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janwillemb commented on Tags to make HTML work like you expect   blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/FromTheArchives
flymasterv · 2 months ago
It states the cargo culted reasons, but not the actual truth.

1) Pronounciation is either solved by a) automatic language detection, or b) doesn't matter. If I am reading a book, and I see text in a language I recognize, I will pronounce it correctly, just like the screen reader will. If I see text in a language I don't recognize, I won't pronounce it correctly, and neither will the screen reader. There's no benefit to my screen reader pronouncing Hungarian correctly to me, a person who doesn't speak Hungarian. On the off chance that the screen reader gets it wrong, even though I do speak Hungarian, I can certainly tell that I'm hearing english-pronounced hungarian. But there's no reason that the screen reader will get it wrong, because "Mit csináljunk, hogy boldogok legyünk?" isn't ambiguous. It's just simply Hungarian, and if I have a Hungarian screen reader installed, it's trivial to figure that out.

2) Again, if you can translate it, you already know what language it is in. If you don't know what language it is in, then you can't read it from a book, either.

3) See above. Locale is mildly useful, but the example linked in the article was strictly language, and spell checking will either a) fail, in the case of en-US/en-UK, or b) be obvious, in the case of 1) above.

The lang attribute adds nothing to the process.

janwillemb · 2 months ago
This comment contains a few logical fallacies.

> It states the cargo culted reasons, but not the actual truth

This dismisses existing explanations without engaging with the mentioned reasons. The following text then doesn't provide any arguments for this.

> Pronunciation is either solved by a) automatic language detection, or b) doesn't matter.

There are more possibilities than a and b. For example, it may matter for other things than pronunciation only. Also it may improve automatic detection or make automatic detection superfluous.

> If I am reading a book [...] I will pronounce it correctly, just like the screen reader will. If I see text in a language I don't recognize, I won't pronounce it correctly, and neither will the screen reader.

A generalization of your own experience to all users and systems. Screen readers aim to convey information accessibly, not mirror human ignorance.

> There's no reason that the screen reader will get it wrong, because <hungarian sentence> isn't ambiguous

This is circular reasoning. The statement is based on the assumption that automatic detection is always accurate - which is precisely what is under debate.

> If you can translate it, you already know what language it is in.

This a non sequitur. Even if someone can translate text, that doesn't mean software or search engines can automatically identify that language.

> The lang attribute adds nothing to the proces.

This absolute claim adds nothing to the logic.

janwillemb commented on Tags to make HTML work like you expect   blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/FromTheArchives
spc476 · 2 months ago
Such questions can be jarring though. I remember my "Unix Systems Programming" class in college. It's a third year course. The instructor was describing the layout of a process in memory, "here's the text segment, the data segment, etc." when a student asked, "Where do the comments go?"
janwillemb · 2 months ago
:) true. I'm a teacher myself. I never dismiss questions, but I do get discouraged sometimes.
janwillemb commented on Tags to make HTML work like you expect   blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/FromTheArchives
troupo · 2 months ago
Every day you can expect 10000 people learning a thing you thought everyone knew: https://xkcd.com/1053/

To quote the alt text: "Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time."

janwillemb · 2 months ago
Thanks! I didn't know that one.

I had a teacher who became angry when a question was asked about a subject he felt students should already be knowledgeable about. "YOU ARE IN xTH GRADE AND STILL DON'T KNOW THIS?!" (intentional shouting uppercase). The fact that you learned it yesterday doesn't mean all humans in the world also learned it yesterday. Ask questions, always. Explain, always.

janwillemb commented on Tags to make HTML work like you expect   blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/FromTheArchives
flymasterv · 2 months ago
I still don’t understand what people think they’re accomplishing with the lang attribute. It’s trivial to determine the language, and in the cases where it isn’t, it’s not trivial for the reader, either.
janwillemb · 2 months ago
Doesn't it state this in the article?

> Browsers, search engines, assistive technologies, etc. can leverage it to:

> - Get pronunciation and voice right for screen readers

> - Improve indexing and translation accuracy

> - Apply locale-specific tools (e.g. spell-checking)

janwillemb commented on Surveillance data challenges what we thought we knew about location tracking   lighthousereports.com/inv... · Posted by u/_tk_
janwillemb · 2 months ago
It is about a company, First Wap, that makes it possible to track individuals. Their USP is a piece of software that operates at phone network level and uses the fact that phone companies still support an old protocol, Signalling System 7:

> Phone networks need to know where users are in order to route text messages and phone calls. Operators exchange signalling messages to request, and respond with, user location information. The existence of these signalling messages is not in itself a vulnerability. The issue is rather that networks process commands, such as location requests, from other networks, without being able to verify who is actually sending them and for what purpose.

> These signalling messages are never seen on a user’s phone. They are sent and received by “Global Titles” (GTs), phone numbers that represent nodes in a network but are not assigned to subscribers.

janwillemb commented on Show HN: ASCII Drawing Board   delopsu.com/draw.html... · Posted by u/delopsu
delopsu · 3 months ago
Could you please try it now? Pushed a fix, but have no Android to test it.
janwillemb · 3 months ago
Still only one point
janwillemb commented on Show HN: ASCII Drawing Board   delopsu.com/draw.html... · Posted by u/delopsu
janwillemb · 3 months ago
Doesn't seem to work on Firefox mobile. On each stroke it only renders one "point".
janwillemb commented on Hacking Pinball High Scores   gwern.net/blog/2025/pinba... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
janwillemb · 7 months ago
The links in the article are all annotated with a symbol (showing what happens when you click the link?), which breaks the flow of reading imo. I don't feel this helps communicating the message of the article.

[Example](https://imgur.com/a/wWltrg9)

janwillemb commented on Suno v4.5   suno.com/explore/... · Posted by u/platers
cryptonector · 8 months ago
Oh. Music I know can play repetitively in my mind, which is annoying at sleep time, so I tend to listen to slow music I am not familiar with at bed time. Suno did generate good such music just now for me, even though it failed miserably to generate music for genres I like during daytime. Fascinating.
janwillemb · 8 months ago
I have the same thing, really annoying. I can wake up at night at the same song too. I stopped listening music hours before bedtime, but that doesn't always help and I also tend to forget. I'll try out suno for this purpose. What do you use for prompting, if you want to share?

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KarmaCake day1242March 31, 2010View Original