Hacker News: BelleOfTheBall

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age"

BelleOfTheBall — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 15:06:57 +0000

Technology amplifies this, greatly. In a non-digital era our field of view was narrow, expanding either to our immediate physical surroundings or, when we went beyond them, limited by what we could read in a newspaper or see on TV. When I was little, I didn't know who was the most skilled person at my hobby or how popular it was or whether beautiful people online also happened to excel at it, while my teenage hormones wreaked havoc on both my personality and looks. Every single child in the civilized world nowadays is subjected to exactly that. You may be an aspiring dancer and there will be a million like you right there on your phone. It's hard for them to formulate self-worth when that is the case.

Does that mean the internet and digital advances are bad? No, it just means we were unprepared for them in a very meaningful way.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Genetics solves a thorny problem: how plants have prickles"

BelleOfTheBall — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:37:56 +0000

That's not really how that works. Certain crops are edible but we don't want them to spread too much because they easily overtake other, more fragile species. This applies to blackberries.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU"

BelleOfTheBall — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 06:46:35 +0000

Egan is one of those rare writers where reading his book made me realize just how much smarter he is than me. Not even in a negative way, it's simply like listening to a lecture by a brilliant, brilliant man.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Selfie-based authentication raises eyebrows among infosec experts"

BelleOfTheBall — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 09:07:56 +0000

Don't want to praise scammers, but that is a very clever trick still. Especially since it preys on the mark being too happy about getting flowers for free to think straight. One could go the extra mile and search up data on people to do it on their birthdays or around significant dates.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Japan enacts law to promote competition in smartphone app stores"

BelleOfTheBall — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 07:48:08 +0000

Couldn't they argue that these royalties don't apply if payments aren't routed through the core platform? Such as saying "oh, well, the user paid through the web version of Spotify, not the iOS one"?

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Rare and Amusing Insults, Volume 2"

BelleOfTheBall — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:25:27 +0000

I think it is but there's plenty of Irish characters in British shows.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Rare and Amusing Insults, Volume 2"

BelleOfTheBall — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 08:08:27 +0000

I didn't realize "gobshite" is supposed to be rare, but I guess all the British shows I've seen are to blame. Thinking about it, I probably couldn't name a single person in real life that I've heard say that word.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "NoTunes is a macOS application that will prevent Apple Music from launching"

BelleOfTheBall — Tue, 21 May 2024 15:02:02 +0000

At least Windows had the decency to make their ridiculous straight-to-LinkedIn keyboard shortcut obscure. Applications auto-launching should not be a thing unless the user set them up to do so or they’re essential to the system’s functioning.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Don’t bleed on the artwork"

BelleOfTheBall — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 08:15:56 +0000

All the discussion is rightfully around the art bits of this article, but I'm an absolute mess thanks to those paragraphs about the author's mom. So gutting to have this juxtaposition of unforgettable art that's fragile and coddled and a woman who's forgetting everything about herself, equally fragile in her old age. Masterful work.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab"

BelleOfTheBall — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 13:56:10 +0000

Seems like they will really push VisionOS, which is cool. Hopefully this leads to innovative ways to use it, because those initial videos of pasta timers and "smarter" vacuuming were not at all what I wanted.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Logitech mouse and keyboard users are getting a free AI upgrade"

BelleOfTheBall — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 13:04:06 +0000

Frankly, while it’s obviously terrible if you ever want people to actually use it, I’m glad it’s so convoluted because I’d be majorly pissed if some other shortcut I use in some software lead my PC to accidentally also open LinkedIn.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Dubai's Floods Weren't Caused by Cloud Seeding"

BelleOfTheBall — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:58:16 +0000

I think it’s both: climate change as the origin of the freak thunderstorm and their absolute lack of working sewers and drainage systems is the cause of all that water accumulating to the point that we all saw in photos and videos.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "What makes housing so expensive?"

BelleOfTheBall — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 07:37:12 +0000

> banning foreign property ownership

Don't you worry, a completely local conglomerate will gladly buy all those houses and that conglomerate may be owned by foreign citizens, but the company would be 100% American.

I know this is very pessimistic but we've all seen how lenient we get with corporations and I don't expect this to be an exception.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Serious security breach hits EU police agency"

BelleOfTheBall — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 14:29:07 +0000

To be fair, the article probably gives all the details it can, what do people expect? They can't share information that they don't have or that the police aren't willing to divulge. Not every piece of news will have an in-depth look at a recent event.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Jasmin Paris Becomes First Woman to Finish Hardest Race"

BelleOfTheBall — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 09:10:00 +0000

Wow, I haven't heard of this one before. I'm no couch potato these days, but that's the kind of feat that makes me realize I am far from fit, it seems insanely difficult to even navigate the trail.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "The deep sea is filled with treasure, but it comes at a price"

BelleOfTheBall — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 11:06:44 +0000

Not to mention that we need to clearly define what we're talking about when we say "advertising". Do influencers flaunting new outfits every video count? People who post intentionally lavish lifestyles on Instagram? There are studies proving both of those make users envious and, most likely, spur purchases. But you can't really ban people from showing off.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "FDA clears first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor"

BelleOfTheBall — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 20:28:36 +0000

While there is usually some big case that then defines things like this, I'm worried whether any incidents of a person dying or developing life-threatening issues due their phone being confiscated will change much. We've historically erred on the side of police exercising their power to enforce laws.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Biologists discover four new octopus species"

BelleOfTheBall — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 19:07:44 +0000

I've used Seek and, yes, if this is what the current capabilities are like, we are not ready to use AI for new species discovery.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Biologists discover four new octopus species"

BelleOfTheBall — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 09:49:00 +0000

It's not exactly that simple, especially the part where AI would somehow differentiate extremely visually similar species from each other, while in near-complete darkness and on the move.

New comment by BelleOfTheBall in "Man Allegedly Raped in Jail After AI Wrongly IDs Him as Suspect Despite Alibi"

BelleOfTheBall — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 16:01:21 +0000

> But how fortunate, a man raping a man isn't actually "rape". Its just "sexual assault".

Why exactly are you making this statement in a thread based on an article that explicitly calls that act "rape"? It directly contradicts your argument.