News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

ivell

Re:Mathematics has changed. Let's act like it on Monday November 02, 2026 @12:35AM (#50333465)
> Israel used the sounds of crying babies to lure out innocent people and shoot them with drones.

This sounds horrible. Do you have an article where I can read about it?

Re:Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament on Saturday October 31, 2026 @08:01AM (#50315293)
I think we have people who are highly intelligent and still unable to navigate social situations. Neurodivergents are not uncommon in academics.
Re:Jules Verne's Lost Novel on Saturday October 31, 2026 @07:23AM (#50315005)
> I don't understand the supposed value of AI-made art tailored to the viewer's wishes.

Some people do not like tragic endings while they love the premise of the movie. Some have issues where violence in movies could disturb them for days. So to be able to take a premise while toning down on violence and having a happy ending would be attractive for many people. There is a reason why many hollywood movies are variations of Americans saving world with a happy ending. Movies with tragic endings or challenging preconceived notions are not going to be successful.

In that sense, we would be able to make our own offbeat movies with intersting premises, instead of watching the usual movies prefered by average movie goers.

Re:Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament on Saturday October 31, 2026 @07:17AM (#50314959)
Politics also require quite a bit of emotional intelligence and charisma and ability to get diverse people to come to the table for compromises. Academic achievements are orthogonal to all these.

Best case would be multi-talented persons who have both IQ and EQ and good character. Just IQ is not enough.

Re:Jules Verne's Lost Novel on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:04AM (#50314095)
Although Verne had written about 1960, the social situation seems to be something that could for 2060.

I read a comment elsewhere speculating that the article was written by AI. It could be, but it also shows that authors have to now go extra lengths to prove what they write is not from a machine.

I am afraid future of art is bleak. Poems hand written by poets will be competing with machines. Movies by Nolan and AI probably would not be easily distinguishable. Would we still pay for human made movies when AI can generate one for us, with the ending and style we want?

Of course there will be value to human generated content, but probably much less than how it is today. It will be probably niche like art work for millionaires to boast than for masses to consume.

In that sense, I would say Verne was right to be worried.

Re:The Great American Rascal: Tom Sawyer at 150 on Friday October 30, 2026 @02:20AM (#50300436)
Your teacher worked very hard to take fun out of learning. How dare you make it interesting! :-)
These behaviors are only short term beneficial for the company. Eventually they will just get banned in other nations as a threat to sovereignty.
> But so many people would have to change their minds for that to happen that in practice it is very unlikely.

In his previous administration there were at least some checks and balances. This administration is completely unethical in all kind of levels. Frankly I won't be holding my breath.

Re:The compiler was supposed to end programming too on Thursday October 22, 2026 @06:26AM (#50193493)
> Not only does the code become impossible for humans to reason about very quickly, it actually becomes difficult for agents to reason about it.

Story of many enterprise applications built only by humans. There is a good reason that frequently devs either refactor their codebase or do a complete rewrite.

Re:What shall I teach my son? on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @11:39AM (#50182830)
> affirming their emotions are also attending therapy.

Would be good to know for what they are going for therapy. Many people go for therapy for different issues. The parent post mentioned about empathy issues. But not clear what issues you are mentioning here.

Re:What shall I teach my son? on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @09:39AM (#50180790)
> obsessing over what words to use will just make you more anxious and worried

It is not exact words to memorize. It is about what attitude you bring to your child.

If you really try to understand the toddler's sadness, you would realize that something important to her has been lost and instead of disregarding it as unimportant (for an adult), you would help her to find, make her understand her emotions etc. This is more about being empathetic and not about the right words to use. In case of psychologists, they are giving example phrases - doesn't have to be exact as long as the spirit of those phrases are maintained.

Obviously being as asshole doesn't help, but most of the times children of assholes tend to be assholes due to the same reasons.

Re:What shall I teach my son? on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @08:32AM (#50179837)
> Not everything that seems like a big deal to a toddler is one, and simply reaffirming that won't help

Some of divorces happen because one partner thinks the other partner's concern is not "big deal".

The goal is not to teach what issues are critical and what is not. This they will learn over time. The goal is to teach them empathy and you show it by example, showing empathy to their concerns - big or small.

Re:What shall I teach my son? on Wednesday October 21, 2026 @07:59AM (#50179449)
> I understand that you feel sad because..." instead of "don't cry, it's not that bad").

Since children have very limited experience, I think it is important for them to know that their feelings are valid instead being discarded. This makes them understand their own feelings and build empathy for others. Otherwise you are basically teaching the kids other's feelings are invalid or not important to be acknowledged. Think of it as model training to build empathy and understanding.

> two separate countries because of incompatible competing cultures not able to live together.

India has one of the world's largest muslim population. Pakistan separated due to religion and not culture. In fact Pakistani has Punjabis that are quite similar to Indian Punjab and Bangladesh & Indian West Bengal has quite similar cultures.

> What is called multiculturalism in India is a mix of indigenous sub-cultures who share many similarities

Are you claiming that Assam, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Bengal cultures are the same? They dont even share the same scripts (and in case of Tamil it is even a different root language)! They may be sharing same religion for majority of people, but that does not make it a subculture.

I think you are conflating religion with culture.

> "multiculturalism doesn't work"

It works very well where I come from. India.

The parallels are striking. Now the outgroup is immigrants instead of jews.

Give angry people an outgroup to vent their anger and hate, one can become the ruler of the nation. US did not get a great economy by incarcerating or throwing those few thousand immigrants out. Its economy is currently getting messed up by stupid policies. But people need an outgroup to hate and it is enough for the right wings to get to power.

> This idea that somehow it just starts with small things, and then before you know it, the Third Reich is back. Come on. It's 2026.

And in 2026 we see the state of US going exactly in that direction. Humans are pretty predictable and something similar to Third Reich will happen before you know it. "This time will be different" is hope. Not a given.

In many cases banks decide the account is not worth the hastle of regulation and compliance. In some countries US citizens have difficulty getting an account due to US regulations being more hassle than worth.
Re:Developing Taste on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @01:26AM (#50161691)
Or design-researcher :-)
Even in the past, US was more of a gangster supporting its gang rather than a fair hearted policeman. Its support to Pakistan during Bangladesh (East Pakistan) genocide is well known.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Blood#The_Blood_Telegra...

Reminds me of PC vs Mac campaign
Re:Why Were Victorian Elites So Effective? on Friday October 09, 2026 @10:40AM (#50021194)
A suppression of economic activity would describe slow shrinkage of GDP.

India was always populous, so that was a constant.

You may also like to read about increasing famines in British controlled regions, how food crops were forcibly replaced with cash crops and so on. E.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394628864_An_analys...

Unfortunately not many people understand or appreciate how colonialism destroys a country and they just see the end result and claim that the citizens of the country were incapable of developing by their own.

Not only economical, but also psychological (as in lose of self confidence) and cultural (assuming own culture is somehow inferior to the rulers) destruction happens. It is not much different from abused people losing self confidence and blaming themselves and additionallyhaving to suffer victim blaming from others - just at a nation scale.

Re:The value of not getting to the point (2015) on Friday October 09, 2026 @02:23AM (#50016711)
This person has and used to prefer a conversation style that is not according to the average population. Outliers should be allowed to exist as long as they are not evil.

> necessity to cultivate trust and comfort in others before,

Con artists are very adept at building up such conversations. So the trust and comfort it builds is superficial.

Re:US Suspends Visa Program for Tech Firms Including Microsoft on Thursday October 08, 2026 @12:34PM (#50007997)
Me buying food from restaurant would make the owner richer, but would also employ more people at the restaurant.

The scarcity issue is valid when the resource is limited. In case of US, I was not aware of food scarcity. Even housing is more due to policies than actual land scarcity.

Economic activity does have positive feeback. Yes, some people get unfairly rich - but the solution is not to stop the activity, instead try to get the rich pay their fair share of contribution to the country.

Re:Why Were Victorian Elites So Effective? on Thursday October 08, 2026 @11:43AM (#50007212)
IIRC India's GDP was approx. 25% of the world's in 1700s compared to Thai 1% around the same time. In case of India it came down to 3 to 4% in 1947. So India faced quite a drop.

I don't think comparing an already declined India to Thai is a fair comparison.

Re:Why Were Victorian Elites So Effective? on Wednesday October 07, 2026 @11:44AM (#49994447)
Britain had large amount of colonies and therefore access to a large market. The markets were designed to extract wealth, see for e.g. https://averyreview.com/issues/57/empire-salt-tax

The industries in Britain had access to such huge monopolistic markets, so not really a surprise.

Re:First Implantable Cochlear Implant Launches on Tuesday October 06, 2026 @03:02AM (#49975166)
Is the battery safe to be implanted. I ask because of fire and poisoning risks
I don't expect that to happen. I suspect even the democrat politicians are internally happy that Trump has pushed boundaries of everything and has given a precedent. The new admin if it comes, would cherry pick all the delicious parts and put on backburner more controversial ones until it is ready to bring it out again.

Once power is corrupted, it is very hard to bring it back to more innocent times. The power of presidents have only increased under both parties.

Re:How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @09:47AM (#49893203)
> jump-starting a giant civilisation, say, 1000+ years into the future is not straightforward either.

Not sure what you are suggesting here.

Older »