4cao

At first glance I thought it was a far-fetched conclusion but then I read in a subsequent reply he wrote:

> With your current rate, I very doubt to see 5.4.0 release this year. The only progress since april has been small changes to test code. You ignore the many patches bit rotting away on this mailing list. Right now you choke your repo. Why wait until 5.4.0 to change maintainer? Why delay what your repo needs?

https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00568.h...

The last two sentences really make it look as if he were trying to pressure the original author.

Whether Taiwanese Mandarin is a separate language or not is a matter of opinion. Delving further into this debate will not lead to an interesting discussion as the definition of what constitutes a language is ultimately blurry. So I'm not making a claim either way, just an observation that you can't have it both ways: if the languages are separate, whatever goes on in China is irrelevant. If it is the same language, then the way it is spoken in Taiwan is no less "standard." It seems you agree with the latter, so let's leave it at that.

I don't think the website is trying to "emphasize the differences," just point out the issues with Google Translate: namely that the output for "zh-tw" does not reflect the language actually used by people in Taiwan, and to that end it betrays the trust of the user. Of course it only lists where the problems are, so it's not a balanced view by definition. It focuses on what needs to be fixed.

In particular, as similar as the two languages or variants are to each other, nearly all the vocabulary relating to modern technologies developed separately, and is fairly distinct. I've never tried it but I can imagine a Google-translated text heavy on computer-related vocabulary can easily end up being unintelligible to a Taiwanese, which constitutes poor quality of service on Google's part.

Taiwan is a separate market for Google, and from the business perspective they would do best not to alienate their users there. Of course it is a free service with no reasonable expectation of quality. But if someone went to the trouble of listing all the issues, the problem might be worth addressing even for purely reputational reasons. I read through the whole world list and I'd say it's at least 95% accurate. Frankly, I'm surprised it sparked such a debate.

As for "Mainland China," you are technically correct about the scope. The term has its use in certain contexts if one is aiming to be very precise (or pedantic). But here it's tangential to the discussion.

Shouldn't it be "No.", with a period at the end?

Anyway, the translation is wrong given the context as no numeral follows.

Yes, but the island of Hainan is considered part of "Mainland China," while the mainland areas of Hong Kong and Macau are not, so in this context it's a purely political term, trying to shape reality as opposed to just describing it.

大陸 /dàlù/ 'mainland' is used but often pejoratively. It's a politically charged issue as this article from a pro-KMT newspaper can attest: https://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20180520000567-260109

對岸 /duì àn/ 'opposite [side of the Taiwan] Strait' is a neutral term coined specifically to avoid the controversy.

If talking about politics, another neutral way could be to just say 北京 /Běijīng/.

Is having "lived in Taipei for almost three years," really enough to confidently claim that "this is not a big deal at all?" Especially if you "use Google Translate every day of [your] life," presumably not because you're proficient in the local language?

As a matter of fact, a special "Cross-Strait" dictionary was developed to deal with all the language differences, with nearly 6,000 words and 30,000 phrases: https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=10&post=19596

It hardly seems like "no big deal" to those who should know best.

If, as you are claiming, the Taiwanese don't have their own Taiwanese Mandarin, with their language being just the same as the Mandarin used in China, how can it be that at the same time they also don't get to have a say in what constitutes the "standard" of that "common" language they share with the "mainland?"

Also, there is no reason for constantly calling it "Mainland China" where you could just as well call it "China," unless it is to further a political agenda.

Anyway, this is all beside the point. The concept of a "standard" language is political not linguistic. If Google is run as a business, not a political entity, their linguistic choices should reflect the language actually being used in any given market, and not be based on purported "standards" promulgated elsewhere. The same simple concept that somehow already works well for other language pairs that could be construed as similar to the point of being the same should also be applied here.

Because it's part of the cultural heritage. Very much like the weird spelling of many English words is.

In particular, the phonetics of Mandarin Chinese underwent several waves of simplification to the point that many characters are pronounced pretty much the same - in particular, there are a lot of syllables pronounced /yi/ or /shi/.

So, transition to a purely alphabetic writing system would mean losing access to all the sophisticated texts of culture. There is even a poem illustrating that phenomenon, and taking it to the extreme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...

More practically, everyone learns their first language as a child, and at that point does not get to decide whether something is too "crazy" to learn or not, since nobody asks their opinion.

Further simplification was attempted at some point by the Communists (also as a means to increase adult literacy) but they rolled it back quickly.

Also, it's not 20,000 "icons" to learn. There are a couple of hundred composing elements ("radicals," although it's not entirely correct to call all of them this), which just repeat themselves in different arrangements, and there are some rules to it. Beyond these, only a hundred or so characters have purely unique elements.

I'd say perhaps 5 or so of the ~100 entries on the list are somewhat debatable. The rest seems pretty obvious and indisputable, and among these I would count the "通過"/"透過" that you mentioned. If anything, perhaps the whole list is too focused on the IT lexicon. But it's pretty much solid work, doesn't really deserve a "mixed opinion" - in my opinion.

Thing is, Google forces their translations upon everyone. For example if I want to check Taipei restaurant reviews on Google Maps with my interface language set to English, each of them shows up translated (poorly), and I have to click or tap every time to "see the original."

Translation quality is one issue, e.g. "加油！" being translated to 'add oil!' instead of something like 'keep up the good work!' which is what it is supposed to mean in this context figuratively. But there is also a bigger cultural issue in that Google developers do not allow for people being multilingual: just because I made a choice for the interface language doesn't mean I need everything else translated to it (with no opt-out).

> I am paywalled from the article [...]

Just a technical note: by HN guidelines, the submission URL must point to the original source but I also linked to a mirror that bypasses the paywall in a parallel comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36603895

(Perhaps I should've labeled it "paywall bypass" instead of just "mirror" but I can't edit that post anymore.)

The article was not written by "HN." The author, Edward Luce, is an Oxford University graduate whose father holds the title of a baron in the UK, was at some point the Governor of Gibraltar, and then a member of the British parliament for 20 years. Do you think what he wrote stems from an anti-elite agenda? Or could it perhaps simply be good journalism, even if it means upsetting the powers that be?

I can't speak for the collective "HN" but the interest in this topic might have something to do with the fact that a lot of people here believe anything but meritocracy is suboptimal and ultimately self-defeating in the longer run.

I decided to share this also because, no matter the topic, it's been a while since I've read anything so succinctly put, and getting to the gist of the matter, gloves off.

I posted the link to bypass the paywall together with the submission:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36603895

It's a soft paywall anyway, there are multiple other ways to access the content.

Mirror: https://archive.is/tlA8T

I was expecting this would be about the letter Ⱶ or one of the other Claudian letters of the Latin alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters

I'm not saying what they did was in any way justified, just providing context that seems to be missing from the reporting: to sideload e.g. SmartTube you need an app like this first, and it must be available from the Play Store. Google has an incentive to disrupt this under any pretense as it costs them ad revenue.

I think there might be more to this story. This app is what people generally use to sideload apps on a locked Google TV device such as the Google Chromecast. One such commonly sideloaded app is SmartTube, an unofficial YouTube client with no ads and SponsorBlock included:

https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/

I'm not surprised Google is eager to take it down under any pretext, and not so eager to restore it.

Please see my other comment before taking the above linked "list" seriously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34706914

For years there's been another ranking with much better methodology:

https://www.jacdec.de/airline-ranking/

Although there are still caveats, with the main one being that past performance does not directly translate to future results, especially if there were significant changes to the airline situation in the meantime. Checking the recent reports from the Aviation Herald can also be revealing:

https://avherald.com/

The safest carriers are those that have just been founded recently, by this logic. Since they have no incident history.

According to this website, Air Asia is supposedly safer than Singapore. And Xiamen Airlines are safer than Cathay? CX and SQ have one of the best safety records, each only suffered a single hull loss, which is very little considering how long they've been operating.

Air Asia is not even a single operation but a bunch of separate airlines using the same brand for marketing purposes. Some of them have much worse safety record than the others (Air Asia Indonesia for example). One would think this also warrants a mention, considering KLM is labeled "Air France-owned" (which is sort of true but much less relevant). Also for consistency shouldn't Transavia then be labeled "Air France-owned" and not "KLM-owned?" Or maybe Air France should be labeled "KLM-owned" to give the more complete story.

In any case, it would be much more useful to know which airlines are government-owned, since this usually breeds regulatory collusion (especially if the regulator and the head of the airline happen to be the same person).

Anyone can put up a list on the Internet but this one is really misleading. If you want a better picture of airline safety comparison (still with many caveats), there's this one:

https://www.jacdec.de/airline-ranking/

Security from the user, not for the user, is an anti-feature from the user's point of view. Security features in general are not.

These defaults seem like a reasonable, pro-consumer choice. Great to know there's at least one vendor that helps to get around the restrictions Secure Boot creates for the user.

Secure Boot has always been an anti-feature, at least from the user's point of view. It seems really strange to complain your device isn't locked down enough by default: the restrictions can always be enabled manually if that's your kink.

The ranking should more appropriately be called "tourist passport ranking", "visitor passport ranking" or something the like. It's a misnomer to call it a "passport ranking" without any qualifiers as this is based on visa exemptions for short-term visitors only.

Japan and Singapore win it every year because apart from being able to enter all the "usual" Western countries and tourist destinations, they are allowed 14-day visa-free entry to China and some other places that typically require visas from everyone else. But then, for China (at least pre-COVID), many other nationals are allowed 5-day visa-free stay while "transiting." And US citizens can get multiple-entry 10-year visas. So the difference in practice isn't that big.

Visitor visas in general are hardly difficult to obtain. For example Germany is a notch above other EU member states because it has visa-free entry to Namibia (perhaps in reciprocity for the generous German aid directed there), whereas for passport holders from most other countries it's a question of paying a nominal fee ("tourist tax"). Although the amount itself is steep (€90 last I checked), obtaining a visa there is unlikely to prove an obstacle.

It would be more interesting to see a ranking comparing access to the best job markets instead. But then the winners would obviously be EU/EEA member state and US passports, alongside some others that grant a pathway to one of those (Canada, Australia, ...).

Yet another way of looking at it is that the "best" passport is the one that grants the best consular protection for their holders abroad, and here the winners would either be the US (willing and capable of doing more than any other country to get their citizens out of trouble) or some countries that are nominally neutral and non-threatening to anyone (so that holding their passport does not paint you as a target in adversary countries), while still being able to flex their diplomatic muscle if need be (Switzerland? Sweden? The latter used to have the most embassies in the world I think.).

Finally, some passports have anti-features. For example the US citizenship is great if living in the US but can be a burden while abroad due to the need to file taxes even if non-resident, and the FATCA regulations making it difficult to even open a bank account in another country (extra reporting burden on the bank). Singapore is not even a democracy and has mandatory conscription for citizens by birth (perhaps not a gift you'd want to make to your children).

I would like to see a ranking considering all of the above as well but I doubt that's going to happen (unless I made one myself I guess): since the simplistic approach is enough to win the news cycle, why would anyone bother. It's similar to all those city rankings always topped by the most boring places that nominally check all the right boxes but few people aspire to move to.

That or an even cheaper CH341A (which is what I use).

Being "rooted" can mean different things, so I'm answering in the broadest sense.

You're right of course. You don't need actual superuser access to the live system to make it work (only through recovery). And, as is the case with LineageOS for MicroG, it can already be integrated into the custom OS.

Thing is, when you start doing such things, the next step is often "rooting" the device anyway, so that you can hide what is considered being "rooted" (which can be as little as running any custom OS) from APKs with "root detection" that otherwise refuse to run.

> What benefits are you guys reaping from taking root, these days?

On stock Android 12+ (LineageOS 19+), superuser access is necessary even to customize the default color scheme. (Except on Google Pixel devices, which have the UI for this built-in: but that's proprietary, not part of AOSP.)

The most common use cases would be easily installing and updating apps from third-party stores (such as F-Droid through their Privileged Extension) [1] and ad blocking.

1. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged/

As a matter of fact, there have been unofficial builds [1], so it's not like the newer Pixel hardware isn't supported at all. Although being Exynos-based likely doesn't help.

Besides Graphene, there's also CalyxOS [2], which is basically like LineageOS with MicroG [3].

And for those who want GApps, they might like their Pixels on stock OS. In fact one of the more popular custom Android flavors these days is Pixel Experience, [4] trying to port these features to other devices.

1. https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/rom-unofficial-raven-orio...

2. https://calyxos.org/

3. https://microg.org/

4. https://download.pixelexperience.org/

Since it's compatible with so many devices, it should probably run on most others too as long they support the same Camera API.

As for downloading, I'm not sure if it's available separately, which of course would be the easiest way, but you can always get the APK for it from any LineageOS build. Just download the flashable ZIP image, extract payload.bin from inside the ZIP, extract the product partition with payload-dumper-go [1]:

    payload-dumper-go -p product payload.bin

and then you have an EXT4 image you can simply mount under UN*X, or extract from using numerous tools for Windows. It'll be somewhere in the /app/ directory.

1. https://github.com/ssut/payload-dumper-go

Follow the link to NSA's Privacy Policy on https://ghidra-sre.org/ and you get a "404 Not Found."

Guess it serves as the final proof nobody reads privacy policies that it apparently has been like this for months: http://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://www.nsa.g...