Hacker News: belviewreview

New comment by belviewreview in "Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai"

belviewreview — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:24:13 +0000

That's very interesting. But am I right that means when you start out, you don't whether you are going to end up with a big excess of left or right, just that it will be one of them?

New comment by belviewreview in "High Diesel Prices Bankrupted 16 Trucking Companies in Just 30 Days"

belviewreview — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 22:31:27 +0000

Batteries keep getting more energy-dense, so likely one of these days electric trucks won't weight any more.

New comment by belviewreview in "On social reality in China"

belviewreview — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 01:01:53 +0000

I once read an article by a fellow from China who said that for many centuries the country had a set of social norms from Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture. But he said this was all abolished during the Cultural Revolution. An example was traditional values stressed piety toward ones parents, but during the Cultural Revolution children reported their parents to the government, which often punished them harshly.

The fellow said that when the Cultural Revolution ended, the culture never went back to the old values, and didn't have anything to replace them. so since then it has been every person, or at least every family, for itself.

New comment by belviewreview in "Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal"

belviewreview — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:22:34 +0000

Fake math? Does he know that all the electric circuits in the equipment that is used to broadcast his program are designed using algebra?

New comment by belviewreview in "Most people prefer traditional architecture"

belviewreview — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 03:11:58 +0000

Modern architecture, like modern art and modern classical music and jazz, is supposed to be ugly. That's because it is based on existentialist philosophy that believes that life is meaningless and what ordinary people consider a good life is an attempt to escape this alleged truth. The purpose of the arts is supposed to be to push the ugly truth into people's faces so they can't ignore it.

New comment by belviewreview in "Hepburn Romanization: How to Read Japanese in the Latin Alphabet"

belviewreview — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 23:53:22 +0000

About a decade ago I became a fan of the young Japanese drum prodigy Kanade Sato. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYpFL08m5fQ This lead to me learning the amazing fact that Japanese has 4 writing systems: kanji, hiragana, katakana, and romaji. And now I am learning that there are actually several different romanization systems. What a confusing situation.

New comment by belviewreview in "Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting"

belviewreview — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:21:31 +0000

I think the people who pushed to remove Pluto's status made a mistake by focusing on new discoveries. They should have told the whole story forward, starting with the thousands of years before the telescope was invented, then the gradual evolution of understanding after it was until we arrived at the idea of 9 planets plus asteroids and comets, and then the further series of discoveries since then including the Ort cloud and the Kuiper belt, and also include Newtonian physics and how the solar system was seen as stabile, but now chaotic.

Then after you tell this whole larger story the whole idea of Pluto being something other than a planet makes a lot more sense to people since it was originally based on the idea the solar system has a lot fewer types of features than we know it has.

But the Pluto planet demoters didn't do this. The started with the present decision and just referred back to the history in bits and pieces, and out of order.

And worse than not arguing for their position as effectively as they could, they missed an opportunity to get the public interested in the whole story and how it is continuing to evolve today in various ways.

New comment by belviewreview in "IPFS Maintainers Winding Down"

belviewreview — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 23:31:39 +0000

Question from a non-techy: if today someone who is a non-techy wants to store some files on ipfs, how hard is it? A few clicks, or a day reading documents and installing software, with various ways of unintentionally fouling it up, or what?

New comment by belviewreview in "Illinois Just Passed a Law That Puts Linux on the Hook for Age Verification"

belviewreview — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:54:50 +0000

Including Tails?

New comment by belviewreview in "Did medieval people love their children?"

belviewreview — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 22:07:30 +0000

The claim that medieval people did not love their children was accepted on very scanty evidence. My understanding (correct me if I am mistaken) is that this happened at least in part because of a dogmatic believe that the idea that human nature is in part biologically fixed is a falsehood created to justify the powerful oppressing the weak.

New comment by belviewreview in "The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)"

belviewreview — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 22:35:32 +0000

I was explaining why people believe it. I think they are often correct in their belief. So let me ask you, have you experienced this yourself, like for a subject that you have a good knowledge of, observed someone who claims they do but is wildly off track?

New comment by belviewreview in "The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)"

belviewreview — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 01:31:57 +0000

The reason people find the DK effect persuasive is that everyone has run into this many times in their own lives. Like with an idiot boss who thinks he knows your job better than you do, or an article by someone that gets things completely wrong about a topic that you yourself know very well, through personal experience or extensive study. And we have all been dismayed about the impact such people can have, like through their decisions or influencing each other.

If the research can't demonstrate the DK effect, then the research is bad, like poorly designed.

New comment by belviewreview in "How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners"

belviewreview — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 22:37:50 +0000

And is it your view that, in contrast, the news media in China is highly responsible?

New comment by belviewreview in "How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners"

belviewreview — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 22:30:24 +0000

So where do you go for reliable information on China? And what is your overall view of its government?

New comment by belviewreview in "Beyond Greece and Rome"

belviewreview — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 23:24:30 +0000

This idea is correct, but I am very puzzled it is presented as something knew. In 1964 William H. Mcneill won the National Book Award for The Rise of the West, and the first 2/3's of the book was about how for thousands of years there was an interconnected set of civilizations that spanned from the Pacific through Central Asia and the Middle East to the Mediterranean.

New comment by belviewreview in "What's Wrong with American Studies?"

belviewreview — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 02:23:27 +0000

The authors are not saying the articles are unjustly critical of America. Their criticism is that the journal publishes only articles that are critical, and none say anything good about it.

So let me ask you, is it your view that everything about America is bad? or do you think that in some important ways it is good?

New comment by belviewreview in "Why do we love music? (2018)"

belviewreview — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 23:21:35 +0000

And that is not all. Spoken speech moves up and down in pitch, and in a rhythm, and no doubt that is at least much of the basis of music.

New comment by belviewreview in "We want Texans to know their rights"

belviewreview — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 02:11:08 +0000

One reason the government surveillance is important is I've read there is a growing movement among the right-to-lifers to hold women who abort criminally liable.

New comment by belviewreview in "I make good money. Why do I still feel like this?"

belviewreview — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 03:19:01 +0000

"Humans are simply NOT designed to _be_ happy, we are designed to _search_ for happiness."

If that were true, then all humans and the people in all cultures would be equally unhappy. And everyone would be equally unhappy all the time. But they are not, partly because of people's expectation levels.

New comment by belviewreview in "EV demand up 50% in France and Germany since Iran war"

belviewreview — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 23:23:54 +0000

"make a multiyear purchasing decision based upon recent events" You have this all backwards. The fact is that for many decades petroleum is an unreliable energy source due to geopolitical factors, but people have been pretending that was not the case. What has happened in the last two months is people have finally realized the long-term truth.