est's recent activity

  1. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    est
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    Outer World. It really has a Fallout: New Vegas vibe.

    Outer World. It really has a Fallout: New Vegas vibe.

    3 votes
  2. Comment on SpaceX reveals monthly cost of Starlink internet in its "Better Than Nothing Beta" in ~space

    est
    Link Parent
    Is it viable to split the bill to multiple tenants?

    Is it viable to split the bill to multiple tenants?

    3 votes
  3. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    est
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    Pardon my ignorance, but this looks just like a longer version of ban list? Trolls would just create more accounts and use them as throwaways. Or what if a user is wrongly banned? Is there any...

    Pardon my ignorance, but this looks just like a longer version of ban list?

    Trolls would just create more accounts and use them as throwaways.

    Or what if a user is wrongly banned? Is there any appeal process?

    1 vote
  4. Comment on Bad arguments against teaching Chinese philosophy in ~humanities

    est
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    Ha, there's a good & direct counter argument here: What if Chinese philosophy is already heavily influenced by Greek philosophy? I am not making this shit up. Chinese philosophers, as the author...

    ME: Have you considered teaching Chinese philosophy in your department?

    COLLEAGUE: Philosophy is by definition the tradition that goes back to Greece.

    Ha, there's a good & direct counter argument here: What if Chinese philosophy is already heavily influenced by Greek philosophy?

    I am not making this shit up. Chinese philosophers, as the author listed, like Mozi/Zhuangzi/Mengzi/Xunzi/Han Feizi, were not really widely known until the end of Han dynasty, it was due to improvement of paper production, which replaced the expensive and heavy old fashioned bamboo scrolls, made the philosophers' work to spread in China.

    At that time, the bunch of scholars who dedicated themselves to learning and expanding philosophy gave it a dedicated name: 玄学. It basically means metaphysics and literally means abstruse or intricate shit.

    And guess what was the driving force of the systematic classification and unification of Chinese philosophy in the late Han dynasty? Mahāyāna happened. Mahāyāna was a revised branch of Buddhaism introduced by the Kushan empire. WTF is Kushan empire doing here you may ask? Well, Kushan empire was founded on a place called Alexandria Eschate, the furthest territory Alexander the Great was able to conquest. After he died, the Greek generals setup an empire there and stole this proto-Buddhism shit from local Nepal people, slamed Greek mythology and transformed it as Mahāyāna, and introduced this cult to China. Chinese scholars build a whole philosophy and religion structure on top of it. Chinese used to think those clever ideas behind 佛祖 were accidentally Greek philosophy in disguise.

    As much today's China hate "western values" or "western philosophy" in general, the irony is the pillar of Chinese ideology were largely influenced by Greek-style Buddhism and Soviet style Marxism. LOL

    Read more:
    Ancient Greek State in Afghanistan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQATsepKoLE
    Confucius (or, What to Do When Elites Break The Rules) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFeXJkcKYaU

    3 votes
  5. Comment on People expect technology to suck because it actually sucks: so much of our usage involves dealing with a constant stream of minor annoyances in ~tech

    est
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    That's probably because technology were not designed to be a useful daily tool, but as a platform for higher profit extraction from the consumers. To make things worse, every app on this platform...

    That's probably because technology were not designed to be a useful daily tool, but as a platform for higher profit extraction from the consumers.

    To make things worse, every app on this platform have different ideas of how the extraction process works.

    2 votes
  6. Comment on What is something you hated as a youngster but now like as an adult? in ~talk

    est
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    Arguing with people on the Internet ..... especially talking about politics. I always hated politics topic with a passion when were young. But it seems politics is an inevitable part of adult life...

    hated as a youngster but now like as an adult

    Arguing with people on the Internet ..... especially talking about politics.

    I always hated politics topic with a passion when were young. But it seems politics is an inevitable part of adult life now. Sad.

    The saddest part is politics is gradually the only topic an adult capable of arguing over now. Other technical topics requires a deep understanding of special kind of knowledge which many of us lost interest to learn.

    6 votes
  7. Comment on How does Tildes enable you to express yourself in contrast to reddit/other? in ~tildes

    est
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    It's not about the functionality of the website, but people here are generally nicer.

    It's not about the functionality of the website, but people here are generally nicer.

    4 votes
  8. Comment on Why IRC is Still Good in $CURRENT_YEAR in ~comp

    est
    Link Parent
    speaking of text-only, quoting code is way easier in Slack or Telegram. In IRC we have to use Paste.

    speaking of text-only, quoting code is way easier in Slack or Telegram. In IRC we have to use Paste.

    1 vote
  9. Comment on Why IRC is Still Good in $CURRENT_YEAR in ~comp

    est
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    mIRC on Windows, Textual on Mac. I rarely IRC these days. Mostly on Telegram/Slack/Discord

    mIRC on Windows, Textual on Mac.

    I rarely IRC these days. Mostly on Telegram/Slack/Discord

    1 vote
  10. Comment on Why IRC is Still Good in $CURRENT_YEAR in ~comp

    est
    Link Parent
    external hosts for images and attachments are fine, but is it clearly defined in IRCv3?

    external hosts for images and attachments are fine, but is it clearly defined in IRCv3?

    1 vote
  11. Comment on Why IRC is Still Good in $CURRENT_YEAR in ~comp

    est
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    I glanced IRCv3, it didn't mention how images or attachments are transfered. Is it a already solved problem or it is an undesired feature? On telegram, people had lots of fun sending image memes,...

    I glanced IRCv3, it didn't mention how images or attachments are transfered. Is it a already solved problem or it is an undesired feature?

    On telegram, people had lots of fun sending image memes, gifs, transfer compressed files, share some video clips, and most interesting of all, those animation emoji stickers. There are even mini emoji games like dices, darts and hoops. Are these possible with IRCv3?

    1 vote
  12. Comment on The truth is paywalled but the lies are free in ~news

    est
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    Funny you mentioned it, because Tiktok's parent company, Bytedance, released an infamous news app called The Headline (com.ss.android.article.news). It scrapes news reports from every major...

    It's odd that the music industry was able to work out how to do this for music but we don't have a website that lets you read all the top newspapers

    Funny you mentioned it, because Tiktok's parent company, Bytedance, released an infamous news app called The Headline (com.ss.android.article.news). It scrapes news reports from every major website and newspapers and apps with an editorialize headline, it instantly gained popularity in China. It was so successful and profitable and enabled Bytedance to acquire a US based startup called Musical.ly and turned into Douyin aka Tiktok.

    And of course the content license was a huge issue for Toutiao, many scandals and shutdowns from the government.

    3 votes
  13. Comment on US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirms TikTok is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US following national security concerns in ~tech

    est
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    Cookies can't verify if a user is real person or a bot. A real user can register thousands of accounts and then spam the API calls to manipulate "likes". So extra information had to be gathered.

    cookies, or some other software source

    Cookies can't verify if a user is real person or a bot. A real user can register thousands of accounts and then spam the API calls to manipulate "likes". So extra information had to be gathered.

  14. Comment on US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirms TikTok is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US following national security concerns in ~tech

    est
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    I discussed the params they collect on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686320 tl;dr identifying real users from bots is hard.

    going as far as to compare the data they do transmit

    I discussed the params they collect on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686320

    tl;dr identifying real users from bots is hard.

    4 votes
  15. Comment on At a loss for words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers in ~humanities

    est
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    You may find my reply very interesting. Spoken aloud is not necessary in other languages.

    How would a person learn to read words they haven't heard spoken aloud?

    You may find my reply very interesting. Spoken aloud is not necessary in other languages.

    2 votes
  16. Comment on At a loss for words: How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers in ~humanities

    est
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    This is an extremely interesting article because as a ESL speaker, my native language is Chinese (some people mistakenly call it "Mandarin"), we had a somewhat opposite experience. Guessing words...

    This is an extremely interesting article because as a ESL speaker, my native language is Chinese (some people mistakenly call it "Mandarin"), we had a somewhat opposite experience.

    Guessing words from context is pretty common when reading Chinese and it's very easy to guess because Chinese ideograms are basically stylized and formalized pictures.

    Guessing the meaning of English words from context does not work for most Chinese ESL learner, simply because all those variations and conjugations and shit. So everyone heavily relies on vocabulary.

    The Chinese language makes new words from contexts, contrast to English where independent phonetic words are more common. For example computer is literally called "electric brain" in Chinese, bus is called "public wagon". If you do not know the word "public" but you can guarantee it has something to do with wagons. Pork is called "pig meat" and "goat" is literally called mountain sheep. The "pony" vs "horse" situation in OP's article does not exist in Chinese, because pony is literally called "little horse". LMAO.

    There is the Chinese periodic table. A reader with zero knowledge of Chinese language can easily guess which ones are metal, which ones are rock and which ones are gas.

    Also Chinese is an analytic language while English is fusional language makes the context guessing work easier? IDK

    Then there's the issue of phonics. It's very interesting, because "reading" in English, can be translated into two distinct activities in Chinese, you either "voice out" the book, or "comprehend" the book, I found that Chinese speakers have to ability to understand a paragraph of text without even knowing if the pronunciation was correct or not. So the Mapping the words part in OP's article does not necessarily apply to Chinese language. We have pictures of the world mapping directly into ideograms, the characters are the primary "language, different speakers can interpret the "language" into different dialects like Mandarin or Cantonese.

    By getting rid of the "voice" part is very important, it's also the secret of most speed reading technics. You have to get rid of the subvocal activities in your brain to achieve better performance.

    11 votes
  17. Comment on Got any new electronics? Tell me about them! in ~tech

    est
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    I bought an ear canals cleaner with fiber cam. The price is about $2.5 USD. Can be mounted on Android or PC with USB.

    I bought an ear canals cleaner with fiber cam. The price is about $2.5 USD. Can be mounted on Android or PC with USB.

    3 votes
  18. Comment on Do we really want a new Cold War with China? Corporate media is laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check in ~misc

    est
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    Communism is indeed an alien concept, that's why millions were starved to death when Mao tried to push "People's Commune" during great leap forward, however, today's authoritarian China was has a...

    Neither is more of a 'native concept' to Chinese culture than the other imo.

    Communism is indeed an alien concept, that's why millions were starved to death when Mao tried to push "People's Commune" during great leap forward, however, today's authoritarian China was has a strong tradition trait since ancient emperors unified the middle kingdom and centralized power 2.2k years ago.

    2 votes
  19. Comment on China has imposed a massive eighty per cent tariff on Australian barley imports from today, saying the product has been imported against trade rules in ~news

    est
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    So the weapon was lock n' loaded in as early as 2018?

    Barley is considered one of Australia's top three agricultural exports to China but since 2018 has been at the centre of dumping allegations.

    So the weapon was lock n' loaded in as early as 2018?

  20. Comment on Do we really want a new Cold War with China? Corporate media is laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check in ~misc

    est
    Link Parent
    Taiwan's democracy was introduced by Chiang's dictator son Chiang Ching-kuo in the 80s, by force. An authoritarian ruling party can force any ideology upon its population. In mainland china the...

    democracy is incompatible with the culture--just look at Taiwan.

    Taiwan's democracy was introduced by Chiang's dictator son Chiang Ching-kuo in the 80s, by force. An authoritarian ruling party can force any ideology upon its population. In mainland china the term "democracy" already has a bad rep.

    Also Chinese culture without democracy can flourish very well -- just look at Singapore. Deng's open & reform is basically a copycat of Singapore mode.

    3 votes