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erklik commented on The Rise of the Japanese Toilet   nytimes.com/2025/05/29/bu... · Posted by u/Kaibeezy
illiac786 · 3 months ago
I feel it’s weird defining them by the main religion of the country it is (maybe) mostly used. No one says the numbers used in English are Muslim, they are generally referred to as Arabic.

I wouldn’t say printing is a “catholic thing”, but it definitely came from a super catholic part of the world.

erklik · 3 months ago
I think it makes sense specifically in this case.

Mainly because Islam has jurisprudence around hygiene in a sense. Ritual purification is an actual religious principle.

Islam requires Muslims to pray 5 times a day, and for those prayers, one has to be ritually clean. That involves washing the hands, rinsing the mouth and nose, washing the face, forearms, head, ears, and then the feet. That's effectively all the major parts of the body that are generally not covered by clothes. Your "cleanliness" is invalided if you use the toilet, pass flatulence, vomit, sleep and so on.

More so, for using the toilet, there are rules. You have to find a place that is away from standing water, people's pathways, shade etc ; granted, this generally doesn't apply in today's age. You have to be quiet on the toilet, and not look at anyone. Not allowed to eat any food while defecating. Lastly and most relevant in this case, you have to use water to wash yourself using the left hand, and then afterwards, you need to do the same for washing the front if you've urinated.

The reason why the "bidet spray" thing exists, is largely because of the rules in the religion around that practice. Calling them Arabic wouldn't make any sense because Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population, has similar tools in their facilities. Again, because they're mostly Muslims.

Printing isn't a catholic thing because the religious doctrine didn't emphasis "printing" itself.

Arabic numbers aren't "islamic numbers" because the religious doctrine didn't emphasise the numbers in some way.

erklik commented on Denmark to raise retirement age to 70   telegraph.co.uk/world-new... · Posted by u/wslh
nicolashahn · 3 months ago
Raising the birth rate is extremely difficult and immigration will destroy a country's culture if not managed properly.

For an interesting case study, compare Japan (who refuses to allow mass immigration and is at risk of going extinct) and the UK (who has embraced it and is on the way to becoming Muslim-majority). It'll be interesting to see in 50 years which one has had better outcomes.

erklik · 3 months ago
> Raising the birth rate is extremely difficult

> the UK (who has embraced it and is on the way to becoming Muslim-majority)

.. Seems like we've found a fix for ;) I wonder what's the difference between Muslims in the UK vs Japanese folks.

erklik commented on Show HN: Family Folder – Help your family remember everything, organise anything   familyfolder.com... · Posted by u/tonystaunton
erklik · 4 months ago
Not sure if this is just me, but the second section with the dark background, seems to have very dark text.. It's effectively unreadable.
erklik commented on AI Horseless Carriages   koomen.dev/essays/horsele... · Posted by u/petekoomen
dvt · 4 months ago
What we need, imo, is:

1. A new UX/UI paradigm. Writing prompts is dumb, re-writing prompts is even dumber. Chat interfaces suck.

2. "Magic" in the same way that Google felt like magic 25 years ago: a widget/app/thing that knows what you want to do before even you know what you want to do.

3. Learned behavior. It's ironic how even something like ChatGPT (it has hundreds of chats with me) barely knows anything about me & I constantly need to remind it of things.

4. Smart tool invocation. It's obvious that LLMs suck at logic/data/number crunching, but we have plenty of tools (like calculators or wikis) that don't. The fact that tool invocation is still in its infancy is a mistake. It should be at the forefront of every AI product.

5. Finally, we need PRODUCTS, not FEATURES; and this is exactly Pete's point. We need things that re-invent what it means to use AI in your product, not weirdly tacked-on features. Who's going to be the first team that builds an AI-powered operating system from scratch?

I'm working on this (and I'm sure many other people are as well). Last year, I worked on an MVP called Descartes[1][2] which was a spotlight-like OS widget. I'm re-working it this year after I had some friends and family test it out (and iterating on the idea of ditching the chat interface).

[1] https://vimeo.com/931907811

[2] https://dvt.name/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-11.png

erklik · 4 months ago
> 1. A new UX/UI paradigm. Writing prompts is dumb, re-writing prompts is even dumber. Chat interfaces suck.

> 2. "Magic" in the same way that Google felt like magic 25 years ago: a widget/app/thing that knows what you want to do before even you know what you want to do.

and not to "dunk" on you or anything of the sort but that's literally what Descartes seems to be? Another wrapper where I am writing prompts telling the AI what to do.

erklik commented on Ahmed Mohamed Clock Incident   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahm... · Posted by u/carabiner
nyolfen · 9 months ago
this story never made sense to me. he disassembled a digital clock then put the pieces in a pencil case? he didn't fabricate it or design any of the electronic components; what was he supposed to be demonstrating, that you can put a digital clock in new case? also his dad was a sudanese opposition politician??
erklik · 9 months ago
It's a 14 year old kid. He wasn't demonstrating anything.

He took apart a clock, stuck in back in a different case, wanted to show his teacher that in a, I am guessing : "Hey look, I took all this apart, and managed not to destroy it"..

Honestly, this entire event shows me two things:

1. The jumps people make to crazy assumptions when faced with someone they don't like because of ideological reasons.

2. The low level of technological acumen/knowledge to assume that this is even similar to a dangerous device.

erklik commented on Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours   reuters.com/world/asia-pa... · Posted by u/testrun
test1235 · a year ago
>I work for FAANG and have had one page

literally a page? with a pager?

erklik · a year ago
Usually via a Pager app these days, not a physical device.
erklik commented on Show HN: Raven – A Better System for Note-Taking   ravenapp.ai/login... · Posted by u/tiagovasc
tiagovasc · a year ago
The account creation process is free and takes just a few seconds. If you use Google to log in, you can access Raven immediately. For email sign-ups, you’ll receive a login link right away and it's just an extra click.

Nevertheless, I understand your point. We agree that having the option to try the app without creating an account would be ideal, and it's in our roadmap.

erklik · a year ago
> The account creation process is free and takes just a few seconds. If you use Google to log in, you can access Raven immediately. For email sign-ups, you’ll receive a login link right away and it's just an extra click.

The average user leave web pages in 10-20 seconds unless you provide a clear value proposition to hold their attention.

I can make a account, and I can give you my email ... But why should I? What exactly even is Raven? The webpage tells me nothing, yet you think I am going to give over my email information (and name etc that's pulled from Google OAuth) ... for what again?

> We agree that having the option to try the app without creating an account would be ideal, and it's in our roadmap.

Not even that. Make a landing page. Stick a few screenshots on it, make a loom video. Anything that shows me what I am even signing up to.

More so, you're targeting developers, on HN. That's a more privacy focused crowd. No Privacy Policy. No contact information. No proof that my data won't be sold to some random company is not a great way to gain trust.

erklik commented on Show HN: Raven – A Better System for Note-Taking   ravenapp.ai/login... · Posted by u/tiagovasc
erklik · a year ago
> gathering feedback from our first users. If you’re interested, you can try it here: https://ravenapp.ai

doesn't seem like I can try it. There's a screen that pops up saying I need to make an account.

erklik commented on SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube   sponsor.ajay.app/... · Posted by u/anotherhue
noone_youknow · a year ago
As a YouTuber, I’m conflicted about this. My main channel (non-tech) is small, but is monetised, and YouTube see fit to throw me a _very_ variable amount of money every month. CPMs are down right now so revenue has tanked along with it, it’ll pick back up at some point, but the variability is itself the pain point. My videos are relatively expensive and time consuming to make, but people seem to find them useful, and even enjoyable. The occasional (relevant) sponsor read or similar has been a huge help in providing some stability in the past, and I know for many channels it’s the main source of income since YPP revenue share can be so volatile.

I do worry that if this takes off it will just result in those sponsors pulling their budgets for this type of advertising, and it’ll be another nail in the coffin for creators. Sure many of us also do patreon etc but that’s never really sat right with me personally (and see also the post on HN just today about Apple coming for a revenue split there for another creator-hostile storm brewing).

On the other hand, I totally get the hatred of “the usual suspect” sponsors (VPNs, low-quality learning platforms etc) that get done to death because of their aggressive sponsor budgets and not-unreasonable deals. Those get shoehorned into a ton of videos and it’s a shame, but a blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole, not just those bad ones.

erklik · a year ago
> blunt instrument like this is likely to kill off sponsorships as a whole

That's the dream. Ads are a poison and a blight.

Removing them is something many users, including me welcome. If one wants money for their videos, they're welcome to actually allow getting payments i.e. patreon, the "Youtube sponsorship"-thing.

erklik commented on Scientists discover a new hormone that can build strong bones in mice   ucsf.edu/news/2024/07/428... · Posted by u/gmays
sapphicsnail · a year ago
Men could also stop policing women's bodies and activities. I have had my doctor tell me to do load-bearing exercises but I've also heard men mock not just masculine-looking women, but women who are interested in male-coded activities like weight lifting.
erklik · a year ago
Far more men like women with good-looking fit bodies. It's a statistically insignificant minority that likes "fat women", so "men" overall aren't policing women's bodies to the point of influencing women to not go to the gym. It's largely women who do it to each other.

u/erklik

KarmaCake day1362August 14, 2016View Original