Hacker News: bsanr2

New comment by bsanr2 in "Sidney Poitier has died"

bsanr2 — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 19:42:29 +0000

>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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Sidney Poitier has died"

bsanr2 — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 19:40:45 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories"

bsanr2 — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 15:59:10 +0000

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).

Sidney Poitier, Oscar-Winning Icon, Dies at 94

bsanr2 — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 15:55:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/01/sidney-poitier-dies-94

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29840562

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by bsanr2 in "How to Write about Africa (2019)"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:54:17 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Japan HP accidentally deleted 77TB data in Kyoto U. supercomputing system"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:50:30 +0000

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).

New comment by bsanr2 in "Japan HP accidentally deleted 77TB data in Kyoto U. supercomputing system"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:41:51 +0000

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?

New comment by bsanr2 in "How to Write about Africa (2019)"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:23:02 +0000

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

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

New comment by bsanr2 in "Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 15:53:00 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 15:44:53 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 15:34:01 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "How to Write about Africa (2019)"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 15:20:38 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "How to Write about Africa (2019)"

bsanr2 — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 15:17:01 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Japan HP accidentally deleted 77TB data in Kyoto U. supercomputing system"

bsanr2 — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:48:44 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Railway lines once connected the Middle East"

bsanr2 — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 16:33:22 +0000

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

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

New comment by bsanr2 in "Turkey's Financial Crisis"

bsanr2 — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 21:06:29 +0000

>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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system"

bsanr2 — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 20:49:23 +0000

>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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system"

bsanr2 — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 16:06:15 +0000

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.

New comment by bsanr2 in "Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice"

bsanr2 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 22:52:57 +0000

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

New comment by bsanr2 in "Neon Genesis Evangelion (2019)"

bsanr2 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 22:47:35 +0000

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).