Hacker News: OfSanguineFire

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests"

OfSanguineFire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 20:32:27 +0000

When I first saw reporting of these UAE ventures some days ago, it was about suspicion that the owners would eventually exploit the forest or the minerals underneath. It is a frequent phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar that land is first restricted and named a protected reserve, but after ribbon-cutting ceremonies are over and attention moves elsewhere, logging is done with wood being sold to e.g. China’s furniture industry, or the local population’s slash-and-burn practices encroach regardless.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Mistral AI Valued at $2B"

OfSanguineFire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:57:01 +0000

Curious thought: at some point a competitor’s AI might become so advanced, you can just ask it to tell you how to create your own, analogous system. Easier than trying to catch up on your own. Corporations will have to include their own trade secrets among the things that AIs aren’t presently allowed to talk about like medical issues or sex.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Methane under the seabed is thawing as oceans warm"

OfSanguineFire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:30:20 +0000

Your concern about total environmental collapse makes me wonder why there has been so little talk recently about biomedical advances as a hedge against the effects of global warming. Twenty-odd years ago, Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the human race moving from organic to machine bodies was all the rage in nerd circles. (I don’t share his optimism myself, I just think it curious that it totally disappeared from the discourse.) Machine bodies don’t rely on a world kept within such a narrow temperature range, they don’t rely on all the species that are going extinct, they don’t even need a biosphere at all.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "A warrant showing the U.S. government is monitoring push notifications"

OfSanguineFire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:09:59 +0000

So much was revealed in the European Parliament's ECHELON report back in 2000 that I found it hard to understand why Snowden made the big splash that he did. It all seemed pretty old hat to me.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "The Geopolitics of Godzilla"

OfSanguineFire — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 01:22:59 +0000

Japanese considering themselves victims in the war is something that has been present in Japanese cinema since the moment American-occupation censorship was lifted in the early 1950s. It’s present here and there in films by Kurosawa and Ozu that are now in the canon of world cinema. It seems a bit late to be offended by it.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "LA vegan restaurants are putting meat back on the menu"

OfSanguineFire — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 18:29:47 +0000

I wonder if it is easier for fast food to stay consistently vegan than a sit-down restaurant. For example, holes in the wall or food trucks that sell takeaway Middle Eastern staples like falafel or koshary. Sit-down places have too much space that, with soaring rents in so many countries, costs too much money.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Balkan genomes trace the rise/fall of Roman Empire's frontier, migrations"

OfSanguineFire — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 16:21:26 +0000

Your posts here are so incoherent, it’s not clear what you are complaining about. Is it the term "Eastern European"? That isn’t a “Cold War-era classification” at all. The use of “Eastern European” in the archaeology and linguistics of the region goes back to the term Osteuropa in the foundational 19th-century literature.

If you lack any familiarity with this field enough to know that, then it would be wise to refrain from making pronouncements on the worthiness of this research. Also, the HN submission is a pop-sci article created by that university’s PR, it is not the actual research. The actual research can be found in the mentioned journal.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Spain expels two US spies for infiltrating secret service"

OfSanguineFire — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 12:30:57 +0000

You’ll notice that I already spoke of the Moroccan occupation in my post. Repeating the point in more strident language only makes it look like you are trying to engage in political battle on HN.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Balkan genomes trace the rise/fall of Roman Empire's frontier, migrations"

OfSanguineFire — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 12:24:13 +0000

The article didn’t say “race” at all. Its wording tries to simplify, for a mass audience, the research that found at this Balkan site DNA that is mainly associated with sites in the east of Europe. Across archaeology and linguistics, there has been an archaeogenetics revolution in the last 15 years or so that enables tracing historical migrations like never before.

I don’t know why you think “attracted to the wealth Rome invested in its frontier zone” is a wording that implies jobseekers. It can obviously mean opportunities for pillaging, which peoples of the Eurasian steppe did for centuries. It can mean making use of convenient infrastructure left behind when the Roman military retreated from certain holdings.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Spain expels two US spies for infiltrating secret service"

OfSanguineFire — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 12:02:36 +0000

Have you ever traveled in Western Sahara, on both sides of the berm? Especially over a span of time that would allow you to witness the changes that have occurred in the region’s demography? The indigenous Saharawi population is so small now it could hardly form a viable state, especially one able to resist migrant flows from further south. As the other poster said, European states’ foreign policy now is strongly driven by migration concerns. Yes, the marginalization of the Saharawi from their own region is a result of Morocco’s occupation, and that can be lamented, but the damage is already done.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Balkan genomes trace the rise/fall of Roman Empire's frontier, migrations"

OfSanguineFire — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 11:36:50 +0000

No, the genetic factor itself is something new here, and interesting even to this reader with an academic background in a related field. Florin Curta (a very respected scholar overall) has held out against the mainstream view of a Slavic migration into the Balkans on the basis of a supposed lack of archaeological evidence. So, I suspect that many scholars, as soon as they learn of this news about the ancient DNA, will immediately think “Hmm, I wonder what Curta has to say to that.”

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "How to think about OpenAI's rumored (and overhyped) Q* project"

OfSanguineFire — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 16:22:56 +0000

The poster has 16905 karma and has been around since 2013, though. Obviously a bona fide member of the HN community and not a spammer. (Well, unless his account was hacked.)

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets (2020)"

OfSanguineFire — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 12:59:15 +0000

In Finland, a pizza-buffet chain has been one of the most common all-you-can-eat experiences. However, the catch is that you pay extra for drinks. I find the pizzas are so incredibly salty that I suspect they are intentionally made such to force drink purchases. (Like the old salted peanuts at a bar trick.) The pizzas might initially look enticing, but the magic wears off after just a few minutes of eating there.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets (2020)"

OfSanguineFire — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 12:53:43 +0000

I'd be interested in seeing a study on different health outcomes for crust-eaters and crust-avoiders in their 30s and 40s. Do crust-avoiders (or hambuger-bun avoiders) suffer less from obesity or type 2 diabetes due to getting that much less intake of carbs?

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Life Changing Books on Sex and Relationships"

OfSanguineFire — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 10:36:34 +0000

As someone who has occasionally stumbled across the community around this book at Reddit, I do wonder why so many of these men keep trying. When I reached, from relationship experience, my own conclusion that any partner in a relationship would inevitably have different and incompatible goals, motivations, and outlook from own, I simply chose to live alone from then on.

Obviously people might crave companionship. But if one is frustrated in obtaining that to the point of seizing on literature like Tomassi’s book, why keep hitting one’s head against that wall?

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "A Schism in the OpenPGP World"

OfSanguineFire — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:11:31 +0000

Almost every time on HN that there is a discussion of changes in technology that experts would argue are overall good, there is always someone who says “But that would break my use case!” This even got lampooned at xkcd[0]. OK, I understand that he finds this trend vexing. But no party to this discussion is obliged to spend their time and effort on suggesting a solution, especially when we don’t know his specifics and our suggestion might simply be rejected out of hand.

[0] https://xkcd.com/1172/

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "How the first gen iPod was reverse engineered to run Rockbox"

OfSanguineFire — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 16:13:08 +0000

Fond memories of running Rockbox on my iPod Video. Today, like many, I want to get away from my smartphone that only distracts me, and I wish I had kept my old iPod and upgraded its storage to flash. I wonder what battery availability is like now.

One of the many disappointing aspects of the PinePhone is that it would often stutter playing FLACs, something that Rockbox on weaker hardware never did.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "A Schism in the OpenPGP World"

OfSanguineFire — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:48:35 +0000

Your post said “documents, images, and invoices” and “business”. In the real world, documents and invoices in business are overwhelmingly sent in PDF format. Even images get embedded in PDFs a lot of the time. PDF e-signatures can be validated, the technology is based on very standard crypto with FOSS implementations. Fine if you have a different workflow that requires PGP, but most people clearly don’t feel it is impossible to “do business” otherwise.

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "A Schism in the OpenPGP World"

OfSanguineFire — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 14:31:07 +0000

If you are concerned about digital document signing, then that is a different use case from the OP who speaks of encryption and being “[not] safe from state-sponsored hackers”. For digital signing, business sectors like e.g. banking rely on PDF e-signatures[0], not PGP.

[0] https://www.adobe.com/sign/hub/how-to/how-banks-use-electron...

New comment by OfSanguineFire in "Until the 14th century women dominated the field of beer brewing"

OfSanguineFire — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 13:46:42 +0000

I assume the GP was chuckling at how the OP offered two authoritative (well, not really) links to support a claim in my top-level post, but then went on to make an erroneous claim himself.