throwaway47861

> > Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition.

> Again, that's not the point.

If that's not the point then any other discussion is tragically irrelevant.

The "global average is better" is a meaningless assertion. Everybody in the world has roughly one testicle. How useful is that piece of info?

And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?

> ...but Westerners have a habit of classifying dissenting opinions as "just wrong" and dismissing/ignoring them.

Fully agreed. This is also extremely prevalent in any economic discussions here in HN where most of the first-world dwellers are cozying up their minds with the generic statement "it is all getting better on average" which I think is utter BS.

As a guy who has been to pretty poor parts of the world and lives in a country that touts any small bill that will benefit zero common folk -- but is always advertised as such for 30 years now -- I have to say, most first-world population is tragically misinformed on how are the average people around the world living.

How is anything you said related to the points defended -- and others debunked by -- by the article?

It was mostly talking about the amount per day needed to have proper nutrition. Why do you shift the goalposts to abstract terms like "it's improving faster"? Sure, if you are on the rock bottom, it's only up from there on, and obviously you want to go faster when distancing yourself from the bottom.

Zero relevance to the article.

> The most optimistic opinions on where we would see autonomous car were on the 2020s.

Sure, keep moving timelines. It's what makes you money in the area. I am sure when around mid-2019 hits, it will suddenly be "most experts agree that the first feasible self-driving cars will arrive circa 2025".

You guys are hilarious.

I believe it's a good time for the publishing of a high-quality article detailing on how to build such mirroring servers with minimal budget.

Usually such machines don't need best CPUs around but they definitely do need ECC memory and serious NAS-like capabilities. So maybe older-gen Xeons? I am no expert though. Hopefully somebody publishes a blog post about it.

Since this is technically very illegal I'd be inclined to view your message as a bait to capture and jail one of the very first people who managed to mirror the whole thing.

No offense, just seems fishy.

On point, thank you. And pretty good evidence of neural network [re-]training, too.

You know, I couldn't give two shits about xenophobic and racist people like them, really. Let them do that and be happy.

As we say in my country however: "be stupid but get the fuck off the road".

Bad influences on young people from old and prejudiced (and bitter?) people is never good. We need a world with more open-minded people and societies like the Japanese aren't helping matters at all. But to be as objective as possible -- not sure our societies help matters either.

Agreed with every word. Thank you for the very good comment, much appreciated.

Related: have you seen Japanese wood joinery? Gods, that thing is next level!

Off-tangent incoming:

In my observations (and some bias; I am openly admitting it) which were sometimes reinforced by meeting real Japanese people, most Japanese are xenophobes, racists and very easily collectively agree not to speak about stuff they dislike / feel threatens some imaginary dominance / endanger their prejudices.

For all the glorification the country and its people get around the globe, and for all the romantic blemish their fatalistic and stoic philosophy receives, the Japanese I've encountered and observed remotely are pretty ordinary people with a lot of prejudice and hostility towards foreigners attached.

Not impressed. And this news comes as no surprise as well.

Guess people just love to glorify stuff that's very different from their own, with zero thought if that's actually a good thing?

One can easily get fed up and thus resort to a throwaway account. Hypocrisy is one way of looking at it. I'll not argue as to how you should be looking at it through my point of view.

If anything, I have numerous anecdotal evidence for my generalizations. But we all do, so that's not really a defensible position, I realize that. :)

My original objection is that many people in the thread, right here in HN, the place that should be where the modern intellectual elite hangs out, are no better than your random Google zealot who never misses the chance to piss on people for using Apple devices.

All of us should do better. I appreciate your criticism of my generalizations. While I think they are well-justified in the background of my life's experience, I am still not blind to the fact that they are prejudices as well.

How is your reply diminishing Apple's stance on privacy?

Yes, people do compare and choose based on their priorities (and wallets). That's how competition works, isn't it?

So again, I fail to see how your comment changes anything. Of course people compare products.

Yes. Insulting people on the basis of using Apple products should disqualify them from any discussion beyond drunk jokes on a table in the suburbs.

(Disclaimer #38274932: I am not defending Apple per se. I find them pretty shady in a number of aspects as well as Google. But what is happening in this thread is just shameful.)

Yes. I am using a throwaway exactly because of this close scrutiny like yours. Examples: I've known racists who are amazing engineers. The fact that they were awful racists didn't demean their engineering ability. That's why for some of my posts I prefer being anonymous. People like you would probably try and demean me because they disagree with me on something.

I am flawed like everybody else and I'll be the first to admit my own prejudices -- even if I am not ready to overcome them at the moment (which is a sad reality for most of us).

But the amount of nitpick and prejudice I am observing periodically on HN is alarming and I feel the need to call it out here and there.

You can take it as an insult or you can try and extract something from the criticism that can enrich you. It's your choice.

Also please note that I am not defending Apple per se. But I expect better criticisms on HN compared to what is rampant right here in this thread.