Hacker News: nemo

New comment by nemo in "Aristotle quotes on virtue, knowledge, and happiness"

nemo — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:46:29 +0000

You literally posted that some people are effectively born slaves, that's beneath contempt and if you said it to my face I would certainly have been far, far less kind. Also you definitely need to spend a while researching what comprises being an adult.

New comment by nemo in "Aristotle quotes on virtue, knowledge, and happiness"

nemo — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:41:53 +0000

"many people are meant to be slaves is also a fact" - you definitely need to spend a while researching what comprises a fact.

New comment by nemo in "AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog"

nemo — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:06:33 +0000

In traditional publishing publishers view the cover as a marketing tool - Arthur C Clark had negligible influence over what appeared on the covers of his books in his career when 2001 was released. That's not self-expression by any definition. You could hire a human to do art for you if you like, that's also not self-expression, nor is using an AI to do art for you. There's no meaningful self-expression in the act of having other people make things for you, they're doing the expression, you're enjoying (or not enjoying) the result.

New comment by nemo in "AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog"

nemo — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:00:51 +0000

Using AI to generate content isn't expressing yourself. It's expressing non-human AI content that's actually not a part of your self - AI content is the opposite of self-expression, it's other-expression. That's why people dislike seeing it peddled as self-expression.

New comment by nemo in "Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?"

nemo — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:12:24 +0000

Yes, every translation is an interpretation, none can capture what the original Homeric Greek means in English, all make some kinds of compromises. It is work noting that it is absolutely the case that some of what's Emily Wilson's translation is literally invented to fit a vibe - see "complicated man" which is not only not what the Greek says, but also violates the spirit of what the Greek says.

New comment by nemo in "Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?"

nemo — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:48:39 +0000

"man of many turns" is at least a better translation than "complicated man" which feels to me like a bit of a travesty to translate polytropos into. Polytropos literally has the roots of "many" and "turn" in it, "complicated" is not there. Lattimore was a literalist and his translation's weird for that but more fair to the Greek than what I've seen of Wilson's translation. Wilson takes the Fagles approach, but modernizes it.

For the record I can still recite the first book of Homer in Greek so I have opinions.

New comment by nemo in "Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?"

nemo — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:39:29 +0000

Yeah, I studied Koine, Attic, and Homeric Greek over eight years in school, Modern Greek's the Greek of the Eastern Romans who spoke an evolving Koine (this language they actually called Rhomaic) while their intellectuals turned to Atticizing. When Greek became a nation state Atticizing was idealized (called Katharevousa) so Attic and Koine are more intelligible (I can't speak much modern Greek and have no listening comp, but can read menus and signs and monuments in Greece), but Homeric Greek is a distinct dialect with its own weird vocabulary, weird particles, lots of complicated inflections later Greek lost like the dual forms, and so on. More like Middle English, familiar but very weird. I did a seminar where we read Homer's Odyssey in Greek, any English translations will inevitably be an interpretation reflecting the thoughts and values of the translator. Lattimore's good in some areas, terrible in others, Emily Wilson's great in some areas, terrible in others. I never read Fagles but assume it's the same.

New comment by nemo in "France's Anssi Will Block PQC-Free Products from Certification Starting 2027"

nemo — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 01:07:48 +0000

Logistics companies are using hybrid QC now from D-Wave Systems. Quantum computing is currently in use in the real world. There's already physics simulations running on QC hardware beyond the capacities of classical computing, QuEra's Gemini is already doing materials science work now. It's very expensive, giant logistics companies and other industries with lots of capital and the need to do the special kinds of simulations these things are good at will be renting time on these things from specialized vendors who can run this kind of intensive hardware, something like time sharing on a supercomputer. Quantum-as-a-Service (QaaS) via platforms like Amazon Braket, Azure Quantum, or IBM Quantum Platform is already a thing. Big Pharma will be renting this stuff, Google currently plans to have QC for Pharma applications running c. 2028-2030. Lots of folks dealing with materials sciences and so on will be on projects where this will be affordable since not everything needs a massive CRQC to be useful.

New comment by nemo in "Crypto firms have spent $189M so far on 2026 US election, report says"

nemo — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:18:45 +0000

Every time I see someone pearl-clutching about speaking honestly about fascists, my mental picture is unsympathetic as well. "Fascist" may be inflammatory but it's certainly not inaccurate. Fascists are a real part of the world, trying to language police them away doesn't work.

New comment by nemo in "Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes"

nemo — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 02:07:54 +0000

Whatever that performance was, it certainly was not a debunking. The guy made a Nazi salute at CPAC, I saw it, there wasn't any ambiguity or question of intent. To me and everyone I know it was an obvious overt Nazi salute made in a context where it was clear that's what he was doing, esp. to me and my Jewish family members. The fact that the ADL stooped to what they did doesn't change reality, it just shows what a bunch of ghouls the ADL have become. Other Jewish orgs have been clear that this was a Nazi salute.

New comment by nemo in "I want to live like Costco people"

nemo — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:52:28 +0000

I got a Costco greenhouse a few years ago, sorry they're overpriced now - I enjoy mine more than I expected and I thought it'd be fun.

New comment by nemo in "I want to live like Costco people"

nemo — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:49:37 +0000

"I will never purchase Costco clothing"

Much of my wardrobe is from CostCo, effective suburban camouflage as well as being fine as clothes.

New comment by nemo in "The fun has been optimized out of the Internet"

nemo — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:08:18 +0000

I've taken up gardening, I hike more, I go birdwatching every weekend, I practice pen and pencil drawing and sketching on paper, and I read more paper books these days since there's not much that's very compelling about the current web for me - at this point I'd rather be weeding than surfing the current web, it's great.

New comment by nemo in "Ask.com has closed"

nemo — Sat, 02 May 2026 19:37:47 +0000

You might want to search for "alexander the great" again, and also, maybe use "Alexander IV" or "Alexander of Macedon". I'm an amateur Classicist I look up ancient figures all that time, obscure and well known to check wikipedia on things, and I've never seen it prioritize that film above the figure, though perhaps it did when that movie was recent. Pity about Thor and the MCU, though.

New comment by nemo in "Why Law Is Law-Shaped"

nemo — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:47:46 +0000

Having worked a large bureaucracy, when we'd sometimes get into some catch 22, I used to quote the line "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything" sometimes to a friend who also knew the short story, and we'd laugh.

New comment by nemo in "Butterflies are in decline across North America, a look at the Western Monarch"

nemo — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:45:09 +0000

I live in Austin, we used to have huge butterfly migrations long ago, they were amazing to see, big swarms of Queen butterflies as well as Monarchs and other species. Last year's was heartbreaking to see, handfuls where there once were swarms, though I think that was driven by the drought. I have a pollinator garden and have been tracking butterflies in iNaturalist for a decade, last few years the numbers have been showing real decline. I think it's mostly habitat loss for my area.

New comment by nemo in "Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin"

nemo — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 03:49:38 +0000

Fairly sure it's just a coincidence, Sasanian refers to the dynasty started by Sasan, an ancient Persian king. Sassenach seems to have its roots in "Saxon".

New comment by nemo in "Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin"

nemo — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:14:59 +0000

It is more or less round. While modern milled coining created nice neatly rounded coins, throughout the history of hammered coins they were very rarely anything like a perfectly rounded coin. They were creating these things in a mass production environment where they made tens of thousands (or more the Romans), quality control was focused on weight over all else. For silver coins and gold some issuers did often try to hold to higher aesthetic standards, there's some Roman/Sassanian/etc coins that are fairly nicely rounded (though often still a bit ragged on the edges from being hammered) but for bronzes they did rarely focused on this (the Ptolemaics did, some others did, most didn't care).

New comment by nemo in "A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content"

nemo — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 19:49:48 +0000

As someone who is allergic to sesame, that is insanely annoying.

New comment by nemo in "Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers"

nemo — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:45:02 +0000

You can tell them the truth, you could do public reach out, you could do a whole lot of things. Secret back-room deals deliberately hidden from the public who will (justifiably) assume maliciousness just creates even worse PR, less trust, and opens up avenues of corruption and abuse.