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698969

157 karma · joined January 26, 2023

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698969··on Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing
If it definitely had to be market value, then the law probably would've been worded differently?

It says the compensation is determined as a balance of public good and the interests of those affected, so to me it does read like the compensation can be lower than market value so it'd all come down the courts to determine how much below the market value the state can get away with.

698969··on Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing
The constitutional court revoked the "Mietendeckel" law which is a different one (rental cap for all apartments in the city).

This sort of nationalisation has never been to trial.

698969··on Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing
Correction: It's a reflection of demand from people who already live in Berlin. That's who were allowed to vote in the referendum.

They don't care about the elasticity of the market, or the demand from people who would want to live in Berlin in the future.

They already have an apartment, and at pretty low prices because nearly everything built before 2014 is subject to rent control,

I'd guess most people just voted for it because in their eyes "government promised to take apartment from my landlord and lower my rent even more".

698969··on Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing
Berlin already has fines against letting an apartment sit empty without reason, if they're empty, they're empty for a reason or eating the fine is cheaper than the cost of renting it out.
698969··on Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing
Still the same companies Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia but I agree with the second part.

Their yearly profits are capped because of the Mietpreisbremse (rent control) law since all the old buildings that they bought would fall under it, so it would've been better to put the money towards either building new state-owned housing or helping the tenants enforce their rights.

The laws are there to protect tenants against neglect from the landlord but enforcement takes multiple months which is not a reasonable timeline if you have a problem in your apartment and the consequences for landlord are mostly just reducing the rent for that time by a certain percentage which doesn't make a difference if the rents are already cheap because of the Mietpreisbremse, so it would also be good to introduce fines but not sure if Germany's legal framework allows for that.

698969··on Waymo in Dallas
I can't find the original document anymore but when I read it there were a lot of inconsistencies in the comparisons,

this reddit thread has excerpts from the report and some comments explaining why the comparison was fraught

https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1v1qiz0/waymo_has...

698969··on GPT-5.6
50% reduction in cost charged to customers, inference cost may as well be the same, we don't know.
698969··on Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket
*Naamche Bazaar
698969··on Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket
In Nepal, my parents always warned me before eating at some rest stops because they said the food was doctored with baking soda to make you feel fuller, guess it was true after all and not just an urban legend heh.
698969··on Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps
Can apps detect whether the advanced flow for sideloading is enabled or not?
698969··on The MacBook Neo
Why'd the battery be related to the keyboard issue?
698969··on Temporal: The 9-year journey to fix time in JavaScript
That looks neat although your package is missing a link to the source repository.
698969··on You can now play Grand Theft Auto Vice City in the browser
If you don't have the original executable on hand:

localStorage.setItem('vcsky.haveOriginalGame', "true")

I haven't checked further than the third mission

698969··on SourceHut moves business operations from US to Europe
Calling someone an asshole, or calling them a racist if they seem to discriminate you based on your race, saying a restaurant isn't good etc. can very easily get you sued in Germany.
698969··on Chemical knowledge and reasoning of large language models vs. chemist expertise
I think the breadth vs depth thing applies here as well, the PhD will know more about the topic they're researching of course.
698969··on Social anxiety disorder-associated gut microbiota increases social fear
Heh, if so, I wonder if there is a correlation between social anxiety and babies who relied on formula instead of breastfeeding.
698969··on Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?
For groceries at least, the time cost + fuel cost of buying from different stores would probably cancel out any minor variations in prices
698969··on Cheating my social anxiety with T-Shirts
Why the scare quotes?

I wrote about exactly that in the blog, I tried out some qwertee shirts first and then I made my own designs for fun. And I set up a shop if other people want them.

698969··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)
Usually some commentary or puns on a random relatable life topic, I started with jokes about allergies.

I'll setup a redirect on https://shop.gtmnayan.com when it's ready, still have to figure out logistics.

698969··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)
I'm preparing my t-shirt store for launch soon.

I was having trouble meeting people after moving to a new city so I designed and printed some goofy funny t-shirts for my wardrobe, and that has really helped on getting the ball rolling on conversations.

Hoping to make the launch within the next few weeks.

698969··on One way to fight loneliness: Germans call it a Stammtisch
A friend recently created a discord server to match board game players travelling on the same ICE train (German long distance trains). https://bahn.party

There's a bot that lets you search trains and then creates a channel for the one you select and you meet with others on the same train and play board games or just have a chat.

Feels apt to share in this thread.

698969··on Ask HN: Is it possible to make FAANG salaries without working there?
Out of curiosity, since you said "In the USA" specifically, is there any tax regime in these times where tax brackets don't work like this?
698969··on Xiaomi's self-optimizing autonomous factory will make 10M+ phones a year
Same here, you can do better with other brands on the flagships, but the Redmi devices are usually the best in their class (once you flash a custom ROM on it because all the shit about MIUI is true).
698969··on Farm: Fast vite compatible build tool written in Rust
TikTok NPC streams of course
698969··on Bun is much faster than Node.js 22 at decoding Base64 but both rely on same lib
I'm guessing this was from a time when they invoking bun on a script was just an alias to run it with node instead, and you had to do a more specific incantation like `bun run index.ts` to actually use the bun runtime.

When did you use it?

698969··on TDK claims solid state battery breakthrough
It's fair game to compare if you include the conversion efficiency of the organisms that made the fossil fuels :P

We care about the efficiency of converting resources we have a limited amount of, sunlight is unlimited on humanity's scale, so is wind, but how much solar or wind power we can extract from them and transmit has constraints and that is the step where we should start caring about efficiency

698969··on How/Why to Sweep Async Tasks Under a Postgres Table [video]
In one of the snippets, there is a 10 second sleep inside a transaction to add delays between polling if there are no tasks,

Shouldn't that be outside the transaction?

698969··on Scan HTML faster with SIMD instructions – Chrome edition
In browser Javascript, because there you have to load the decoder which is already slower to parse than JSON, then run it in the JS vm to do the actual decoding whereas JSON is built in and has a native highly-optimized parser.
698969··on Ore Energy unveils battery based on only iron, water and air
It's for the battery technology claimant to fill up, not for the commenter.
698969··on Daylight Computer – New 60fps e-paper tablet
Where do I invest?
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