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Akinato

231 karma · joined January 26, 2018

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Akinato··on The Founder of GeoCities on What Killed the 'Old Internet'
Why was it necessary to bring in pronouns to this discussion? It seems like a truly irrelevant dog whistle specifically in order to offend the identity of those that are non-binary. It has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand at all.

I thought hacker news strived to at least have some decorum in regards to discussion.

Akinato··on Google’s video chat merger begins: Now there are two “Google Meet” apps
I feel like they missed out by not saying “Meet the new Meet, same as the old Meet!”.
Akinato··on Tell HN: Turned 44 today and I'm lost
I 100% agree with this, and it’s why we see a lot of lucky billionaires looking to give back to society. What do you do when you’ve reached the pinnacle of achievement? How can you make yourself happier when you no longer have unmet needs?

You start looking for ways to improve life for everyone else, and focusing on what kind of impact you want to have on the world. What’s something that has caused you or someone you care about a lot of pain? Could you help prevent someone else from going through that, or make it easier somehow? Maybe you can’t achieve something grand like world peace, but you can use your skills to improve education in war torn areas to provide new options, etc.

Start to think of the world as an extension of yourself. After you’ve honed yourself, hone the world.

Akinato··on “World’s best” Guitar Hero player was a cheat
Did they? I’d argue that the next highest competitor that is competing legitimately would bring just as many eyeballs to the games. People are attracted by watching the best of the best compete — I don’t think the exact score is as important.

Unless you’re talking scandals, and then I guess so? There’s temporarily more eyes on the drama but it quickly drops off.

Akinato··on Ask HN: Has Gmail spam blocking taken a sudden nosedive?
Yup same here. So many for Shoppers Drug Mart or other silliness. They’re very clearly fake and have all the tell-tale signs of spam that Google used to properly filter for me. I’m very surprised at the recent drop in quality and it’s had me looking at other providers.
Akinato··on [dead]
There was another comment that highlighted how he's trying to bury this story right now:

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-08-05...

That comment seems to have been deleted, but I thought it was interesting. I hadn't heard anything about this and it's fairly bad.

Akinato··on A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement
Exactly. Most of my family and I cut ties with a family member as she went batshit insane and started thinking the secret police were after her. Started yelling and screaming at all of the family members that eventually cut contact, usually calling them at odd hours in the night. Nothing we did could convince her to get help, and there's no way to force her into care even though she's called the police constantly to report false crimes. (Such as the janitor breaking into her house and rearranging her furniture).

However, she's very cyclical and can act normal ~30% of the time. She's told everyone that we're all drug addicts, or child abusers. Lots of people believe her, and think we all abandoned her. I've had family members call me and reduce me to tears with insults, because of the things she's told them.

From what I've seen anecdotally in every single family where the child has cut contact: there's ALWAYS a (good) reason. It almost always boils down to a failure in respecting their children, and treating them with kindness and understanding.

Younger generations are growing up with better mental health care and social awareness (due to the pervasive nature of it these days with social networks) than previous generations. We grew up in an era of public PSAs and school videos on bullying and acceptable behaviour. We know what's "right", can recognize abuse, and prefer to associate with those that treat us well.

Akinato··on Disco Elysium
Yeah it's a brilliant game, and quickly became one of my all-time favourites. I've never felt so invested in my player character's personality. I loved it.

However, I'm also confused as to why it's on HN right now. The final edition was released a while ago now, and it doesn't look like there's any recent news.

Akinato··on Three FDA Advisers Resign over Agency’s Approval of Alzheimer’s Drug
On top of that, we currently have a grossly overburdened healthcare system that in no way could support this. This presents so many clear problems that I wonder if the people are thinking critically about the long term effects of an unregulated drug market.

1. Knowledge -> How will doctors possibly keep track of the knowledge of all of these new drugs? If they don't need to be verified beyond a claim, they could be getting thousands of options. How do they pick between one drug with no proof, and another drug with no proof -- especially if they all have negative side effects?

2. Data -> All of the data for these drugs will be extremely if not impossible to derive. This will probably result in it taking even longer for evidence of the drug's efficacy to be built.

3. Resources -> Hospitals across North America are understaffed and overworked. How could they possibly find time to not only learn the entire treatment path for new drugs and all the necessary information, but to do this countless times across all their patients? MRI machines are already backlogged quite a bit, do we really think they could weather the storm of an unregulated drug market?

4. Liability -> Whether we like it or not, this adds quite a bit of liability to a hospital. Insurance will absolutely be against this, and would likely greatly increase the number of people trying to sue the hospital.

5. Fallout/Complications -> Can you imagine the strain of the additional complications that arise out of allowing free use of untested drugs? Imagine how much more expensive a patient would be if they got a brain bleed from a medication that they would never have had previously. This isn't just like "I tried a drug and it did nothing", it's more like "I tried a drug that had the potential to kill me. I had severe complications that required me to be in the hospital for 2 months but the drug still did nothing to help my problem."

Effectively, we'd be breaking our own healthcare system by breaking down our regulations. Regulations are written in blood. They're there for a reason.

Akinato··on Three FDA Advisers Resign over Agency’s Approval of Alzheimer’s Drug
There's a lot of great arguments presented in the article for why we shouldn't go "balls to the wall on experimentation". The drug costs $56k a year, can cause some severe brain bleeding and swelling, and requires regular MRIs which can put quite a strain (and cost) on the system. These are some significant negatives for a drug that hasn't been proven to be effective at all.
Akinato··on TikTok just gave itself permission to collect biometric data on US users
Pretty sure tons of eyelids were batted very heavily at FB when that happened. They got fined, there was lots of news articles that you can still find now.

I don't know why you're trying to create a false narrative here. Collecting biometric data for a social media website is concerning regardless of which specific company it is. I'm not sure why you're trying to bring racism into this topic, when it's not involved.

What's even stranger, is that your position is that no one complained about Facebook. If anything, that's a globally shared activity.

Akinato··on The Human Body in Space: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction (2013)
IIRC Nasa put out a bunch of RFPs last year for studying, identifying, and alleviating that exact problem.
Akinato··on They Were Labeled Witches. They Just Had Dementia
Wow this is a brilliant article. I highly recommend it if you're sitting on the fence -- it's very captivating.
Akinato··on Ford Wants Billboards to Beam Distracting Ads to Screens Inside Your Car
I'm not so sure. Spending the time (and money) researching it and developing a patent tends to indicate a desire for them to integrate the technology.

I'd argue against "is going to", but "wants to" seems fairly correct.

Akinato··on Ford Wants Billboards to Beam Distracting Ads to Screens Inside Your Car
I'd hope it would just be a simple button to "bookmark" the content or program the coordinates into your navigation. Otherwise this seems like the exact kind of distracted driving that most distracted driving laws are trying to prevent.
Akinato··on Netflix launches Play Something, a viewing mode that gives a more TV-like feel
Honestly the ratings used to be brilliantly accurate. They've been making them less accurate ever since, to the point where I think there's next to no content-awareness going on and it's just purely fueled by marketing initiatives.
Akinato··on Toronto carpenter builds 'tiny shelters' for the homeless. The city isn't happy
Moving is also extremely expensive and isolating. If you can't afford housing, you can't really afford moving either. They can either stay where they have social and charitable connections and maybe irregular work to a place where they have none of that with a much smaller job market. Plus, if you have no home, job or other creature comforts, it's kind of nice to at least be somewhere familiar. It's not surprising people get stuck where they are.
Akinato··on Over twenty subreddits have gone private
Honestly I'm not sure anyone has an end game here. Someone on UKpolitics posted a basic link to a recent news article and got banned. People are getting banned for mentioning her. This is what most of the controversy is about. They're stifling any discussion of what are quite serious issues, because they hired her. Posting a link to a public newspaper shouldn't be ban worthy. However now that Reddit has been grossly overstepping in their reaction, people are getting very upset about censorship and the perceived conflicts of interest.
Akinato··on Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’
I'd argue that it's not Reddit's aggressive moderation, but that Reddit is now so popular that the racist, illegal, fickle beast that can no longer stay on topic. If they weren't so aggressive, they'd have a much bigger problem of everyone thinking they're a cesspool of hatred.
Akinato··on Jacquard by Google
I remember hearing about Jacquard years ago. Given I haven't heard or seen any applications of it gaining traction since the launch leads me to think it's just going to go into the endless cavern of Google Abandonware.
Akinato··on No one who was born blind has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia
I remember seeing an article on hacker news before about this. Someone actually worked out the math and you're right: there's such an infinitesimally small chance of having both and there is likely zero connection between the two conditions.
Akinato··on Google warns of novel social engineering method used to hack security researcher
This is a pretty decent social engineering attack, I'm actually kind of impressed at the long-con set up. Shows that nearly anyone can be compromised merely through dedicated social engineering.
Akinato··on Ask HN: Anyone else notice iPhone autocorrect is absolute rubbish?
I can't tell if it's because my fingers are simply getting too "bumbling" to type correctly, but I've also noticed that auto correct is a lot worse on Android. Frequently my typos go unfixed or merged together, and it fails to catch a lot of things now. Frequently the word options provided aren't even close to what I have typed.

I've often pondered if it's the software, or the fact that it's easier to mistype with touch screens than the old phone buttons, thus increasing my error rate.

Akinato··on Hire Me, You Cowards
Personally, I don't know if I would ever even consider hiring from a site called "hire me you cowards". It just seems incredibly self important and individualistic.

Honestly, I find that having some basic semblance of cooperation and teamwork skills is much more important to productivity and success than having the best engineer ever. The best engineer ever could probably do everything much faster than the rest of the team -- however I've seen first hand how this kind of attitude slowly chips away at the team spirit due to their self-centeredness. It's surprising how quickly their toxicity can affect a work environment to the point that it affects your whole team's work performance & retention.

I'd rather have a chance to hire an idiot (who will be easier to get rid of) than the certainty a genius who can do the work of 2 people, while alienating everyone else and deftly skirting the line of employment law. It's not a coward or a fear based thing. It's basic logic and efficiency on a whole. This is why some of the best engineers and scientists get passed up -- they're just toxic individuals that are impossible to work with.

I want to emphasise that this isn't saying that I think most brilliant engineers have poor teamwork skills. I just think that the language of this website perfectly describes the kinds of engineers you DONT want. Selfish and self important.

Unless this is parody, in which case, why bother posting this here?

Akinato··on After big hack of U.S. government, Biden enlists world class cybersecurity team
Good! Glad to see cybersecurity taken seriously.
Akinato··on Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics (2007)
Amen! It was digitally rustic (comparatively speaking) and each site was oozing personality.

Not saying I don't like the standardization and trends of today -- just that everyone's general inexperience with the web led to a lot of really weird and fun quirks at the time.

Akinato··on I am lonely will anyone speak to me
I agree. I have no problem seeing men cry, and I've held several whilst they did so -- and never thought less of them. Crying is a human reaction and men are allowed to experience it too. Crying doesn't make you weak, it's just an outlet of emotion that can really help clear your head sometimes.
Akinato··on RIP Google Music
Same here -- I switched to Tidal.
Akinato··on 'My team will be able to program circles around everyone else' (2002)
God this man sounds insufferable.
Akinato··on The faded beauty of abandoned cars across Europe and the US
These would be cool photos if they weren't so overly processed. The current technique makes them look like poorly composited images.
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