4 ms·

Knowing Japan, I bet some poor freshly graduated but elite sod in the health ministry was, out of the blue, told by his boss "here's a bunch of reports from dif

Knowing Japan, I bet some poor freshly graduated but elite sod in the health ministry was, out of the blue, told by his boss "here's a bunch of reports from different prefectures. Make a report out of them." So he goes off and try to make sense of the data, which is why you see those magic and unexplained equations in the report. The kicker is the most complex computer thing he ever did in his life was that Word presentation in university. HTML? Isn't that something you write by hand?

reaperducer 7y ago
HTML? Isn't that something you write by hand? In a good number of very large (Fortune 100) companies, yes. Even in large tech companies. Just as mechanical lathes and nail guns didn't put carpenters out of business, there are plenty of web sites that benefit from the attention of human hands, not just trusting the latest fad framework to concatenate several thousand dependencies pulled from random GitHub repositories.
- downerending 7y ago
  Having looked at a lot of machine-generated HTML, "by hand" is still looking pretty good.
astrobe_ 7y ago
Incidentally, I always though that in animes it is often a big deal for a character to catch "a cold" because plot; unless their cold are actually more aggressive than western colds (or flues)? I wonder more and more which one it is.
- krackers 7y ago
  >to catch "a cold" Not to mention that mere exposure to inclement weather is enough to result in its onset, germ theory be damned
kenhwang 7y ago
My mom is responsible for updating all of Los Angeles' numbers. It's literally "someone sent an email with updated new numbers, put them on the government website/in the database". There's no "making sense of the data" phase, just copy, paste, and hope whoever delivered those numbers did it correctly. She described the situation "all hands on deck, extra shifts, and losing staff to sickness daily"; the last thing they care about is some number on a screen.
- jariel 7y ago
  There's nothing wrong with that - in a peculiar situation, wherein there is no 'standard web site' something ad-hoc is perfectly reasonable. In the 'old days,' it would be a public number board or chalkboard, but it would be accurate. This is what a lot of ladies in the military or in operational centers would have done. And definitely nothing wrong with hand-tweaked HTML. I wish sites were basic enough and HTML clear enough that it could be more pervasive. You can dig up ledgers from 'old-timey' 100-year-old from little stores in the middle of nowhere that were handwritten and perfect. Perfect handwriting, perfectly updated, perfect math (i.e. adds up after corrections). What matters is that the process is legit, that people are responsible for how the numbers are propagated, and they do it professionally. It's almost weird to think that people expect that there is a 'robust and specific electronic process' for everything. The level of organizational planning in WW2 was pretty shocking: all docs, notes, cue-cards, human process.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
glandium 7y ago
I've opened Japanese documents from, AFAIR, at least the Ministry of Immigration, the Ministry of Health/Labour/Welfare and the Ministry of Justice. They all had the similar properties: manual HTML in the best case, PDF in the worst case. Tables very often with hierarchical data. Lack of overall coherence. It's so similar between Ministries that I have to wonder if it's not just the result of some Japanese governmental directive, or the result of their Education system.
- noobermin 7y ago
  It sounds like they just organize information differently. It's annoying to us but it's just how they do it. Everyone reading this needs to have a more wholesome historical education. The best example I can think of is read historical math puzzles, or geometry lessons from ancient greece. Organization of information is definitely culturally contingent, even here in the US.

reaperducer 7y ago

HTML? Isn't that something you write by hand? In a good number of very large (Fortune 100) companies, yes. Even in large tech companies. Just as mechanical lathes and nail guns didn't put carpenters out of business, there are plenty of web sites that benefit from the attention of human hands, not just trusting the latest fad framework to concatenate several thousand dependencies pulled from random GitHub repositories.

downerending 7y ago
Having looked at a lot of machine-generated HTML, "by hand" is still looking pretty good.

astrobe_ 7y ago

Incidentally, I always though that in animes it is often a big deal for a character to catch "a cold" because plot; unless their cold are actually more aggressive than western colds (or flues)? I wonder more and more which one it is.

krackers 7y ago
>to catch "a cold" Not to mention that mere exposure to inclement weather is enough to result in its onset, germ theory be damned

kenhwang 7y ago

My mom is responsible for updating all of Los Angeles' numbers. It's literally "someone sent an email with updated new numbers, put them on the government website/in the database". There's no "making sense of the data" phase, just copy, paste, and hope whoever delivered those numbers did it correctly. She described the situation "all hands on deck, extra shifts, and losing staff to sickness daily"; the last thing they care about is some number on a screen.

jariel 7y ago
There's nothing wrong with that - in a peculiar situation, wherein there is no 'standard web site' something ad-hoc is perfectly reasonable. In the 'old days,' it would be a public number board or chalkboard, but it would be accurate. This is what a lot of ladies in the military or in operational centers would have done. And definitely nothing wrong with hand-tweaked HTML. I wish sites were basic enough and HTML clear enough that it could be more pervasive. You can dig up ledgers from 'old-timey' 100-year-old from little stores in the middle of nowhere that were handwritten and perfect. Perfect handwriting, perfectly updated, perfect math (i.e. adds up after corrections). What matters is that the process is legit, that people are responsible for how the numbers are propagated, and they do it professionally. It's almost weird to think that people expect that there is a 'robust and specific electronic process' for everything. The level of organizational planning in WW2 was pretty shocking: all docs, notes, cue-cards, human process.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

glandium 7y ago

I've opened Japanese documents from, AFAIR, at least the Ministry of Immigration, the Ministry of Health/Labour/Welfare and the Ministry of Justice. They all had the similar properties: manual HTML in the best case, PDF in the worst case. Tables very often with hierarchical data. Lack of overall coherence. It's so similar between Ministries that I have to wonder if it's not just the result of some Japanese governmental directive, or the result of their Education system.

noobermin 7y ago
It sounds like they just organize information differently. It's annoying to us but it's just how they do it. Everyone reading this needs to have a more wholesome historical education. The best example I can think of is read historical math puzzles, or geometry lessons from ancient greece. Organization of information is definitely culturally contingent, even here in the US.