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>How often they are followed is a grey area.

It's interesting to note the character of when and when not those guidelines are applied.

It wasn't intended to be snarky, nor unsubstantive, though I suppose that without the necessary context or self-awareness it could come off as either. I'll admit that I may be in my emotions somewhat.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29679505

The culture I would like you to try for is one in which people don't feel comfortable questioning (or, rather, vociferously protesting through abuse of the flag feature) the validity of posts celebrating the lives of black luminaries. In general, the level of soft racism on HN is disheartening and certainly warps how I tend to respond. I join you in wishing that I didn't feel the need to mirror a lack of extended dignity with indignation.

bsanr2on Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories

I do think it's hilarious that the one time Google doesn't drop a relevant search term in the middle of a query is for something like "black haired man." The way it treats terms, you might expect it to drop the "haired" and return pictures of black men, but no, it's almost exclusively white dudes with black hair (never mind that black and brown people also have black hair).

bsanr2on How to Write about Africa (2019)

I would say that journalism is just as bad, if not worse, because instead of making passing comments, they will present a whole-a*s story without indicating where in Africa the events occurred.

bsanr2on Japan HP accidentally deleted 77TB data in Kyoto U. supercomputing system

That's an oversimplification. Pre-existing notions about warrior conduct certainly played a role, but "samurai" were a class (bordering on caste); attitudes descending from bushido were a top-down mandate, enforced by the officer class, not something widespread in common civilian life (save for knowledge of how one is supposed to act towards high-ranking personnel).

If you think that the domestic propaganda machine wasn't running at mach speed in order to shape public perceptions to what would be most beneficial to the Imperial Army and Navy, I don't know what to say. They definitely were, and they definitely pushed, from multiple angles, the idea that surrendering would result in a worse spiritual, material, physical, and psychological outcome than the alternatives (take your pick of whichever motivates you most effectively).

bsanr2on Japan HP accidentally deleted 77TB data in Kyoto U. supercomputing system

I can't remember where I initially read it, but it's mentioned on both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_prisoners_of_war_in_W... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Japan_during_the... and presumably in the associated citations.

Can I ask where your disbelief is sourced?

bsanr2on How to Write about Africa (2019)

You both are dangerously close to accusing him of being inarticulate.

I would ask you to rethink your agreement, for your own sake.

bsanr2on Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories

Ironically, I specifically remember the introduction of voice search coinciding with a marked drop in search quality. This had also happened earlier with their "instant results" experiment.

bsanr2on Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories

I think that the model is, somehow, irreparably broken. Remember that, when it started returning photos of black people in searches for "gorilla", they just stopped using it for "gorilla" searches.

My suspicion is that its been poisoned by some combination of an improperly-considered tagging process and malfeasance.

bsanr2on Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories

Even straightforward situations are frustrated by what is a broken process. There was an article for a black WWII pilot - the only black pilot from the war to be designated an ace - whose article was under constant attack by a particular user. The pilot's fifth kill originally been split between himself and another pilot, but a later investigation had awarded him full credit. In any case, the AF had honored him as an ace at some point before he died, and it was covered prominently in his obituary. Well, this user - a researcher who also worked to "debunk" myths about the exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen - was adamant that the pilot did not have enough kills to be designated an ace. He cited work that had gone back to the original war-time records (before the reinvestigation). The author of this research? Him.

The article is so small, though, and on a topic unsympathetic to the largely white and male editor base, that flagrant original research doesn't register.

bsanr2on How to Write about Africa (2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26383977

Declaring mental illness in the face of exposed bigotry is a classic tactic, meant to discredit legitimate and reasoned grievance.

bsanr2on How to Write about Africa (2019)

I remember reading this in high school. It's actually from 2005. More recently, a journalist suggested a moratorium on the use of the word "Africa" in reporting; the country, and region of the country, should be used instead.

It's disappointing that neither piece has been taken seriously.

bsanr2on Japan HP accidentally deleted 77TB data in Kyoto U. supercomputing system

They were instructed to avoid capture by any means because they had been indoctrinated by propaganda that indicated horrific treatment by Allied POW personnel. While this was obviously false, it's interesting to note that Japanese knowledge of America's history with slavery, segregation, and Indian removal would have made this assumption not unreasonable, and further, may have influenced Japanese treatment of American POWs. After all, a major consideration in Japan's decision to go to war in the first place was the leadership's understanding that their lack of status as a white power would hamper their colonial ambitions. They were only a few decades removed from being excluded from the Berlin Conference, for example.

bsanr2on Railway lines once connected the Middle East

I remember being surprised at the abundance of tactile paving in Japan.

https://www.simplemost.com/sidewalk-bumps/

bsanr2on Turkey's Financial Crisis

>Imagine FED giving guidance for interest rates decrease then out of the blue dramatically increasing the rates at midnight once the pals of the president position themselves correctly and saying that the public shouldn't have listed to the economists.

The Fed has done worse, just on a longer timescale. Alan Greenspan may, in fact, be the devil.

bsanr2on Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

>Google let Niantic go.

Oh, I didn't know that. That's even worse. Niantic is positioning itself to be a competitor to Apple in the global spatial map game.

Explains why Go released on Android first, though. Neat. I hope that doesn't change now that they're running with 6d.ai.

bsanr2on Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

Tango did, 7 years ago, everything ARKit does today. All they had to do was loss-lead on a showstopper of a phone with one killer app. They basically stripped down Tango to create ARCore, and lost the SLAM space to Apple and Niantic. No one realizes it yet, but this is about as bad as Microsoft losing the web to Google.

bsanr2on Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

You wouldn't happen to spend time as a cartoon canid, would you?

bsanr2on Neon Genesis Evangelion (2019)

Can't forget Utena, the proto-Madoka. It IS as cryptic and opaque as Evangelion, while covering similar ground as (but also completely different ground from) PMMM. It also stands in opposition to Madoka in that it seems almost immune to ongoing commercialization: Rebellion and Magia Record, in its multiple forms, exist, but beyond Adolescence Apocalypse (perhaps in part because of Adolescence Apocalypse), Utena is probably one of the most popular magical girl franchises (very, very few anime have had as much written about it) to never be further capitalized on - and avoids thematic sliding in the process (looking at you, Precure).

bsanr2on Neon Genesis Evangelion (2019)

I highly recommend you watch the End of Evangelion and Rebuild movies if you get a chance. Ultimately, I think Eva is ambivalent about the value of saving the world, far and away from the ability to do so. By the end of 3.0+1.0, Shinji essentially HAS saved the world, except that that's not the important victory. In the end, Eva doesn't care about canonicity, and it barely cares about narrative. It's instead more interested in characters, and their relationships to each other and the world they inhabit. Everything else is malleable to produce interesting dynamics between each actor. It's fascinating in how experimental it is, and not just because it superficially upends assumptions about how stories should play out.

bsanr2on Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice

This exposes part of the reason behind, and bodes poorly for those subject to, the lack of success underrepresented groups have in certain fields. If "tacit knowledge" most expeditiously gained from interacting with experts is the most important aspect of skill acquisition in cutting edge (relatively-speaking) areas like applied STEM, then, of course, issues of mentorship and gatekeeping rise to primacy.

This has been my personal experience as well, and it makes me highly suspicious of anyone whose advice for acquiring technical skills is simply to practice constantly - "draw every day," "you have to code," "always be networking," etc. They either aren't aware of how useless this advice is, or simply don't care about your growth or performance. Which, I admit ambivalently, is reasonable in this society; if you want someone to care, pay them to. This of course opens us back up to the issue of underrepresented groups often being unable to afford formal "someone caring about your growth."

bsanr2on As an investor, why is crypto so hard to value?

>To value cash flowing assets, one can use a number of methodologies such as discounted cash flow, capitalization rate/rental yield and valuation multiples (i.e. EV/EBITDA, EV/EBIT and P/E). These methods are not perfect and are rough approximations in a hard-to-model world. To give an example, when looking to buy a rental property, I might look at the rental yield after costs of say $10k. Using the capitalization rate method and assuming a cost of capital of 7%, the property would be valued at ~$143k by dividing ~$10k by 7%. Now this is a simple example which does not include debt/leverage but hopefully you get the point.

I understand that a jargon avalanche is part of the way finance and investing is effectively gate-kept, but boy is it annoying that, every time I try to read an article on the subject, I feel like I'm pulling up a particularly convoluted page out of the Silmarillion or a Final Fantasy Ultimania guide.

At any rate, is this what he's saying?:

$10k costs * (7% capital units/cost)

Or is the $10k rental-yield-after-costs? In which case I'm completely lost.

bsanr2on Ask HN: Why have we accepted the cookie pop-up situation across the web?

Tangentially-related, but it's funny that you should say that, and in as many words.

https://youtu.be/hX2aZUav-54

bsanr2on A Civil War cartoonist created the modern image of Santa Claus (2018)

I like to think that the classiest revenge is just supporting Black Santa Claus.

https://youtu.be/OY4Yod55B_c

https://youtu.be/Lijydf9hGxs

bsanr2on 100 years of whatever this will be

>the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within

Occasionally, this doesn't exist. Hence, for example, the American Civil War. You're making the mistake of assuming that software engineering design schema work for all real-world problems (or, rather, that that which would be foolish in approaching the redesign of software is necessarily also foolish in reforming other systems).

In fact, the "incremental change over time" approach is often the comfortable, irresponsible choice, in no small part because it allows bad actors the opportunity to adjust their approach to align with the new rules. This is especially true when the corrupt status quo threatens to collapse not only the system in question, but also many interrelated systems. The last thing you need when approaching a cliff is the car enthusiast in charge of the wheel and the child lock. Sometimes brakes aren't enough; you might need to just jump.

bsanr2on Hayao Miyazaki prepares to cast one last spell

True, but I also look at JC's work on Terminator 2. If anyone has experience with directing films about a post-apocalypse filled with unfathomably advanced tech which has it out for contemporary humans, it's him.

I also don't know if Villaneuve can handle the Sea of Corruption. So even if he's good with later parts, he fumbles the intro.

Maybe go the Harry Potter route.

bsanr2on Apple Music is the last library focused music service

Grooveshark was better than any other service - including Pandora - at exposing me to music that I wasn't expecting to love but did anyway.

bsanr2on Hayao Miyazaki prepares to cast one last spell

I suppose I'll still hold out hope that he'll come out of retirement one more time after this so that he can adapt Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End

bsanr2on Hayao Miyazaki prepares to cast one last spell

I'd rather James Cameron. Avatar is a closer visual relative to Nausicaa than Villaneuve's Dune, and his long-standing desire to see Gunnm adapted (which he eventually passed to Robert Rodriguez so it could actually get done) tells me that he has a respect for both the originating medium and a lot of the elements that also make Nausicaa work. The two works have very different tones, of course, but so do Nausicaa and everything V's done.

bsanr2on Hayao Miyazaki prepares to cast one last spell

Yes. Nintendo spent decades as an also-ran novelty company before Hiroshi Yamauchi had the foresight to go all-in on video games. Ghibli is obviously a very different company, but with Goro's continued involvement, it seems like it will follow the example of many Japanese firms of essentially being a legal business entity that represents the founding family until - and even after - it happens upon an application that can be sustained by personnel outside the family. In other words, what Ghibli makes doesn't necessarily matter to its continued existence, I think.