Hacker News: brandelune

New comment by brandelune in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

brandelune — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:34:21 +0000

You apply for permanent residency in Japan from Japan.

New comment by brandelune in "Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?"

brandelune — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 12:56:12 +0000

OmegaT is widely used in the professional translation world and maintained by 1 person with a very few active contributors (except for localizers).

https://omegat.org

New comment by brandelune in "Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training"

brandelune — Wed, 31 May 2023 22:28:36 +0000

The original links here, to the actual question asked and the answer by the minister:

https://kiitaka.net/21312/

New comment by brandelune in "European standards bodies are inaccessible to Open Source projects"

brandelune — Fri, 19 May 2023 00:16:50 +0000

Interesting. So, when the "open source" movement was born out of a desire to become business friendly, it did not envision that the approach would eventually come back, 30 years down the road, to nastily bite them. Problem is big corps live long, longer than the average concentration span of a free software shop. And they have plenty of money and corporate hacks to co-opt "open source" and then take over. But hey, "open source".

New comment by brandelune in "I am done. I give up"

brandelune — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 12:28:15 +0000

How many digital nomad influencers vs would-be entrepreneurs who keep wasting time on IT social networks? This ratio alone should make it very clear to you that most of that world is fake and just here to entertain you when you feel alone in front of your machine.

New comment by brandelune in "Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code"

brandelune — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 07:48:45 +0000

The AI hype is finally over.

Meta's language models, GH Pilot, real life car auto-pilot. When it fails, it fails big. And the "we were 10+ years early to market" is just a big lie that bought them plenty of VC money. Good for them.

New comment by brandelune in "Five origami books by Shuzo Fujimoto are now public domain"

brandelune — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 05:25:46 +0000

If you're familiar with Fuse Tomoko's work on his origami, and her books are much easier to read, it should be much easier to undestand.

New comment by brandelune in "Drax: UK power station owner cuts down primary forests in Canada"

brandelune — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 14:16:37 +0000

It is "carbon neutral" because of a bet on the future of trees that will be planted in replacement for the burned ones. The future trees do not exist yet. And with global warming probably won't come soon enough. So that's extremely stupid and criminal to do what they're doing.

New comment by brandelune in "Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4"

brandelune — Thu, 26 May 2022 15:19:59 +0000

Do I support my "local community" when I type on a given keyboard layout ? And when I switch the layout because I need to type in a different script, do I betray my "local community" ? And what about I live in a country that's not my "original" local community and need to use yet another layout ? Do I feel insecure when I don't see a flag I know in my menu bar ?

New comment by brandelune in "Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules"

brandelune — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 14:57:56 +0000

I suspect Assange does not want to be tortured and murdered and thus does not want this. Are you insane ?

New comment by brandelune in "Japan pitches 'Society 5.0' to keep its edge in tech and science"

brandelune — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 15:42:01 +0000

And Japan is betting on pervasive hydrogen based electricity generation to manage carbon neutrality by 2050... A lot of wishful thinking + hot air and "I won't be there to see the disaster" from current politicians...

New comment by brandelune in "Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII"

brandelune — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 23:37:07 +0000

Interesting to see that even a world war would not be enough to drop C02 emissions to a safe level...

New comment by brandelune in "2-Acre Vertical Farm Run by AI and Robots Out-Produces 720-Acre Flat Farm"

brandelune — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 02:43:09 +0000

Actually no. In Japan, where I live, the country side is covered by development projects that destroy rice pads, mostly because there are tax incentives for that. In France, where I come from that's the same.

Perfectly good arable land is not being misused for development projects that don't mean anything when you know for ex. that Japanese population is in decline and creating individual houses far from the center of the city is going totally against what should be done to counter potential food crisis and the real environmental crisis. Etc.

New comment by brandelune in "2-Acre Vertical Farm Run by AI and Robots Out-Produces 720-Acre Flat Farm"

brandelune — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 10:29:47 +0000

Growing food is not an issue.

Not wasting food is. Not destroying biodiversity is. Not destroying ecological services is.

Exactly none of those problems are solved by salad factories.

New comment by brandelune in "2-Acre Vertical Farm Run by AI and Robots Out-Produces 720-Acre Flat Farm"

brandelune — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 00:27:40 +0000

It outproduces salad, but not potatoes, wheat, and most of all humus. Also the need for heavy machinery has a real cost in green house gas emissions (same issue as with electric cars).

There are real ecological services provided by a healthy land and natural agriculture that can't be provided by such food factories.

As @systemvoltage wrote, this is good for a heavily centralized system that's owned by big corporations looking for big profits but that's not a solution to the global environmental and soon to come (and it's already here for a lot of us) food/water crisis.

New comment by brandelune in "Slate Star Codex must remain anonymous"

brandelune — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 14:11:43 +0000

He says nothing about anonymity. He writes about pseudonymity.

New comment by brandelune in "Whales could help curb climate change"

brandelune — Sun, 09 Feb 2020 01:32:59 +0000

From the World Economic Forum at Davos...

"Over a lifespan of around 60 years, whales ... accumulate an average of 33 tonnes of CO2 ... By comparison, a tree absorbs up to 48 pounds of CO2 a year."

The modern version of "apples and oranges" ? "whales and trees"

New comment by brandelune in "Ask HN: I started a company in Japan but I'm in over my head"

brandelune — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 12:46:10 +0000

A KK in Japan is currently the least expensive option. Basically all you need is to pay for the registration paperwork (about ¥300k) and what used to be a minimum capital of ¥10 million has now no minimum.

There used to be Yugen (limited responsibility) with a minimum capital of ¥3 million but it disappeared with the new KK law.

That was about 12 years ago.

New comment by brandelune in "Ask HN: I started a company in Japan but I'm in over my head"

brandelune — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 11:22:47 +0000

First, relax.

A company is just an entity that allows you to pay less taxes overall.

Don't worry for not having been able to start much.

Regarding all the paperwork, go to the tax office (or the relevant offices) and ask them for help. They are always willing to help. Be honest and sincere and they'll sometimes fill the stuff in your place if necessary.

One thing you can do is shift your English teaching activity to the company. That's good for your taxes.

Do not hire an accountant for anything right now. You'll lose money.

I've lived here for 22 years, had my company for 12, I'm not doing anything magic with it but it pays the bills.

Send me a mail if you want.

New comment by brandelune in "Famous for its resistance to immigration, Japan opens its doors"

brandelune — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:11:46 +0000

"It will also be possible for trainees to extend their stay for up to 10 years."

Basically a way to cut wages forever.