NERV Disaster Prevention
nerv.app
nerv.app
Except there was a law suit in that case because nobody bothered to get the rights from Lucasfilm
The lawsuit was dismissed, btw.
> On November 26, 1985, the suit was dismissed by Judge Gerhard Gesell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on the grounds that the lobbyists' use of the mark in a noncommercial and non-trade context fell outside the jurisdiction of trademark law. [1]
[1] "Lucasfilm Ltd. v. High Frontier, 622 F. Supp. 931 (D.D.C. 1985)". Justia Law. (via Wikipedia) https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/6...
But then I think about some of the things in the series and movies and it's incredibly hard to fathom those showing up in any kind of Star Wars IP.
But I love that about it... I've always thought Star Wars sucks to be honest. I love that Japan's is so much darker and angstier.
Evangelion has the benefit of not being owned by Disney, and thus not being milked into oblivion*. If all we had of Star Wars was the original trilogy, and maybe the "Rebuild of Star Wars" aka the sequel trilogy (speaking purely in story terms of soft-rebooting things), it could probably stand toe to toe with Evangelion on prestige. It's just been watered down so much in the last two decades, as opposed to Evangelion which has been fiercely protected by its original creator.
Weird, I didn't think I'd be defending Star Wars in 2024. And I do much much prefer Evangelion.
*I am aware of how badly Evangelion has been milked for merch, but I'm talking exclusively about media appearances in this discussion. There was Evangelion manga, but I can remember there being three series or less for about 20 years (and two of those were gag manga). In terms of visual media outside the main series (anime, EoE, Rebuild films), I'm pretty sure there's just been a smattering of Japanese commercials using Evangelion characters.
I can't help but feel you're significantly overestimating the "average familiarity" here.
And I'm pretty sure at least Pokemon is well entrenched into popular culture. Death Note and One Piece have had Netflix series, also indicated a good amount of penetration in the average market.
I recognize most of the names you mentioned, but haven't watched any of them other than to check if they interest me.
Obviously Pokemon is better known, but other than that it's going to depend a lot on age group.
Also, Eva is much more, for lack of a better term, adult-themed, thematically complex, and sexually weird than Pokemon, One piece, etc. This certainly would make it less universally popular as a cultural export.
I don't think Evangelion would ever have been a breakout hit, per se, like DBZ, but depending on the circumstances it definitely could have had moderate success.
related: "Can You Live Entirely Off of Evangelion Merchandise?" by Red Bard[0].
Man... the cognitive dissonance I went through mentally bouncing back and forth for a few minutes. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that before in my life.
I'm glad all the top comments on HN are about Eva though.
I guess a part of the reason of its popularity today belongs to otaku culture on the Internet that was a good fit for this kind of anime-origin stuff. Plus the company that runs NERV is owned by Sakura-Internet, which is one of the biggest computer infra business, and is believed to provide a reliable system at time of emergency.
THE year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
The thing is, The Metaverse wasn't a problem in Snow Crash. It just was - it was a thing, and it was generally regarded as one of the last places not totally under the dystopian corporate lawlessness that the rest of the world was.
So the motivating example is built on misunderstanding the original text, in the same way that Meta doing it was built on misunderstanding everything about the concept.
In fact, there was a whole HN thread about an article on just that phenomenon recently[0,1].
The meme is used so often because there are many, many torment nexuses. Just as the definition of "enshittification" ceased to be bound to a description of platform decay almost as soon as it went viral here, and "literally" has been its own contronym for literal centuries, "torment nexus" has evolved to communicate a broader concept than was originally intended. And that's OK. It doesn't take anything away from the original usage.
Yes, one can be angry that human language doesn't follow the strictly defined, rigid rules of a programming language, and that the meaning of words can change quickly, and that language is fluid, sometimes vague and even self-contradictory. But to be mad that other people are using a meme in a way you don't approve of is petty and silly, because that's how the internet works. Such people need to touch grass and get a life.
[0]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires...
"The radio is powered by satanic devils"
A change in the meaning of enshittification would be worse, IMO, because it is a nice description of a widespread phenomenon. It didn’t really have a great name before (“platform decay” sounds too passive, enshittification is good because it emphasizes the fact that it is incentivized to proactively make the platform bad).
So, I think we should go along with the former but not the latter.
However, the concept still holds weight. If you want a less obnoxious motivating example, there's actually a very, very old Torment Nexus that we've been trying to build for over a hundred years: humanoid robots. The play that literally coined the term robot - R.U.R.[0] - very much made them the central problem of the story. Building humanoid robots IRL is a very bad idea, and yet people still do it, resulting in all sorts of creepy robots with awful problems that could have been built as far more useful machines had they not been forcibly anthropomorphized.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
Yes, I am aware that the robots in this story were more grown-in-a-vat than built-from-parts, but still.
Though perhaps there is something we're missing that the target audience would more quickly identify it as real.
Their Japanese Twitter account has 2 million followers, the branding hasn't really caused enough confusion in Japan to hinder them: https://twitter.com/UN_NERV
they have an excellent mastodon instance
Borrowing the name from Eva might be a bit much in this case but borrowing the UI look won't be. They've done both here. They could've even gotten away with borrowing the graphic design look from Eva without citing it as the Eva UI designs are generic enough that it's not an obvious copy.
Examples:
eva: https://medium.com/astromono/the-amazing-ui-design-of-evange...
lcars: https://www.thelcars.com/themes/lcars-ultra-picard.html
Imagine this: Star Trek the next generation Earthquake Locator! and it's an Lcars interface.
Additionally Eva was a very divisive series. Popular yes, somewhat main stream in japan but also strange enough that its mostly liked by a certain crowd. I'm part of that crowd but at the same time I get why that crowd is different.
To help illustrate imagine 2010s Justin Beiber or Twilight themed earth quake apps. Right? That's sort of a different crowd from the people who like Eva and not everyone is into that stuff. Are you more likely to download the app if it was themed liked that?
Additionally Anime was not always mainstream in the world. It was considered nerdy to like it. It's become mainstream now in the last decade outside of japan, but in japan it's still considered a little different.
If it gets people to download the app, I’m all for it.
What is this based on?
> it gets the wrong people to download the app
Who is a wrong person for a disaster-readiness app?
> the right people will be turned off from downloading it
One, nothing precludes multiple apps. Two, we have different definitions for the right people to save if they’re going to prioritise cultural comfort over safety.
If it was Justin Bieber themed only the Justin Bieber fans wouldn't perish.
Would you download a Justin Bieber natural disaster app? If the answer is yes then this conversation is over.
If it were the only option, yes. Wouldn't you?
I think Bieber is a twat. But you're almost making putting his face on a disaster app sound like a good idea. If we're accepting selecting people based on their traits and biases, those who are unable to put aside a petty dislike for a pop star to survive seem like a decent place to start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...
Practically: they aren't doing it, so does that mean it shouldn't be made? Government also seems pretty captured by industry (not just US) who are more interested in profits than utility. Sadly that's supposed to be where governments should shine the most as they are supposed to have different incentive structures.
Best note(?): Seems when incentives align and there isn't strong capture that the two can work in tandem pretty well. But that seems more and more rare these days. In fact, this particular app works with JMA (government).
Additional note: But couldn't we also say the same thing about texting, calling, and even email? Are these not social goods? In fact, even in some ways the government does this. It's why the USPS exists, which is not a profit seeking entity and services places that UPS and FedEx don't. Also, the US gov donates to Signal (and Tor and some others) under the Radio Free Asia program. The intent is to get people under oppressive regimes encrypted communication so they can organize against tyrannical rule. But this also causes conspiracy around Signal (and Tor) because there are larger factions of the government that want to destroy encryption. This also creates a lot of distrust, especially among Americans, so would we/they have trust in such a system?
“Delivering the most appropriate information at the fastest level in Japan”
That’s the reason I heard about them, for the first time, this morning.
I saw the name and had to go digging to see if it was real (yes), if NERV was a real government agency and not fictional as I always assumed (no), or if they stole the name/logo (no).
I used it for a bit, and it had decent UX, but it seems designed to raise your anxiety until you pay for a snake oil subscription. YMMV
Earthquakes in Japan are a fact of life, and affect many many people very often. Mass shootings anywhere (USA included) are rare, freak occurrences, that involve small numbers of people.
Additional fearmongering over the very tiny risk from gun violence in the US actually makes the problem worse, not better. The mass media already does more than enough of that.
When you look at a source like Gun Violence Archive, they report many incidents where there is no loss of life as "mass shootings", and they also report many incidents of criminal conflict as mass shootings. The reality is that if you are not involved in criminal activity, you are vanishingly unlikely to be shot by someone else in the United States.
I would agree that it would be pointless, though.
Significant earthquakes in Japan occur at least 5-10x more often, and affect 2-4 orders of magnitude more people.
Websites like the one you linked use a definition of the term much different than the one commonly used by everyday people.
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents...
The reason these statistics are so different from what GVA provides is because the FBI is looking at the kinds of incidents that present a risk to a member of the general public, otherwise going about their business: they exclude self-defense incidents, gang wars, drug deals gone bad, and domestic disputes.
GVA, however, defines any incident with 4 or more injured or killed with a gun as a "mass shooting", which technically includes even some gun range accidents. Many of the incidents they report do not involve any deaths at all. Most of the incidents they report are criminal conflict, not the kind of terrorist attacks people are thinking of when the term "mass shooting" is used. The risk profile of criminal conflict is very different from that of a terrorist attack, generally, since being involved in crime is a significant predisposing factor.
Using GVA statistics to get a sense of one's likelihood of injury from guns in the USA, as a basis for a comparison to natural disasters, greatly overestimates the likelihood of firearms related injury (unless you are a gang member or regularly engage in robbery, burglary, &c).
In my neighborhood I hear gunshots almost every night. There were several shootings within a block of my house just in the last six months, including one where patrons of the nearest bar had to run and hide in the walk-in freezer while two idiots shot at each other (and both missed). Often times I hear shots and check the police log and can't even find a reference to them.
I thought the gun lobby advocated for more guns so they can shoot down shooters.
If you rely on this service, you should probably either have the app or use mastodon. X doesn't seem to be a reliable option anymore. Twitter might have temporarily lifted restrictions when such info could save lives, but X wants its $$$ first.
[1]https://www.dexerto.com/tech/japanese-disaster-prevention-x-...
Mastodon was battle-tested by the Japanese, almost no one used it seriously before them.
My understanding from looking at the website and logo and tagline (“God’s in Heaven, all is right with the world”) is this is an augmented reality game set in the Evangelion universe. Similar to Pokémon Go.
Just FYI if the devs are here.