Hacker News: ommunist

New comment by ommunist in "Mylo: A leather-like material made from mycelium"

ommunist — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 03:40:57 +0000

Interesting. But I cannot see any table with reference to mechanical properties of the new materials. MycoWorks instead shed some light upon it on their website. They are using strains of Ganoderma lucidim, and it can be tanned while it grows, not after.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 21:42:16 +0000

It however asks an important question about our internal wiring. During the lat two years I started to think that our wetware runs different AIs, when we think in different languages.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 21:39:20 +0000

I shared room with two Lao students during my university years. I know that their script is very different from Bengali. How difficult was for you to learn to read Lao?

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:58:08 +0000

OK. 'Atkarība' is literally state of land that one can 'atkarot', i.e. take back by force. In old money being "atkarīgs" literally means being the one whose land was taken by force. Its a Normann to Saxon situation in a way.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:50:32 +0000

More like "непокоряемость", but modern Latvians like @tikums forgot it.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:17:16 +0000

No proper term in Latvian can be found in this example.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:28:42 +0000

Not much, since I came to Tibetan from English, and a course in Russian delivered by Mongolian and Tibetan native speaker. I can give a funny example on how difficult it is to keep conveyance of meaning in translation.

Tibetan རང་དབང is translated to English as "independence", when in fact it is itself translation of Sanskrit स्वतन्त्रः, which is in fact "self-empowering reliance", a bit different thing.

Latvian for "independence" is "neatkarība" which itself is wrong pair, because "independence" means not being dependent, and therefore free, while Latvian word means more like "impossibility to take by force". So it might be incorrect to use it in translating Tibetan term. What may be more suitable is to use 'patvaldība', but it is more about power, than reliance.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:21:51 +0000

And they have so many words to express degrees of gratitude and denote degrees of favours. So I was told by a fellow startup guy who speaks Japanese.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:16:21 +0000

Yup, silly it is. I made a survey of preferential by understanding term for "widget" in Russian among Russian businessmen this January, and got about 90% "pro" votes for using the borrowed English term. Practical people do not care for "purity".

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:57:30 +0000

You have a lot to discover in original Buddhism before making statements like that. I am fascinated and struggling with help of Roerich's Tibetan-English-Russian dictionary, and I must say, there is difference in meanings, whether its sutra in Chinese or Tibetan. Ancient translators had their own problems, and direction of tradition is more like India -> Tibet -> China. So Sanskrit originals prevail, and I am yet to learn the script.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:50:12 +0000

He delivers Sanskrit course in Vienna.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:31:54 +0000

We are a bit offtopic, but you may know that you cannot write down Latgalian identity in the Latvian national passport. Latgalians are prohibited to officially exist in Latvia 2.0.

And you very well can fix officially your Latgalian identity in Russia, surprise! Isn't it strange?

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:28:15 +0000

This may well be the reason of the very fact that India has more kids with IQ>120 than the U.S. has all kids combined.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:20:36 +0000

ROTFL. This is translation not from Sanskrit, but from Traditional Chinese. Dude, you really need to learn some languages. Try Russian. Latvian has many words taken from Russian in 19th century.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:12:33 +0000

You see, thinking in foreign language :-)) You are very much right.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:02:53 +0000

This is bullshit. I spoke about it with Edgar Leitan, who is native Latvian speaker, born in Rezekne, and is Professor of linguistics specializing in oriental languages, in Vienna University. Ask him yourself. http://edgar-leitan.livejournal.com

Latvian as a language never lived better under the USSR, because Russian revolution performance was much ensured by Latvian soldiers hired by Lenin, and that was never forgotten. Among the highest Soviet officials there always been Latvians. Boris Pugo being the last.

Learn your own history from professionals, not from tabloids full of hate speech.

UPD: By the way, its Latgalian that is PTE. Latvian is simplified Latgalian. It may look as a bit of exagerration, but truth is worth discovery.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 17:50:28 +0000

Learn Latvian, than Tibetan. Than try to translate a piece of classic buddhist text to Latvian. You will simply have no words to express what you need.

UPD: On other side of the coin, translation of iPad user instruction from English to Latvian is a breeze. All terms meet their pairs in translation.

@tikums. Of course they are. Read Aurobindo Ghosh, for English equivalents. I know, its a popular Latvian meme, that Latvian is close to Sanskrit.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 17:46:17 +0000

You are very right. After learning the third, you start to feel a glimpse of some more universal structure in your brain, that pinpoints meaning to expression in languages you know. So you can tell "this cant be said in English, it is too Spanish", or something like that. And it is very useful to learn at least one Eastern Asian language with non-latin script, to get full experience of this kind. Your own depths are unfathomable, and every language pulls the cover, unraveling the abyss of your own mind.

New comment by ommunist in "Are We Different People in Different Languages?"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 17:25:10 +0000

As a Latvian speaker, I must say, that particular language is very poor in expressing abstract concepts and expressing suspense. The language was quite literally designed by Germans as 'slave language'. It had major redesign in 20-ies, but surprisingly most of books in Latvian were published during Soviet times. I agree with hero, Latvian is 'sweet'. It is very good in expressing practical concepts, and as daily conversational speak is much more 'positive' than Russian or English with their multitude of meanings behind simple expressions.

UPD: Example of sweet positive character of Latvian. Latvian for "How do you do?" is "Ka labi iet?", means literally the same, but asking person is also telling that he is sure that everything is OK and somehow cheers up spirits of the respondent in this short expression.

UPD2: For those native Latvian speakers who care to read Russian and they are many, here is study summing up the first 400 years of Latvian books https://dspace.lu.lv/dspace/bitstream/handle/7/2152/Konferen... And you know, in 1956 there were 7.9 million books printed in Latvian language (!). Quite a figure for a nation of 2.5 mln people.

New comment by ommunist in "State.of.dev – Explore the current state of development"

ommunist — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 16:28:59 +0000

Looks like no build tools on maturity plateau, also no design patterns there.