania legislature – as demand soars   capitalandmain.com/solar-... · Posted by u/rntn
markvdb · 7 months ago
Solar has won the market's backing. Whatever Pennsylvania politicians decide, they better take that into account.

In most places, solar is perfectly competitive without subsidies. Take my prosperous corner of the EU. No direct subsidies, nor the indirect subsidy net metering is. .37€/kWh average residential all-in electricity price caused a solar boom anyway.

The short term result of that solar boom is an ever steeper duck curve [0]. Negative electricity pricing more frequently and longer. Lots of creativity aligning production and demand. Think dynamic pricing, energy storage both as heat and electricity, and more. Great to see these products and services springing up.

I see early signs of much larger actors adjusting to the changed electricity landscape. Ever larger scale industrial scale clients are embracing the entire spectrum of solar, electric steam generation, heat pumps and battery storage. Exciting things with the market providing a strong tail wind.

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

u/markvdb

KarmaCake day2368March 15, 2013
About
Free software geek and classical guitar teacher. Particularly proud I've helped organise https://fosdem.org since the beginning >= 25 years ago.

I take short to medium term consulting projects on things I like:

- where free software and video touch - small to medium functional web applications using django - and more ...

Contact me through mark@fosdem.org .

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