HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

actuator

3,560 karma · joined June 24, 2016

submissionscomments
actuator··on Tell HN: Razorpay a YC company shared donor data under a Section 91 order
The groups you mentioned have little to do with India. Some of the groups responsible in India were dealt with and some are still active mostly outside now.
actuator··on Tell HN: Razorpay a YC company shared donor data under a Section 91 order
and these are from outside India like you were claiming?

My point was there was sufficient Hindu diaspora outside but it has not been involved with violence of religious nature and are mostly considered model minorities.

The problem in India is well known, and it is an actual issue there. Although, I will add all of the events you mentioned have precursor events to them as well; not that that justifies anything.

actuator··on Tell HN: Razorpay a YC company shared donor data under a Section 91 order
Can you give examples from the world where they have killed people or been involved in violence in general in the name of religion?

There is sufficient Hindu diaspora outside, so this comment seems extremely uncalled for.

actuator··on Tell HN: Razorpay a YC company shared donor data under a Section 91 order
I don't think @dang will pin the above comment, but this needs to be higher here as the reply includes that they received a legal order. This is maligning the company unjustly.
actuator··on Tell HN: Razorpay a YC company shared donor data under a Section 91 order
Well, unlike west in India the impact of the said terrorism are much more visible. In the 90s and 2000s, all the major cities were having routine attacks by the said terrorists, so you can see why it is easier to gain sympathy on anything that can be seen to act on it. It is quite a big issue in the country.
actuator··on Tell HN: Razorpay a YC company shared donor data under a Section 91 order
Not that I support the intention of cops to go at his restaurant in the first place, in the article I read, he swung his knife at the cop as well.
actuator··on EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
This is so good. At least one regulator seems to be doing its job.
actuator··on Formula One’s sharpest car designer is also its master of loopholes
> I think a big part of Mercedes' dominance is that they had the best engine and the best driver

Engine: yes, they had a massive advantage

Driver: Not sure, from 2019 onwards Verstappen has probably been the better driver but he didn't have the car, but we will never know this.

actuator··on Formula One’s sharpest car designer is also its master of loopholes
> Sadly, I personally can't see how this remains to be the case any longer... RBR with Newey or Dall'Igna with Ducati have been in championship dry-spells for a really long time

Not being able to have the best car was not Newey's fault. When the turbo hybrid era came in, Mercedes absolutely nailed the engine which gave them a massive advantage. Ferrari also had a decent engine some of those years.

Meanwhile Red Bull engine providers Renault and Honda struggled to put up an engine that was on level ground to the Mercedes one. There is only so much a person like Newey can do when other engines are vastly superior.

actuator··on Formula One’s sharpest car designer is also its master of loopholes
Can't recommend it enough. I started appreciating the whole sport way more after I read the book. Newey is a genius.
actuator··on TikTok updated privacy policy to collect faceprints and voiceprints (2021)
Did you not read what I wrote?

> Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense they would go after Tiktok.

actuator··on TikTok updated privacy policy to collect faceprints and voiceprints (2021)
Tiktok is a far worse threat to India than Meta though.

Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense they would go after Tiktok.

The harm is just not espionage, it is also manipulation of sentiment by propoganda.

Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to Meta in this thread. Sure, Meta has things to be criticized about but if one thinks West has threat from Meta on the same level as Tiktok, that seems delusional.

actuator··on Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
NHS is struggling with wait times and staff shortages, no? I have heard a lot of them is in radiology departments. These diagnostic improvements will help there as well, and for a state funded healthcare like NHS, more automation is good.

As much as I don't like for profit companies monetising this, I am not sure if I know of a better path to innovation.

actuator··on Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
I am so sorry to hear about her but this is the exact reason why I am hopeful with companies like Google entering this space and making diagnosis better.

We have so many smart devices that can record so much data, and it doesn't even have to be auto recording. If you had a headache, if you can mark that and over time based on a pattern it can recommend you to see a specialist or get some tests done.

actuator··on Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
Healthcare in US is run by commercial companies only. The diagnosis machines are made my commerical companies only.

I am not sure what you mean by commercialised.

actuator··on Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
Completely disagree.

There is huge scope in healthcare for automation, pre-emptive diagnosis and raising the bar for precision.

It is mostly going to be done by a company with good AI chops, I would put my money on Google, from what I have heard about their efforts.

actuator··on Wikimedia Enterprise announces Google and Internet Archive as first customers
This is not good at all. Wikipedia has lot of money from donations. Google or its founders already were donors.

Rather than fixing the issue with moderation and editing biases creeping into Wikipedia, they seem to be focussing on being more profligate with their money.

actuator··on FTC fines Twitter $150M for using 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting
Apple's feature is inherently a monopolistic feature and something not really new. Login with FB and Google already had options for not sharing email.

I still prefer to signup using a spam email address.

actuator··on McDonald’s to Exit from Russia
It is not at a five year high though. Seems to be 10-15% down than five year high against USD.

Even the initial sanction shock has petered out as it seems oil and gas sales have been going well

actuator··on Congress urged to ease immigration for foreign science talent
> I get a feeling that "Indians" is just a nation concept, it's actually made up of many ethnic groups. It's like Korea and Japan, and China being one country.

Funnily enough India being a country is exactly like the idea of China being a country.

The difference between the two nations is China having one of their golden periods in the recent past which allowed land territory to be mostly unified under common rule, pre civil war. Post PRC formation, there has been much more effort to homogenize the identity of a Chinese person.

Also, the idea of China and Japan being one country is more similar to say India and Indonesia being one country just because one of them influenced the culture of the other in the past.

actuator··on Japan's population falls by record 644,000 to 125.5M in 2021
> The downside is that the people leaving also tend to be the most capable of producing that change

Some % of people, yes. But not everyone leaves. As long as enough brilliant people remain and there can be economic and scientific progress breaking the shackles of a millennia of rule, things can become right. These things are slow and take time though.

actuator··on Russia Sanctions Add Shock Internet Censorship Twist for UK ISPs
I am appalled at how much censorship is being pushed down our throats with this war and somehow it is gaining wider acceptance that doing this is ok. The writer of this article even seems to suggest that Google or Cloudflare could have blocked them from their DNS, but they haven't been ordered to. We want to censor our opponents at big DNS providers level? Really?
actuator··on Airbnb’s design to live and work anywhere
Good that the compensation is not changing in the country, but why not bring compensation parity with other countries as well. If they are going towards compensation determined by role not market location, they should do this.
actuator··on twitter/the-algorithm
Yeah, this makes no sense. There is no golden algorithm that Facebook, Tiktok or Twitter has figured out.

All these feed rankings are complex combinations of features, models coupled with weights and filters. On top of this abuse detection layers are added.

Unless Musk is planning to open source user data to show what all the "scores" and "features" for all the entities are and how they were reached to, this will make no sense. The whole argument against some people being downranked has been, why me? Just writing a whitepaper to tell the general methodology, is not going to make that go away.

On top of that, exposing every vector through which you measure and stop abuse, will just allow for more sophisticated abuse.

actuator··on Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi
> Why would you compare violence from 1980's to 2020? You realise thats a gap of 40 years?

I said 90s too which is a gap of 20 years. I skipped 00s because I don't recall the data completely now, but I will check.

> In terms of trends in the 20th century, there's been a clear noticeable jump after the current government came in, which is what should matter.

00s had clearly more terror incidents in India than 10s. There were several major metros and big cities hit with blasts every year. So, one form of communal violence has definitely gone down. Even early half of 10s had much more of these than the latter half. There is a whole Wiki article that lists these incidents, you can have a look at that.

actuator··on Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi
> it looks petty and stupid.

It does, but I don't know how this can be even changed.

The Indian judicial system is broken and even the laws are very vague so law enforcement can always choose to act on them.

India has needed judicial reform from a long time but it hasn't been forthcoming.

Worse, every successive government makes laws more vague to suit themselves.

actuator··on Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi
In the UK, yes. But my point was, recent incidents of suppression of free speech through law enforcement agencies by other parties in India haven't made it to Guardian coverage like this has. So they are selective about what they choose to write.

Guardian is as infallible as any other media organisation run by humans who have their own biases.

actuator··on Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi
> Arresting lawmakers is de-stabilising. Very different from what's going on in China.

People speaking opposing viewpoints are silenced in China as well, no?

The only difference is that in case of India, either the courts or the public through agitations can intervene which might lead to instability.

actuator··on Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi
Guardian largely doesn't publish false news as such but is incredibly selective about the events it chooses to write about.
actuator··on Indian lawmaker arrested after tweet criticising Narendra Modi
With what we have seen in China, I hardly think it matters whatever happens in India with relation to freedoms as long as the economy booms. Investors will pour money for returns.

But I had a question about this. Do VCs looking for data and analysis of a country largely rely on foreign press or read an assortment of local media as well?

← PreviousPage 4 of 34Next →