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arglebarnacle commented on Giving up upstream-ing my patches and feel free to pick them up   mail.openjdk.org/pipermai... · Posted by u/csmantle
arglebarnacle · a month ago
Interesting, when I've come across this before I have always interpreted it as "not from Hong Kong", especially in a context like this where it's raised in the context of engaging with a western counterpart's potential suspicion.

It's been my experience that westerners (I am a westerner) do have different assumptions about "mainland" Chinese people than people from Hong Kong who are assumed to be more cosmopolitan, "westernized", or even "politically neutral" from a western liberal capitalist perspective, so it seems reasonable to point it out in this context.

arglebarnacle commented on ASCII-Driven Development   medium.com/@calufa/ascii-... · Posted by u/_hfqa
arglebarnacle · 2 months ago
A really interesting article, and I'm likely to give it a shot a work. I'm grateful for it, and yet I found it difficult to get through because of a sense of "LLM style" in the prose.

I won't speculate on whether the post is AI-written or whether the author has adopted quirks from LLM outputs into their own way of writing because it doesn't really matter. Something about this "feeling" in the writing causes me discomfort, and I don't even really know why. It's almost like a tightness in my jaw or a slight ache in my molars.

Every time I read something like, "Not as an aesthetic choice. Not as nostalgia. *But as a thinking tool*" in an article I had until then taken on faith was produced in the voice of a human being feels like a let down. Maybe it's just the sense that I believed I was connecting with another person, albeit indirectly, and then I feel the loss of that. But that's not entirely convincing, because I genuinely found the points this article was making interesting, and no doubt they came originally from the author's mind.

Since this is happening more and more, I'd be interested to hear what others' experiences with encountering LLM-seeming blog posts (especially of inherently interesting underlying content) has been like.

arglebarnacle commented on Minnesota officials say they can't access evidence after fatal ICE shooting   pbs.org/newshour/nation/m... · Posted by u/perihelions
afavour · 2 months ago
I know a certain set of HN users doesn't like to discuss "politics" but if the government's site about "Eat Real Food" can sit on the front page for many hours (currently at spot 14 after being posted 23 hours ago) then this can too. It's important that US citizens know what their federal government is doing in their name.

If you require a tech angle: how about the fact that smartphones have enabled this incident to be recorded from many angles by everyday citizens? A couple of decades ago we'd likely only have the government's word for it. How long before AI messes up that trust?

EDIT: what do you know? This post has disappeared from the front page. Currently in the 57th spot on page 2. And yes, "Eat Real Food" remains exactly where it was.

If you didn't already know about HN's moves to minimize visibility of government wrongdoing, well, you do now.

arglebarnacle · 2 months ago
Agreed, and the impact, culture, and law around the rise of distributed smartphone video by citizens is especially relevant in a universe where the Justice Department has called filming immigration officers "obstruction of justice" and even "domestic terrorism" (https://reason.com/2025/12/26/justice-department-says-filmin...)
arglebarnacle commented on I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me   grell.dev/blog/ai_rejecti... · Posted by u/serhack_
hollowonepl · 7 months ago
Good findings, the rest not surprising tho.. online recruitment doesn't work at all these days. most likely your app wasn't read by anybody meaningful and did not trigger right flags in the HR system to even be spotted by clueless ladies working there.

This post can give you some visibility unless somebody sees it as frustration/negativity then they won't bother either.

aside of the core topic, best way to get a job these days is unfortunately either some elite job boards that work and both sides know why... or personal relations.

All the automatic HR/recruitment platforms is illness and i'm sure that's what victimized your genuine application there.

arglebarnacle · 7 months ago
I assume your choice to describe average HR reps as “clueless ladies” isn’t meant to suggest that you respect e.g. women software engineers on your team any less. But if the gender of the clueless HR employees isn’t relevant, why mention it? Maybe worth reflecting on whether calling them clueless ladies rhetorically emphasizes their cluelessness
arglebarnacle commented on Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database    · Posted by u/willbryk
wormius · 10 months ago
WHY DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS? STOP WITH THE NAME COLLISIONS ALREADY. https://github.com/ogham/exa
arglebarnacle · 10 months ago
A dead project that has been replaced with a fork with a different name? Maybe I’m missing something but this really doesn’t seem so bad as far as name collisions go
arglebarnacle commented on 7 Databases in 7 Weeks for 2025   matt.blwt.io/post/7-datab... · Posted by u/yarapavan
vjerancrnjak · a year ago
I like Clickhouse more.

Unrelated, not sure if it is just me, but ever since LLMs became popular, I've been seeing an enormous amounts of special utf8 characters no one used regularly, like this em dash you used.

How is this simple to type? If you're on a phone keyboard, you have to switch to special characters, and then have to long-hold the dash and then slide to em dash.

arglebarnacle · a year ago
On a full keyboard it’s not too bad—just hold alt and tap 0151 on the numpad. Honestly I wish it was harder to type for stylistic reasons—it would help cure me of my em-dash addiction
arglebarnacle commented on Joint statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC   home.treasury.gov/news/pr... · Posted by u/FormerBandmate
adastra22 · 3 years ago
...why? For asking for government intervention to protect the innocent and avoid contagion? Why should that be embarrassing?
arglebarnacle · 3 years ago
Why do you find it believable that they asked for government intervention to protect "the innocent" as opposed to simply acting to protect their own private financial interests, which seems to be the simplest explanation?

I'm not even convinced that the depositors made whole here were innocent--they accepted a known risk by exceeding the risk-free FDIC limit. The sad part is that in our society, we have no qualms about literally turning working people out into the street when they make financial missteps, but the already-wealthy receive prompt intervention from the highest levels to protect them and other wealthy people from the consequences of their investment decisions.

What argument is really left for this kind of intervention, besides appeals to the trickle-down system where the rich must be vigilantly protected since the rest of our society is set up to be disrupted when they fail. The whole system is morally and politically bankrupt.

arglebarnacle commented on The sad story of Heisenberg's doctoral oral exam (1998)   aps.org/publications/apsn... · Posted by u/occamschainsaw
seanhunter · 3 years ago
One of my favourite positive doctoral viva stories was Wittgenstein, who presented "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" as his dissertation, which had already been published and was already considered a masterpiece. The report was something like "We consider the work of Mr Wittgenstein to be the work of a genius. Nevertheless, it fulfills the criteria for a Cambridge doctorate".

Edit to add: The actual quote (which I just found) was from G.E. Moore (Bertrand Russell was the other examiner): "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree."

arglebarnacle · 3 years ago
Very funny to me that on the way out of the room Wittgenstein allegedly "clapped the two examiners [Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore] on the shoulder and said, 'Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it.'"
arglebarnacle commented on StackExchange offers 'possible reinstatement' to moderator removed over pronouns   tech.slashdot.org/story/1... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute
wizzwizz4 · 6 years ago
She said nothing of the sort.

Monica has a purely grammatical objection to the use of singular they. I believe that objection to be unjustified (for etymology pedantry reasons), but it's not born out of malice or the rejection of people's identities. I don't agree with Monica on this point, but she has never used her position as a moderator to hurt people in this way. She wouldn't be the sort of person to use neopronouns if she were inclined to do this.

And, to my knowledge, she has never knowingly used the wrong pronouns for a user of the site, which is more than can be said for most people.

Please don't selectively apply standards. You should be equally outraged at the other >30% of the population who fail this test – if you're not, stop slandering Monica.

arglebarnacle · 6 years ago
It would have been better to say that she has an ideological objection to using they/them pronouns (rather than non-binary identity), so I'll concede that point.

But the thrust of my post is that it's wrong to describe her as someone who is helping the LGBTQ+ community, just in a different way, and I stand by that. She said in her statement that she "write[s] in a gender-neutral way specifically to avoid gender landmines".

I'm sure this is a relatable sentiment to cisgender people who's main engagement with the trans community is anxiety about making mistakes. But this can't be compared to the marginalization trans people face. One way that non-binary people are denied space in our culture is by being erased. It's not a high crime to go out of your way to avoid our pronouns like this, but by doing so Monica is someone who is doing the bare minimum of avoiding offense--she is not helping or supporting non-binary people or fostering their inclusion.

Despite the implication of your reply I am actually not outraged that she could continue to be a Stack Exchange moderator, that seems fine. But I am intransigently against the vision of LGBTQ+ allyship laid out in the GGP, where being a supporting helper just means not being hostile.

Trans people are fighting for our lives in society right now, it would really help if people could find it in themselves to pick the right side, use our pronouns in public, and build the cultural space for us to exist in normalcy, instead of only think about this issue when twitter "activists" have "gone too far" by criticizing someone they like.

arglebarnacle commented on StackExchange offers 'possible reinstatement' to moderator removed over pronouns   tech.slashdot.org/story/1... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute
andybak · 6 years ago
So all of this is because a company that believes in helping the LGBTQ+ community had a dispute with an individual that also believed in helping the LGBTQ+ community but differed about how to do so.

And all the while there's still genuine real and unambiguous harm and violence being committed against the community that this is supposed to be about.

Something, something choose your battles...

arglebarnacle · 6 years ago
That's not true--the moderator said she refused to acknowledge non-binary people by their pronouns if they use a singular "they" because of an ideological objection to their gender identity.

I am non-binary and use they/them pronouns, and while I'm not bothered when people avoid my pronouns e.g. by using my name instead, it's another thing entirely to assert that someone who doesn't consider non-binary identity valid "believes in helping the LGBTQ+ community but differed in how to do so."

Simply avoiding being rude (by deliberately using the wrong pronouns) is the baseline for respect, literally the least you can do. To "help" implies to support--if you support our community please use our correct pronouns and correct other cis people who misgender trans folks in your presence, don't merely humor us.

u/arglebarnacle

KarmaCake day461July 16, 2015View Original