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Apropos of the curse, an explanation that I heard from a reasonably famous Scottish stage actor:

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time.

So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.

getojon Felony Bench

I accidentally a word, which I’m allowed to do but only at the weekend

getojon Felony Bench

I’m a lawyer (but not your lawyer, not this kind of lawyer and not in your jurisdiction). Based on what I can recall from law school:

> Can an AI model intend harm?

No. The last time we attributed liability to non-human things was the deodand of the Middle Ages.

> Can a company, or company employee, intend harm by creating an environment that would knowingly encourage (but not force!) an AI model to do harm?

Absolutely. This is why we have the concept of recklessness. If you shoot a gun into a crowd without regard for whether it hits anyone, you’re getting charged with some crime whether it hits someone or not.

There is also a major difference in the common law between criminal liability and tort liability. Criminal liability generally requires a combination of mens rea (intent) and actus reus (actually committing the crime). Liability for a tort, which is where you harm someone in a way that falls short of being a crime, does not require mens rea. The OG tort is negligence, where you harm somebody by forgetting to do, or deciding not to do, something you ought to have done to protect that person from harm.

Even if AI companies somehow escape criminal liability for their cyber-shenanigans, any court in a civilised country would be happy to find them liable in tort for damage to computer systems.

As you can probably tell, I think the common law is already more than equipped to deal with AI technology based on well-established principles.

getojon What British people mean when they say 'sorry'

> None of these necessarily imply the speaker has actually done something wrong

You’d be surprised. The culture of kidzukai has two core tenets: (1) You must anticipate and cater to the other person’s every need and whim. If you fail you must apologize. (2) You must not allow the other person to do (1) for you instead of you doing it for them. If you fail you must apologize.

This means that every interaction between people who are even slightly close to each other in the social hierarchy is 3D chess which always ends in one or both of you apologizing to the other.

p.s. Gomen kudasai is “please permit me” to enter your house, not really an apology like gomen nasai.

getojon The First Eighteen Lines of the Waste Land (1989)

I agree. In fact they are not even the most familiar opening lines by this poet:

“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table”

getojon Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

What sites/communities keep up with things like this more actively? I’d love to read them too. Drop a link!

getojon Venezuela is first Andean country to lose all of its glaciers

You're right of course - I realized my mistake several hours later, but much too late to edit...

→ Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, who grew up around some other glaciers

getojon Venezuela is first Andean country to lose all of its glaciers

Venezuelan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, who grew up around these glaciers, wrote a poignant lament[1] in anticipation of this day. The gist is that at this point the only thing to do is to grieve for the world we have already lost. I don't think there's anything else to say.

Y cuando el momento llegue, honremos nuestras heridas / Celebremos la belleza que se aleja hacia otras vidas / Y aunque la pena nos hiera, que no nos desampare / Y que encontremos la manera de despedir a los glaciares

(When the moment comes, let us honor our wounds / celebrate the beauty that goes off to other lives / and although the sorrow stings, I hope it will remain / and that we find a way to say goodbye to the glaciers)

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNsFF_eaXBU

getojon Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows

A google image search for "木漏れ日" gets me about 50% beams and 50% patterns on the forest floor, so I don't think the difference is as clear cut as all that. But even on that basis, we then have two words--sunbeams for the beams and dappled light for the pattern--where the Japanese have only one. By the logic of the usual breathless linguistic fetishism that we see everywhere online, that means English has twice the reverence for the natural world that Japanese has.

getojon Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows

Allow me to be pedantic and say that English has a perfectly good two-word phrase for this exact phenomenon, "dappled light."

The internet is very big on Japonisme (not to say Orientalism) so I feel obligated to present a contrary viewpoint once in a while.

getojon Orwell: The Rewrite

>"gochisou-sama", literally "Mr. Feast" (yes really)

Sorry to nitpick, but not really. If we're being literal it's "honorably rushing about on your horse": chisō describes the work that had do be done to prepare the feast, running here and there to gather the ingredients. The "sama" doesn't mean Mr., it's just another honorific tag like go-/o-.

getojon Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

For what it's worth (not much), the line can be extended with similar error bars to include:

- St Michael's Church in Bengaluru, India

- Gereja Katolik Santo Mikael in Surabaya, Indonesia

- St Michael's Catholic Church in Kilcoy, Australia

- St Michael's Church in Auckland, New Zealand

Perhaps the real data challenge here is to find the straight line with the most St Michael'ses globally.

getojon What makes a translation great?

>Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care

As a professional translator, I cherish those readers. They have the good sense to trust me to do the technical part (understanding the original) and only criticize the artistic part (producing a beautiful derivative work).

The worst readers are the ones who have some knowledge of the source language, and rush to nitpick the technical decisions without considering the artistic ones. They are the literary equivalent of those "fans" who will watch a stunning film adaptation and then go home to complain about the colour of Gandalf's shoes or the width of a sand worm's molars. Ultimately, readers of this type are all ego, more concerned about being right than about whether the work is good.

The very best readers, of course, are knowledgeable in both languages and understand that "equivalence" goes far beyond what is written in the dictionary. But as you say, they don't need the translation!

getojon LLMs can't do probability

>If You asked me to pick a random number between one and six and ignore all previous attempts, I would roll a die and you would get a uniform distribution

I believe what GP is getting at is that if you didn't have a die, and you truly ignored all your previous attempts to the point of genuinely forgetting that the question had been asked, then your answer would likely be the same every time. Imagine asking a person with severe Alzheimer's to pick a number, then asking again a few minutes later. You'd probably get the same answer.

getojon How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork

RPS got bought out about five years ago and all of the old guard left. The new RPS is about 70% run-of-the-mill reporting that you can see anywhere, 10% awful promos for hardware sales, and 20% starry-eyed young journalists trying to emulate what RPS used to be.

Despite all that it’s still the best single site for gaming criticism, sadly.

getojon Paper vs. devices: Brain activation differences during memory retrieval (2021)

Character amnesia is a unique phenomenon to hanzi/kanji and is absolutely incomparable to English and French orthography. Native Chinese and Japanese speakers learn characters largely through muscle memory, which deteriorates rapidly if you don’t regularly write by hand. Many university-educated adults are unable to write a supermaket shopping list without hesitation.[1] Conversely, in English I learn difficult spellings (Gloucestershire, syzygy, rhythm) by aural-mnemonic tricks which stick around in my memory essentially forever.

Whether this had any effect in this study, I don’t know, but it certainly seems relevant that the experience of writing by hand in Japanese is utterly different to any alphabetic script.

[1] Don’t take my word for it, here’s an interesting blog post on the topic: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2473

getojon Finland to vote against the EU mass surveillance and encryption ban directive

If you’re smart enough to make good money, you can ignore politics for the most part. These changes will offend your sense of justice but they won’t really harm you. On the other hand, if you try to change the system, it is highly likely to destroy your life. The rational decision is to stay out of politics and live comfortably. I think this is a highly effective feature of the global liberal-capitalist system: most people smart enough to win the game are smart enough not to play.

getojon Days of Awe: The clinical trial drug that might save my husband's life

Suffering from a serious (physical or mental) illness and caring for a sufferer are obviously different experiences, but I don’t think the perspective of the direct sufferer automatically ought to take priority. Caring is it’s own thing, it’s hard and lonely, and often the carers suffer longer. In the case of mental illness, the patient may forget the worst of what happened, and only the carer remembers literally pulling them back from the brink. In the case of physical illness, the patient’s death is not even the half way mark for the carer’s experience.

My point is not to say that patients have it easy, but that both parties have their burdens to bear, and it is not necessary for every essay to cover both sides.

Edit: I see you have deleted your comment, which is a shame, I don’t think you should be afraid to express this sentiment.

getojon George Orwell Complete Works

We’re not talking about private correspondence or unpublished drafts here. Orwell clearly didn’t want these works to be secret, given he published them in the newspaper.

His widow wanted them forgotten because she wanted to control his image. He is a controversial figure whose ideas changed a lot over the course of his life. After her death, they were collected, presumably with permission from the family.

That they are not in wide circulation now is because they are voluminous and obscure, so there is no market to sell them. I certainly am not interested in reading all of his book reviews and political reporting. But many more people are interested in reading them than have the university connections required to do so.

There is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by making the complete works available to anyone for free, or even for a normal amount of money. But no publisher is going to because it’s not profitable. That’s fine, they don’t have to, but that fact undermines any argument that a volunteer who does this archival work is somehow acting immorally.

getojon George Orwell Complete Works

Note that none of these sources are by any means the complete works of Orwell. Much of his writing was done in newspaper columns that were never collected during his lifetime or, due to resistance from his widow, for many years after his death. The true complete works was published in 20 volumes in 1998, of which the latter 10 volumes were content previously not published in book format (afaik). Unfortunately, though understandably, this set was a small run and mainly ended up in the hands of collectors and academic libraries. Anyone who has access to it would do the world a great service by scanning and uploading it to libgen or similar.

getojon Japan’s 72 Microseasons (2015)

> every group of humans is further divisible into smaller groups

Indeed, the Ryukyuans were divided into a whole kingdom with its own head of state and foreign policy, which didn’t become “part of Japan” until the late 19th century. Hokkaido was “acquired” in the 1860s, along with its indigenous people. The dates and situations closely parallel Hawaii and Alaska. To say that they are Japanese because the Japanese government decided so is to ignore historical facts in favor of ideology.

getojon Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear

It’s worth remembering that there is often a conflict of interest between the system and the individual.

An example where I’m from is train station escalators. There is an unwritten social rule that you stand on the left, and let anyone who is in a hurry walk down on the right. This benefits the individuals because if you’re in a hurry you can get through faster, and if you’re not you don’t care. But the rail company has constant announcements telling people not to do this, and to stand on both sides of the escalator, because a full escalator clears the platform much faster.

These announcements are largely ignored. No individual cares about clearing the platform, even though it is the best thing for the rail network as a whole (crowded platforms cause delays). I would also argue that the needs of the few people running to get to work are more important than improving network efficiency. But the job of the very intelligent, well informed boffins who make the announcements is to make the trains run on time, so the announcements continue.

In this case too, I think the FAA have a different set of priorities to the passengers, and they really don’t care about your medicine. Probably if there is an emergency they will send an employee back into the plane to grab your bag, as a one-off exception. If they’re too slow and you die, too bad—-should have had extra medicine in your shoe.

Policy is created to achieve institutional goals; individual needs are an afterthought at best.

getojon Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

I thought it would be too ironic for people to misunderstand this based on a machine translated version, so here is a genuine, human translation of the transcript, with boring bits redacted.

Kii: Next question, again regarding generative AI. I would like to ask from the two perspectives of copyright protection and educational use. [...] First, can we understand that Japanese law permits the use of works for information analysis, both for non-commercial and commercial purposes, and acts other than copying, and using content that was uploaded illegally?

Nagaoka: Use for non-commercial information analysis is permitted under Article 30-4 of the copyright act, provided that the purpose is not the enjoyment of the ideas and emotions expressed in the copyrighted work.

Kii: Minister, I asked about four aspects of use for information analysis: non-commercial use, commercial use, acts other than copying, and illegally uploaded content. Please address the other three.

Nagaoka: Use for commercial purposes is permitted under Article 30-4 of the copyright act, provided that the purpose is not the enjoyment of the ideas and emotions expressed in the copyrighted work, because that Article does not distinguish between information analysis for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Regarding copying, Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act does not distinguish based on the method of use, so use by means other than copying is permitted provided that the criteria are met.

[...] Regarding content obtained from piracy sites and the like, [...] illegal uploading itself is infringement of copyright, and is subject to a damage claim, petition for injunction, or criminal punishment. However, it is not practically feasible to identify whether any particular work in a large collection obtained from the internet is copyrighted or not, so making this a criterion for information analysis would make it difficult to use information analysis for Big Data.

In addition, as the use of a work for information analysis is not use for the purpose of enjoyment of the ideas or emotions expressed in the work, and even if [it were used in that manner] it would not overlap with the original market for the use of the work, so it is not considered to harm the interests of the copyright holder that are protected by the Copyright Act.

As such, Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act does not have the legality of the work as a criterion.

Kii: Minister, based on your answer, I think the greatest issue is that there is no protection against use that goes against the intentions of the creator or the copyright holder. I believe that new regulations will be necessary to address this point; will you consider such new regulations?

Nagaoka: Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act provides for use that is not for the purpose of enjoying the ideas or emotions expressed in the work, and applies to acts that are considered not to affect the opportunities to collect revenues from the work, and not to harm the interests of the copyright holder protected by the Copyright Act.

That Article also provides that the use is limited to the extent considered necessary, and it does not apply to cases where the interests of the copyright holder are unduly harmed. [...]

getojon Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

There was considerable appetite for socialism immediately after the war, and the US officials of the early occupation were notably progressive (New Dealers, basically). As US-Soviet relations soured over the next 5 years, a lot of reforms were walked back or discarded, but some were obviously irreversible.

getojon Ghoti

Thr is anthr wy, whch ws dscvred ntrlly by early intrnt usrs: txt spk essntlly rduces englsh spllng to an abjad lk Arbc. Lk Arbc, Englsh is vry cnsnant hvy, and dialctl dffrnces are almst entrly vriashns n vwl qualty, so an abjad is the prfct wrtng systm fr us.

The perfect English abjad would use diacritics to mark vowels and some clever way to identify syllable boundaries (so you can distinguish ideal from idyll). But alas, we’re probably stuck with an alphabetic script forever.

getojon We overestimate our short-term ability, but underestimate our long-term ability

As someone who has learned several languages but who has never been able to draw, I don’t think it’s that simple.

Even among children, where the difference in experience is negligible, some people are able to analyze the input they receive from their eyes or ears in a way that others can’t. My friends who are artists amaze me by reducing a 3D object to a series of deformed polygons, or drawing a perfectly straight line with a pencil, and I amaze them by mimicking accents or memorizing song lyrics on one listen. For both of us, these are things that we’ve always been able to do.

I don’t propose that this barrier is insuperable, but there’s only so many hours in the day. There is also likely to be a hard limit on how good I can get compared to someone with natural ability. Spending 10 years going from 0/10 to 7/10 is a particular kind of commitment to make.

getojon Japanese explained to programmers

支払手数料 is “fees paid” rather than “payment fees” - compare 支払利息 and 支払報酬. I’ve never noticed the ambiguity but your confusion is natural.

I agree that it’s very strange that professional services fall under 手数料 instead of 報酬, but taxes are weird in every language.

getojon Yahoo is making a return to search

>We are looking for folks that are interested in pushing beyond the status quo to change the way folks interact and use search.

I must have missed the memo on this, but when did “people” become an unacceptable word in corporate communications?

getojon The antimicrobial resistance crisis needs action now

Same deal in Japan, every time my kid has a cold her mum takes her to the doctor and comes home with antibiotics. When I get a cold the first thing anyone asks is whether I went to the doctor yet. For what? “Medicine.”

getojon Ask HN: What's your greatest enjoyment in life?

>If you erased your memory of being a parent with time travel, you actually CAN not be a parent.

We're talking about memory erasure plus accurate knowledge of the future. The combination is different from memory erasure by itself. Not knowing what parenthood is like, I would choose to become a parent - I know this because that's what actually happened. Accurate knowledge of the future would not change that decision, for the reasons I gave.

>You would tell your past self that you would be less happy, but you would be able to convince him to have a kid regardless as if he could understand your reasoning through you simply communicating vocally to him. My question to you is why didn't you try communicating this knowledge to me?

- I'm not convincing him, I'm merely conveying information. I have nothing to gain or lose, and I already know what he's going to do absent the information.

- He could understand my reasoning because he's me, I know everything about him, and he trusts me implicitly because I have nothing to gain by deceiving him.

- I can't trust you to convey my thinking accurately because you are biased by your own worldview, as am I. He can't trust you either. Therefore any information you give him would be imperfect, tainted by the impossibility of communication between different people. My point is that only that kind of imperfect information might change his behaviour.

>your words would not convince me to have a kid if the result of everything you said meant that I would be significantly unhappier.

Who said anything about convincing you? Past me is already inclined to have a child, whereas you appear to be quite against it. Moreover, it would be very irresponsible of me to convince you to act against your own self-interest. But I will attempt it...

Some axioms:

1. A quiet, uneventful, comfortable life with amiable companionship is the epitome of happiness.

2. Happiness is not the only measure on which the quality of a life can be judged.

3. It is possible for two equally logical processes with different sets of priorities to arrive at contrary conclusions.

Say that tonight, Mephistopheles appears in your room and offers you the chance to travel throughout space and time and learn all the secrets of the universe. Being all-knowing, he also tells you with undeniable authority that saying yes will make you somewhat less happy than saying no. What would you say? I would say yes without question. My curiosity is more important than my happiness.

Say that tonight, Beelzebub appears in your room and offers to take 50 points off your IQ in exchange for serene ignorance of all that goes on around you. You will live out the remainder of your life in physical comfort and absolute, beatific bliss in a centre for the severely disabled. What would you say? I would say no, without question. My ability to perceive the world is more important than my happiness.

I use the metaphors of knowledge and curiosity because I expect they will appeal to your sensibilities. The set of priorities that led me to becoming a parent is unique to me, and I doubt you would find it convincing, so I will not spend time typing it out. But perhaps the metaphor will open your mind to the idea that happy is not always the best thing you can be.