mercer

51 ms·

541.
by mercer 6y ago
I second The Information. A Mind at Play was interesting but a lot of it was about Shannon as a person, and while that was interesting, The Information went a lot deeper into the history of 'information'. I also feel it was much b
542.
by mercer 6y ago
I'm not 100% certain of how the medical/psychological community would define 'placebo', but I'd argue it's not as simple as this not being a placebo because it's an effective trick. The fact that placebos
543.
by mercer 6y ago
Agreed. For various reasons I often interact with (or befriend) people who seem to be into the typical weird beliefs that I know about (anti-vax, 5G, EMF, homeopathy, fluoride-in-the-water) and quite regularly I have the displeasure of bein
544.
by mercer 6y ago
> As you say, it would probably not work on foreign governments, but would be very effective on the general population I can't think of any serious risk posed by 'the general population'. Maybe particular stocks would dip
545.
by mercer 6y ago
> Seems likely Elon's followers have the highest rate of people who understand crypto Even worse, I'd say his followers probably have enough understanding of crypto to be able to send him money, but not enough understanding or
546.
by mercer 6y ago
Right, because all these other parties would totally not think Twitter might be hacked? I'm truly baffled by this kind of hysteria.
547.
by mercer 6y ago
That's quite some hyperbole. I don't think any state actor or 'player' of significance would be stupid enough to do something terrible based on a tweet. It's much more likely that these actors would consider the acc
548.
by mercer 6y ago
Assuming this is what you went to prison for, is there anything you can tell us about what happened or what the experience was like? Or have you written about it already on HN or anywhere else? Of course I can understand if you somehow unab
549.
by mercer 6y ago
I haven't played This War of Mine, but "Papers, Please" is probably second only to "A Dark Room" in making me 'feel' something that could only have been achieved by masterfully combining gameplay with a cl
550.
by mercer 6y ago
I can't count the number of times I clicked on a dead comment's user profile only to see a shocking number of dead comments, sometimes going back months (years, even?). Out of some morbid curiosity, I suppose, I'd just keep c
551.
by mercer 6y ago
> I personally always check the posting history when I'm in doubt about the intentions of a poster. I do the same, and in the cases where it's somewhat obviously a new or 'bad intentioned' it still surprises me how fa
552.
by mercer 6y ago
Thanks! I was trying to figure out why angle brackets would be a problem and this article really explains it well (consider I know very little about any of this!).
553.
by mercer 6y ago
Interesting observation. I grew up with shitty (but fun!) phpBB forums and the fancier vBulletin, but wouldn't categorize them as 'social media'. The first of those were probably cu2, MySpace, and eventually Facebook/Twi
554.
by mercer 6y ago
It feels depressingly long ago when "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog" was both funny and true :-/. Btw, I checked your profile and I was sad to find that your blog doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'd l
555.
by mercer 6y ago
I thought so too, but if the article is to be believed it's algorithmic / AI (with at the very least Chinese censors doing /some/ degree of curation).
556.
by mercer 6y ago
That's a good point. Over here (NL) things have been slowly opening up, to the point where to many of us it feels like things are 'back to normal'. Nonetheless, when it comes to schools reopening, as I understand it, one of t
557.
by mercer 6y ago
Yeah, my impression is that there might be some major issues if the 'PUA subsidy' isn't extended, but I'd love to hear from people who know more about this. Anecdotally I've heard that there are a ton of people that
558.
Ask HN: Anyone else bothered by Gmail's “Changes may not be saved” popup?
3 points by mercer 6y ago|2 comments
559.
by mercer 6y ago
Agreed. I'm a heavy CLI user and I can't remember a single one being upper-case.
560.
by mercer 6y ago
I've heard the same said about Reddit back when people were starting to migrate away from Digg.
561.
by mercer 6y ago
Pretty cool! I currently use Hacker News Enhancement Suite, made some tweaks via the Tampermonkey extension, and made a little "unread comments" and "tag user" feature. Looks like your extension might be able to replace
562.
by mercer 6y ago
I love Cleese but my impression is that among the left he's definitely not liked for a number of (sorta legitimate) reasons. just FYI.
563.
by mercer 6y ago
The majority don't really care and have other things to worry about. Then there's a few who care and the only explanation I have for that is that they're either racists or over-sensitively engaged with some political narrativ
564.
by mercer 6y ago
Oh yeah! While I preferred the games there focused on co-op, I could see the appeal of Street Fighter. My friend seemed to have a decent amount of fun seeing how long he could last in single player, but the constant second player putting in
565.
by mercer 6y ago
How don't comments or tweets have an effect in the real world considering this 'cancel culture' hubbub and all? apparently you can get fired for tweets?
566.
by mercer 6y ago
Oof, well, I don't entirely disagree with that. I will say as a general statement that I do think there are systemic biases against various minorities (or women in some cases, who aren't really minorities in the counting sense at
567.
by mercer 6y ago
I'm an ESL too and you did a truly terrible job 'explaining'. You just threw out a bunch of sentences that - I think - makes somehow light of Alan Turing's suffering for being gay. I was hoping you could explain further
568.
by mercer 6y ago
I fully agree with your perspective, and thanks for putting it in words more succinctly than the word-vomit I'm going to put on the internets. I've had a ton of discussions with friends who are more right-wing, some of them probab
569.
by mercer 6y ago
The memory was so nice that I'd have been happy writing it in a journal just for myself :). Very happy to have been reminded of it.
570.
by mercer 6y ago
In the spirit of truly wanting to find understanding: could you elaborate? I found the initial comment difficult to fully get in the first place (which might be entirely my fault!).

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