HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

vimy

2,317 karma · joined December 30, 2012

matthias.vermeulen@gmail.com
submissionscomments
vimy··on Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants
Engie was lying. They just didn’t want to be in the nuclear business anymore.
vimy··on Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
Export is only a small part of their emissions.
vimy··on The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran
They are boxing in China. Taking away China’s oil. First Venezuela. Now Iran.

Decoupling from China while taking out China’s allies is the overarching foreign policy.

vimy··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2026)
Seeking work | iOS / macOS developer | Worldwide | Remote

Location: Belgium - No problem to be available for US timezone if needed

Technologies: Swift | Objective-C | AppKit | UIKit | SwiftUI | MLX / CoreML

If you need a contractor to ship a macOS / iOS app, upgrade an older Objective-C/legacy UIKit project or integrate local AI (LLMs or Image gen) using MLX or CoreML into a real product, I’m a good fit.

Email: see profile

vimy··on ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
ChatGPT has conversation branches. Or do I misunderstand?

Just edit a message and it’s a new branch.

vimy··on Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros
Interesting that most of the shows you like are +- 10 years old. From the early Netflix days.
vimy··on AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
The US is in fact increasing support right now. Trump lost his patience with Putin.

You also underestimate the Chinese support. The war would have been over in 2023 if it wasn't for China.

> The discovery of a Russian decoy drone made up entirely of Chinese parts is another indication of the growing wartime relationship between Moscow and Beijing. ... Beyond components, China appears to have provided Russia with at least some complete weapons systems. In May, we reported that Russia was using a new Chinese laser system to shoot down Ukrainian drones. https://www.twz.com/news-features/new-russian-drone-made-com...

vimy··on AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
China is actively supporting the Russian army. They don't want Russia to lose. The Russians won't stop in Ukraine. It can't be more clear than this which country is a greater danger to the West.

> Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine as this could allow the United States to turn its full attention to China, an official briefed on the talks said, contradicting Beijing’s public position of neutrality in the conflict. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/04/europe/china-ukraine-eu-w...

vimy··on Brazil central bank to launch Pix installment feature in September
EU is building Wero to replace all the national payment systems. It uses sepa under the hood.

https://wero-wallet.eu/

vimy··on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024)
For standard credit cards in EU it’s mandatory to pay the full balance every month. And it doesn’t cost anything, there are no interest rates. Not sure how much banks profit on it, if there’s even a profit.

I think most banks only offer if because customers needed credit cards to order stuff on the internet. Before that they were very rare here.

Edit: I meant the credit is free but I pay like € 2 / month to have my card. So maybe that’s their profit.

vimy··on In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
Lol, if you don’t understand we need jobs in Europe this debate has no point.

Wow…

> The European Union’s chemical sector is facing a series of headwinds that the European Chemical Industry Council, Cefic, says are pushing the industry to ‘breaking point.’

A joint study by Cefic and Advancy: The Competitiveness of the European Chemical Industry, paints a bleak picture, with the report saying that between 2023 and 2024 announcements were made indicating that 11 million tonnes of production capacity would be closed across 21 major European production sites

vimy··on In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
It’s late, my brain has shut down but I can name 2 on top of my head:

Steel.

Anything chemical. We already lost half our production. :o

You should read some financial newspapers. Things are really bad.

vimy··on In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
Gas price are still twice as high as four years ago. Whole industries are collapsing because electricity is too expensive for factories. Personally, just heating my home has become very expensive.

Europe is deindustrializing. Especially Germany, the EU economic engine, has been hit hard. So yes, the word crisis is used correctly here.

> For instance, BASF, a global chemical giant, recently announced plans to downsize its operations in the country with the reason being unbearably high energy prices in Germany. Now, the company is shifting its focus toward expanding its production efforts in China and the U.S. to access more stable energy costs. Germany’s prime power- the Automotive industry, is also struggling due to immense pressure caused by rising energy costs. A recent study revealed that energy costs for Germany’s automotive sector increased by 20% in 2022 and a similar trend followed in 2023. https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/

vimy··on In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
Well, we don't have that capacity.
vimy··on In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
> In Europe we don't have much fossil fuels, so our "hippiness" is not really a choice.

We have plenty of oil and gas (normal and fracking). We have just convinced ourselves its better to leave it in the ground and pay foreign countries instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The energy crisis in Europe is a self-inflicted wound.

vimy··on In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month
Batteries can’t cover a dunkelflaute that lasts weeks. Like what happened last year (or the year before, not really sure).
vimy··on Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale
A license key is not a login. And a server like that is not a big deal.

Source: me, I do this way.

vimy··on Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale
A simple license key and monthly ping to license server (5 usd digital ocean) is enough.

Pirates is the cost of doing business. Just ignore them.

No need to make this too complicated.

vimy··on Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale
You can just charge subscriptions for local first software. No cloud is irrelevant. Only the value to the user matters.
vimy··on Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean
Let me be more clear. European emissions are down compared to the 90s. By a lot. And yes, taking into account 'exported emissions'. And yet we consume more.

Time to rethink what you have been told.

vimy··on Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean
> exporting all our 'emissions' to China

A popular narrative but it’s false. Even when we take it into account Europe’s emissions keep dropping.

It’s a small % of China’s massive emissions. They produce and consume on a level we can’t fathom. Their middle class has more people than the US and EU combined.

vimy··on Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor
> We wanted something that would talk with us — realistically, in full conversations — and actually help us improve. So we built it ourselves. The app relies on a custom voice AI pipeline combining STT (speech-to-text), TTS (text-to-speech), LLMs, long term memory, interruptions, turn-taking, etc. Getting speech-to-text to work well for learners was one of the hardest parts — especially with accents, multi-lingual sentences, and noisy environments. We now combine Gemini Flash, Whisper, Scribe, and GPT-4o-transcribe to minimize errors and keep the conversation flowing.

Your prompt can't do this. I know because I've been trying to build something similar and a prompt just isn't enough. You need multiple LLMs and custom code working together to achieve realistic conversations.

vimy··on Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?
I’m not sure seeing AI art and thinking scam is a thing. Most people can’t even spot AI art.

His website seems fine to me.

vimy··on Nvidia's latest AI PC boxes sound great – for data scientists with $3k to spare
Did you change the fan settings? Default is for fans to be quiet. If you go to energy management in settings you can choose “more power” or something instead of automatic. Your Mac will be louder but throttle less.
vimy··on Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find
The humanoid robots will make reindustrialization very cheap.
vimy··on Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'
Marco Rubio said that USAID wasn’t listening to orders. They were a rogue agency. From other things I’ve read it has been an issue for multiple administrations.

Watch here: https://x.com/defiantls/status/1888533363117449619?s=46

vimy··on Tesla Sales Are Tanking in Europe
French for EU.
vimy··on Mac Mini G4 – The best « classic » Macintosh for retro-gaming?
It's the most beautiful Mac ever made. I hope they reuse this design one day.
vimy··on Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app
Well done.

You have a small typo in the Lemonsqueezy page for team licenses.

vimy··on Apple M5 could ditch unified memory architecture for split CPU and GPU designs
> That being said, such a split design may help with improved AI inferencing.

Unified memory is the only reason Macs are so coveted right now for local AI. A single 192 gb ram Mac costs less than the equivalent in standalone GPUs.

Page 1 of 26Next →