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Re:Why English doesn't use accents on Monday July 07, 2025 @04:38AM (#44488064)
According to the article, Norman influence led to double letters being used to better mark out sounds, which achieves the same as diacritics. It made English mostly good enough (failures like 'lead' are rare). Being good enough, and lacking a strong central authority, the language only accepted a conservative standardisation, and avoided larger changes such as including diacritics. Without these Norman changes, there is more chance diacritics would have been added, as it would not have been 'good enough'.

Written English is a worse is better story. The Norman influenced version being the first-mover that users cling to even when better comes along.

Re:Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake on Friday September 27, 2024 @03:52PM (#41674875)
Yes.
Re:Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake on Friday September 27, 2024 @01:21PM (#41673215)
I find the power asymmetry is in my favour. I give money to the bookmaker or I don't.

If I don't, then the bookmaker is powerless as regards my money.

If I do, then I also gain some power over the bookmaker's money.

I don't expect many to see it the same way. Most people are more concerned than I am with the problems suffered by those whose decision making does not interact well with the existence of the gambling industry. Given their concerns, it is understandable that they wouldn't share my perspective.

Re:Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake on Friday September 27, 2024 @01:04PM (#41672994)
I think you are right that most people who want to ban such activities want to go back to the former situation where people could only bet on sports with friends. Their position is different to mine.
Re:Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake on Thursday September 26, 2024 @01:22PM (#41660930)
I don't want to stop those who enjoy it from enjoying it for the sake of those whose decision making doesn't interact well with its legalisation. I think others care more about preventing people from acting in ways that have negative consequences than I do, so I don't expect many to agree with me.
Re:EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @04:44AM (#37671887)
A closed system makes long-term support easier.
Re:EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @04:35AM (#37671807)
Everyone I know who had one (okay, that's not many people...) loved it.
Re:Ask vs. Guess Culture on Friday August 18, 2023 @01:03PM (#37178642)
I've never heard of asking vs guessing culture before and don't know much about them, but, based on the article, I'd say guessing looks more transactional. It uses a shared history and remembers past favours ("I gave him soup, so I can seek to get his van", as the example in the article had it), which is really an implicit transaction without guarantee the other side will meet their end.

I am not even sure transactions are possible in asking culture, as it looks stateless. Askers just broadcast needs without reference to any past event, such as a favour.

This might be an equivocation, but, funnily enough, you said guessing is about understanding and for people to have an understanding is a way of saying they have a transaction (often implicit). For instance, "I gave him a pass on that, so now we have an understanding that I can do this".

A team I was on hired someone because I dug up an emulator he had written in the past (I think it was of some Nintendo console). I took a quick look at it, showed it to the other devs on the team, asked the candidate about it to check he really built it and understood it, and then we told the manager to hire him, if he passed the personality assessment. He hadn't even mentioned it on his CV as he worried it would look unprofessional.

I got another person hired as I found a Android game she had written and pushed to the Play store. Again, I don't think she mentioned it on her CV. After looking at it and talking to her about it, I told management to hire her, if they found no issues in her as a person.

In both cases they were outstanding at their job, relative to their level of seniority and pay. Both are very high up the list of people I'd happily work with again.

It might not be fair to the candidates that didn't have projects (or had ones that I couldn't find), but it was a very effective way of getting amazing people. Which makes sense as examples of work are probably better than CVs and interviews for judging someones ability to do the job.

If it does end, Amazon gift vouchers? What would be a better substitute?
Re:OpenAI Lobbied the E.U. To Water Down AI Regulation on Thursday June 22, 2023 @08:36AM (#36431198)
If the tech is so dangerous that a closed market is necessary, then maybe it should be nationalised.
Re:Google's reCAPTCHA likely illegal in Europe? on Thursday June 22, 2023 @08:27AM (#36431097)
If there was a proxy service that acted as an ip mask, and there was a list of the ip addresses of such masking proxies, then could EU customers using such services solve the issue?
Re:Thoughts on Svelte(Kit), one year and 3B requests later on Thursday June 22, 2023 @07:45AM (#36430651)
He’s worked with React and Svelte. He didn’t think he could get it done in time with React. How do you know he is wrong?
Re:Thoughts on Svelte(Kit), one year and 3B requests later on Thursday June 22, 2023 @03:34AM (#36429073)
He said that he couldn't have met the deadline without Svelte.
I talk about political matters for ideas, education, and stimulation (mine and the other person's), rather than to beat them into taking on my position. I'd certainly walk away from a conversation long before I'm worn down into taking on their views.

I think this interchange of thought and sharing of ideas is the true essence of discourse. That other thing is more of a verbal tribal battle. I can see issues with bots swinging the political landscape in ways that cause harm, but I think there is good reason to think discourse might flourish. Fundamentally, if the competitive arguers are discouraged, whilst the curious and conversational are encouraged, or at least not hurt, then discourse itself wins.

Re:Eventually ChatGPT will eat itself on Thursday February 23, 2023 @12:22PM (#34913489)
I wonder how difficult it will be to apply the filter to human generated content.
Re:Please don't be spooky on Friday September 16, 2022 @04:28AM (#32863599)
But they do, so it is probably best to include a short note stating the purpose of the desired conversation.

This will also help prime many people, and thereby improve the conversation, so it is probably worth doing even if the person won’t be made anxious.

Ideally, I'd rotate it between the countries that have a historical tie. I think that is India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and the U.K.. That would allow all the communities with a connection to share in the benefit.
Does it have to go to any country? Duleep Singh was the owner, when the British took it. Who is his legal heir?
What kinds of ethical problems do teams suffer in your experience?
Re:Show HN: Countle on Friday September 02, 2022 @04:45AM (#32688281)
I enjoyed this. Thank you.
So it is an open that has had international organisation layered on top. That does make more sense, in terms of how it got to where it is.

Another possibililty would be to relax the geographic grouping of the events. Maybe the Meta sponsored Olympics of the future will be willing to do that in the belief that VR/AR have made location less important. It'll be interesting to see how people's sense of physical location and togetherness change with new technology. I hope not, but maybe Meta's idea of 'Connection' will win in the end.

The principle of open contest* avoids the problem you cite. Such a problem is inherent to international competition*. The mixture of limited open competition (multiple entries per country) introduces a fault into the system, which corrupts the contest at the highest level as detailed in the article. You make it less likely the best of anywhere will win, so that the second best of somewhere can compete. If you accept the competitive principle that is inherent to the entire design, then the problem goes away.

But yeah, I know most people won't accept this. That is cool. They'll continue to enjoy the Olympics; I'll continue to ignore it.

* In principle, I think a contest that aims to be the pinnacle of a sport, as the Olympics events do generally aim (Association Football being an exception), should be an open contest. However, I'm not sure if an Olympics that was formally open would actually be treated as anything other than effectively an international contest. Still, maybe open would be better (I'd be happy to see it tried), but it is not hard to see that it might cause issues of its own.

* in international competition, it is probably not even fair to consider it a problem, as it is really just an accepted part of such systems.

Restrict each country to one competitor.
You've learned to tell apart the meaningful from the meaningless. You've done this by the age of twenty three. Your time was only wasted if you don't take advantage of this excellent foundation.

Go forth and do that which you think is significant.

He can't charge more unless someone will pay it. It doesn't matter what he feels entitled to. It is just supply and demand.

Like many others during such inflationary periods, he might simply end up with less purchasing power.

I've sat on a beach. It isn't for me.
The fisherman seems to like his life, but I'd find it tedious. Plus, if everyone lived the life of the fisherman, then we'd find it difficult to maintain all the things our society provides.

Maybe that would be better, but I doubt it.

Looking at the Jupiter CEO, his retirement sounds dull, although spending time with parents before they go sounds good.

Still, I'd need to do more than sit on a beach.

I imagine you'd explain before recording what is going on (assuming you don't just fake the entire thing with some friends), rather than doing anything as silly as suing anybody. It wouldn't take more than a token amount to get people to participate. A lot of people wouldn't even want money. They'd get that this kind of blackmail is horrible and help you out.
Get rid of the landing page and get straight to the content.

Create content yourselves to fill the void until it grows.

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