Hacker News: titanix2

New comment by titanix2 in "A drug rehab program has sent patients to work without pay"

titanix2 — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 23:27:28 +0000

That’s why I’m very happy with the prosecution of Carlos Ghosn in Japan. Yes, this maybe part of an international power game between the two car vendors executives but if there is charges against him he’s not clean either. In France he would had a fake trial like all influencing people have and be sparred from jail or any real consequences. In Japan he risks jail like everyone regardless of his status.

New comment by titanix2 in "Gimp 2.10.10 released"

titanix2 — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 14:54:33 +0000

It have a lot of functions but it is still very lacking on the UX side. I launched it today for small image correction and had to wait literally for minutes. Also, no native file picker, dialog boxes losing focus and becoming unclickable, no way to find how to move text object, all that frustrating things happen in the same 15 minutes of use.

New comment by titanix2 in "Let’s Build a Simple Database (2017)"

titanix2 — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 07:01:21 +0000

I know nothing about Go but the project is indeed interesting. Thanks.

New comment by titanix2 in "Explaining Sex Rate Changes"

titanix2 — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 06:14:35 +0000

That’s exactly the theory developed by circles like the red pill. More access to potential partners with less social control lead to a winner take all situation. In addition, and it is addressed in the OP, women try to get partners which are higher on the social scale while men mostly focus on beauty.

New comment by titanix2 in "Let’s Build a Simple Database (2017)"

titanix2 — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 13:48:35 +0000

Thanks a lot. I planned to implement virtual SQL tables for a project and wasn’t aware of existing product. This probably will save me a lot of time.

New comment by titanix2 in "MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE"

titanix2 — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 14:58:56 +0000

Does it make any difference when US companies are participating in PRISM anyway?

New comment by titanix2 in "French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen"

titanix2 — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:34:47 +0000

I have been registered as a student in 5 French universities and I can tell you that even if I can get "any" paper if I can enter a library (which is a joke in itself), sci-hub is 10 times more convient than the bureaucracy involved. The only time I requested a book from the stock, the librarian didn't even give it to me pretexting it was lost... probably because did like me as I had an unopened sandwich in hand.

New comment by titanix2 in "San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance"

titanix2 — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 07:33:39 +0000

Lot of companies have already a recruitment policy based on other parameters than skills, so they already chose the PR boost at the cost of output.

New comment by titanix2 in "French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen"

titanix2 — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 06:17:30 +0000

Probably some negative impact. Sci-hub is the primary and in some case only way to access paywalled papers at master and undergrad level. I’m not sure how PhD students get access to them but if it through libraries this is bad for them as the opening days and hours of such institutions is limited. Even more so which strikes which sometimes close a library for weeks.

New comment by titanix2 in "Hanzi Writer – JavaScript library for Chinese character stroke order animations"

titanix2 — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 05:53:59 +0000

Pr Mair have his opinion on the matter, I have mine. And while he his famous in his field, given I have formal education in Japanese at the MA level, some self taught Chinese proficiency (mostly reading) and linguistic knowledge (mostly phonology) about both these languages and some of their older varieties, I would not blindly follow his advice that I think is misleading.

That doesn't mean Chinese education is perfect right now, and I also think that traditional characters, while seeming more complex can be better for beginners as the system has a more regular internal consistency. And it's easier to learn simplified when knowing traditional than the reverse.

New comment by titanix2 in "Why I stuck with Windows for 6 years while developing Discourse"

titanix2 — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 04:41:51 +0000

Yeah of course, different people will have different experiences. Mine was being never able to make wifi work, random destruction of the GUI when I plugged an external monitor, difficulty to install and configure eastern languages IME, sound issues, etc. That was a very instructive period as undergraduate in informatics, but I got tired after a while to constantly fix my system instead of getting things done. Still using it as a server OS, where it shines.

New comment by titanix2 in "Why I stuck with Windows for 6 years while developing Discourse"

titanix2 — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 04:18:13 +0000

> linux is by far the most stable and easiest to manage OS

Nice April fools.

New comment by titanix2 in "Hanzi Writer – JavaScript library for Chinese character stroke order animations"

titanix2 — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 18:40:37 +0000

Oh I see. But then, handwriting taken appart, stroke order does matter and is a feature for more easy remembering. One actually only have to rote learn 500 characters to get a feeling of the system and then handwriting get optional. Anyway, how would you recommend to learn the characters instead?

New comment by titanix2 in "Hanzi Writer – JavaScript library for Chinese character stroke order animations"

titanix2 — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 18:17:00 +0000

> I’d say learning how to write those characters is mostly a waste for anyone other than historians

You are totally wrong here: this is a useful skill for anyone living there because, like it or not, this is how people are actually writing their languages. Also have a look at any scientific paper written in Korean and you will see how comical it is: every conceptual word is follow by its writing in Chinese characters in parenthesis because there is so many homophones for all the loan words coming from Chinese that using a phonemic script makes the text un-understandable.

New comment by titanix2 in "Hanzi Writer – JavaScript library for Chinese character stroke order animations"

titanix2 — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 18:04:28 +0000

Awesome. Really well made and open-source, I’ll probably use it in the future.

New comment by titanix2 in "Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?"

titanix2 — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 14:24:28 +0000

I upvote the rot learning thing. It is hates by most people because it requires efforts but for things including basic words of a language and other writing systems it is what makes the difference between making real progress or not.

New comment by titanix2 in "Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips?"

titanix2 — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 14:21:28 +0000

Depends on the domain. For languages, having learnt or being learning a few (including Japanese & Chinese) my approach is to first learn about the phonology. Then basic vocabulary and grammar, searching words I don’t know in the street (not everything) and having input from authentic material. I prefer learning from books using multiple one at the same time and cherry picking on what pick my interest. Having a few friends in the target language is a huge help to understand some concept or learn about cultural point. Also Wikipedia.

For other things, reading accessible research papers, reference books and searching for unknown concepts when I encounter them, sometimes ask people about a thing or two.

New comment by titanix2 in "Why Bother with What Three Words?"

titanix2 — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 13:54:14 +0000

I’ve assisted to a speech/demonstration by an employee in my lab and while the system was nice in principe the non-openess and internationalization let me a meh impression. It is used in Mongolia by the country post so it addresses a real problem but concerns rising in the blog post are real.

New comment by titanix2 in "Standardizing WASI: A system interface to run WebAssembly outside the web"

titanix2 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 16:02:23 +0000

Yeap, so innovative it existed already for decades (virtual machine executing some fixed bytecode).

New comment by titanix2 in "The Illustrated Word2vec"

titanix2 — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 07:49:20 +0000

I read some of your posts of few weeks ago when searching more info about gensim, there well explained and understandable even for a beginner. Thanks.