kappasan
kappasan on Hacker News
Posted by
kappasan on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @03:01PM
from the medium.com dept.
Posted by
kappasan on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @08:07AM
from the wikitopia.city dept.
Still working on dédédé [1] - it's a simple web-based platform to share the "good, bad, and why"s of urban spaces. We're slowly adding functionalities and crushing bugs, an iOS app is in the pipeline too!
[1] https://dedede.de/en
Thanks so much, and super cool newsletter btw!
Not directly involved with for Cities, but they're friends of friends and we should have a chance to meet them very soon.
Did a Show HN about a month ago, but we're hard at work building dédédé [1] - it's a not-for-profit website that invites people to casually share the "good, bad, and why"s of urban spaces.
[1] https://dedede.de/en
We're based in Kyoto and the posts are heavily Japan-centric; we'd love to see posts from all over the world!
A big Jacobs fan here, but I remember reading her book (The Death and Life of...) and also about Robert Moses and thinking "hmm both sides have a point" so she'd probably hate me if she was still alive.
I personally think she was a bit too trusting of the (cybernetics-adjacent?) idea of order spontaneously arising from chaos.
Tangential but the name is a pun - "kezuroukai" translates to "shall we shave?" in Japanese, but "kai" can also mean something like "gathering" or "community".
Thanks so much for checking out the website! I hear machiya are quickly disappearing in Kyoto (often turned into generic apartments) so it's great to hear your friend is keeping the old city alive.
Cool photos! My workplace is an old machiya [1] in Kyoto that's more than a hundred years old, so I kinda live like the people in these photos (not really of course - no konbini back then).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiya
I wonder if it's possible to design a new formal language (something like lojban [1], with a grammar strictly based on formal logic) but with better UX so that it can be used by regular folks like me? Maybe combine something like Attempto [2] with a dedicated visual UI?
I would think a language like that could speed up knowledge base construction. Maybe it can also serve as a substitute for natural languages in some situations where we want our communication to be logically airtight.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempto_Controlled_English
On a separate note, I've always wondered how Cyc is pronounced. Is it "sike", or is it "see-why-see"?
I remember in junior high, we kept a pack of much smaller and cuter planarians [1] for a science class. We cut them up into pieces (sorry worms!) and they really do regenerate! Fascinating creatures.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugesia_japonica
I guess you're referring to this one?
https://dedede.de/en/posts/CimzQqTYi4FWIW that's a post I made myself - the German embassy in Tokyo put up a series of posters explaining some German words, and that's the image they chose for "schadenfreude".
I agree that is very true. We'll see if there are free (or very cheap) solutions we could use.
Thanks so much, we'll look into it!
OP here - just to let you know the signup form asks for an email address, but we're just using it as the user ID so a non-working address works fine.
EDIT: apart from one minor inconvenience, you won't be able to reset your password if you forget it
Huh I vaguely remember hearing that term somewhere... will read up on it, thanks!
Thanks, would love to see posts from outside Japan!