Hacker News Reader

Semirhageon The Absolute Denial of Shit

Maybe it’s just that people tend to use emojis for shallow, often humorous exchanges. If you have to express pain, using an emoji seems like a bizarre way to go about it rather than employing language.

Semirhageon 'Free but Not Free': Zimbabwe's Amateur Filmmakers Turn a Lens on Their Country

"Young Zimbabweans are still tentative about taking advantage of that freedom of speech," Munyati says.

Honestly, I’d still wait a bit myself in their position. Maybe this government really will go in a new direction, but if not then this kind of thing could very easily come back to bite you. Having said that, I respect and admire the dozens of people who overcame decades of fear to speak up.

Semirhageon Cancer and mobile phones

LNT is a theory of ionizing radiation, and while your overall point is salient, the reference to LNT is not. While many things enjoy a similar exposure model, LNT is a specific term.

Semirhageon American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

I’m from Italy, and until I lived in America for a while I’d never understood just how massive the US really is. I lived on two coasts, in two states that were both much larger than my entire country! People like to point to Berlin or Paris as model cities, but they’re population centers in countries that could fit inside Texas without making a splash. I’m not saying that US car culture is entirely healthy, or that it couldn’t benefit from more and better public transport in major cities. I’m always annoyed though, to see these conversations on HN ignore the sheer size of the country in question. Of course it’s spread out, it’s enormous!

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hifamb4LTgQooDBYj/worth-reme...

Semirhageon In about 20 years, half the population will live in eight states

Indirectly federated republic.

Semirhageon WeWork Tells Employees Meat Is Permanently Off the Company Menu

And that’s how overnight, 2/3rds of WeWork employees became religious/Ill.

Semirhageon North American vs. Japanese zoning

Another way to look at the Bay is that s previously unique American cultural center has already been irrevocably destroyed by yuppies and big tech firms who felt the need to drop anchor there. Maybe some pressure to spread out the impact of that “economic success” beyond a single city is more valuable than building ArcologySF? The world’s cities don’t need to be aggressively homogenized for the sake of affordable rents for an influx of techies. It’s a big world, stop crowding into one tiny, devastated corner of it.

Semirhageon North American vs. Japanese zoning

You call it NIMBY’ism, they call it the people who actually live and invest in an area wanting to have the final say, not distant interests which might just be interested in developer kick backs.

Semirhageon A Fight for Men’s Rights in California Courts

The title is a clear play on the hashtag.

Semirhageon Ötzi’s last supper: mummified hunter's final meal revealed

Bacon is cured belly meat, whereas this was apparently pure fat. Fat tends to concentrate flavors, good or bad, and in this case it would have probably be very very gamey.

Edit: I think we have to see a difference between domesticated pigs, bred and raised for purpose, and their cured, seasoned, fat... and some fat hacked off a wild ibex. If you’ve ever had wild game you’ll know what I mean about gamey flavors. I can only imagine that some ice age ibex would be an acquired taste at best. Pig fat is also some of the most delicious, mild fat around, which is why it’s pigs used in that article.

Semirhageon A Fight for Men’s Rights in California Courts

#MeToo is a hashtag women are encouraged to use as a way to share personal stories of sexual violence though. I’m not seeing the equivalent here.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/07/is...

Semirhageon George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of self-driving cars

...and then we have the issues of “non-standard” accents. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU

Semirhageon George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of self-driving cars

When push-button elevators were installed, they worked. Can you imagine if the pitch had been, “sometimes this elevator will kill the odd person, thanks for helping us work out the bugs.” As a bonus, the actual working elevator might not emerge until decades after installation began, and the early models only worked on alternate Wednesday’s.

Semirhageon Susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than partisan bias

As far as I cannot tell neither are really the driving factor, rather it’s a desire to believe. People who want to believe in X look for stories which confirm X. X can be UFO’s, or Muslim rape gangs, the blood libel, or FEMA detention camps... it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the story reinforces the desired beliefs, then many people won’t think too hard about it, they’ll spread it to like-minded people, and reinforce the belief. The thinking looks lazy, and the person may look partisan, but that isn’t the active ingredient. You see this pattern in everyone from free energy cranks, through anti-vaxxers and hyper-partisan ideologues, to people who simultaneously believe that Princess Diana was murdered, and that she faked her own death and is still alive. Likewise people who believed that Osama Bin Laden was dead before the SEAL raid that killed him, were most likely to believe that he wasn’t killed and is still alive!

https://www.livescience.com/18171-contradicting-conspiracy-t...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724570/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_...

It’s a breakdown in how humans think and believe, it’s just that. It doesn’t dominate everyone’s thinking, but it dominates enough people to skew elections and online conversations.

Semirhageon McDonald's Says Goodbye Cashiers, Hello Kiosks

It’s sold as a convenience, but the reality is they’re having the customer do the job, but without pay. If I wanted to be a cashier I wouldn’t have gone to school. Of course this gets some traction with people who’s major goal in life is to minimize human-human contact, but for the rest of us this is a pain in the ass. On the other hand, this will still be the least objectionable part of the McDonald’s experience, with the food being second worst, and the supersonic diarrhea being worst.

Semirhageon Show HN: Oathkeeper – Cloud-Native Identity and Access Proxy

Phillip Morris

Semirhageon Tardigrade protein helps human DNA withstand radiation (2016)

Given that it’s a foreign protein, I’d expect a potential autoimmune/allergic response in some part of the population.

Semirhageon Bizarre Glasses Promise to Cure Motion Sickness

Medical scams have traditionally been cure-all’s. If you look at claims made by old patent medicines, orgone boxes, electrical therapy devices, it’s easier to lost what they don’t claim to cure.

Semirhageon DIRT Protocol raises $3M to build a Wikipedia for structured data

Failing to give thought to something doesn’t make it go away, but of course it’s your right not to think. As long as you understand that ideology and opinion aside, it can greatly impact your ability to do business in Europe, then you go be you.

Most companies don't do business in Europe.

As defined under GDPR? I’d love citations for that claim.

Semirhageon DIRT Protocol raises $3M to build a Wikipedia for structured data

You’re being generous... this reeks more of scam than carelessness. Either way, it’s going to never actually be delivered, not be GDPR complient, and based on the answers to questions raised here, full of obvious holes. If it isn’t just a scam, it smells like someone went from “here’s a neat idea I’ve spent a whole ten minutes on,” to fundraising without a beat in between.

No resistance to censorship.

No resistance to conflicting information.

More money = more “truth” with no recourse, because removing info costs.

Incorrect info loses you money, but there is no functional systemic way to determine correct/incorrect.

Waaaaay too much marketing and nothing else extant.

Semirhageon Hawaiian Style: The Roots of the Aloha Shirt

I don’t know, New York in August makes it pretty unpleasant to wear a suit. Actually it’s unpleasant just to try and breathe... it’s like huffing hummus. Of course Florida in August is downright fatal. I think fashion just doesn’t care.

Semirhageon Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

This is not in line with the principle of responding to the strongest possible interpretation of a post, it’s the oppposite.

Semirhageon Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

Let’s not, instead let’s help them with the many more pressing concerns such as homelessness, alcoholism, and mental health issues. No need to eradicate a species to improve their lives. For the record, screwflies were eliminated to save the livestock industry billions, not to help homeless people.

Semirhageon Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

Killing off wolves has had many unintended and unforeseen consequences. Just for one example, the lack of large predators such as wolves leads to uncontrolled population explosions of deer, which leads to a massive increase in the population and prevalence of deer ticks, and consequent tick borne diseases.

As a species we’re piss poor at calculating blowback in complicated systems, ranging from the deaths of animal species, to interventions in foreign lands. Is it really surprising? We have an incomplete picture of the systems we intervene in, so the outcomes surprise us, then we rationalize our next blunder with the old saw, “this time it will be different.”

Semirhageon Trial wipes out over 80% of Australian disease-spreading mosquito

Unless you’re livestock, or indigent that was never going to be a problem for you.

Semirhageon Nissan Admits Internal Emissions-Test Results were Falsified

Could you elaborate in some detail on those other factors? Preferably with some citations. I’m totally unfamiliar with this second narrative, while I am familiar with the likes of ‘The Jungle’.

Semirhageon Kialo – a platform for rational debate

That wasn’t my intent, but I’ve also never been on Reddit so wouldn’t know. I didn’t realize that a religious precept from the 6th century was still so hot as to be flaming either.

Semirhageon Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras

China is a huge, huge country, historically it's been difficult for the central government to exercise its control all over its territory. This would be the realization of that historical desire.

That sounds like a better argument for China breaking up than it does using force and dystopian surveillance to maintain a lock on power.

Semirhageon Kialo – a platform for rational debate

I’m with you, but religious extremists and rationality are like oil and napalm. It always struck me as odd that for religious types, “because god said so” isn’t enough. I guess it highlights a difference between just faith and scriptural literalism.

Semirhageon Kialo – a platform for rational debate

There are also religious extremists who believe that a flat earth is strongly implied in the Bible. If I remember correctly, they point to a passage in which someone is shown the whole world, and the “idea” is that obviously you can’t see the whole surface of a sphere at once. sigh

Plus yes, nutters, obligate contrarians, and conspiracy theorists.