rayval

Yes it is my experience in the US -- but not across the world.

Last year, I was in visiting in Korea and needed to see a doctor. I randomly picked a name out of the phone book and asked my Korean-speaking friend to call and make an appointment. They said no appointment needed, just walk in. So I did.

The doctor saw me within 5 minutes of arrival. He did a physical exam, listened to my lungs, did a simple blood test and gave me a prescription. He then asked if I had insurance, to which I said No.

So he said: "I'm sorry I wlll have to charge you." I went out to the front desk and got the bill. It was the equivalent of $12. In the US it would be $300 before insurance, and $50 after -- not counting the lab cost, which would be separately billed. And all this would take weeks or months to schedule.

I went to a Korean pharmacy with a prescription for 30 days supply of multiple medicines, which in the US costs me $200 with insurance. In Korea, the cost was $50 without any insurance. I had a similar experience in Portugal years back.

People in the US don't realize how screwed up the healthcare system is here. And seem powerless to change things.

CPAP for me was life-changing.

I had sleep apnea when I was young, skinny and sporty. Then I got old, fat and sedentary and of course it got worse. I was falling asleep while driving.

I tried a CPAP machine and could not stand it for more than 10 minutes. However my apnea got worse so that I actually did not want to fall sleep because I did not want to wake up choking and gasping for breath. Literally a nightmare.

So I forced myself to stick with the CPAP the whole night through and woke up refreshed and alert. I cannot live without it.

Just to give additional context, the full passage I was trying to translate was a New Year's greeting as follows:

里祝愿在新的2023年风调雨顺， 四季平安， 五福临门， 六六大顺， 十全十美， 万事如意， 好运连绵， 兔年吉祥

This passage has some nuance and wordplay, due to the stylistic device of starting each of the key phrases with a character that can represent a number: 四 (four), 五 (five), 六 (six), 十 (ten) and 万 (ten thousand). These characters also have meaning as words within each phrase. For example, 十 can convey perfection, in addition to the numerical quantity.

So here is Google's lumbering and broken translation attempt:

"Wishing you good luck in the new year of 2023, safe all year, Five Blessings, Liuliu Dashun, perfect, May all go well with you, good luck Auspicious Year of the Rabbit"

Baidu does a better job (including handling the problematic 六六大顺 phrase:

"I wish the new year 2023 a good year, Four seasons are safe, Five blessings are at the door, Everything goes smoothly, perfect, Everything goes well, Good luck, Auspicious Year of the Rabbit"

Neither of these is as good as the result from ChatGPT:

"I wish you a smooth wind and rain in the new year of 2023, peaceful seasons, five blessings at your doorstep, everything going smoothly, perfection in all things, everything going according to your wishes, continuous good luck, and a lucky Year of the Rabbit"

ChatGPT is not perfect. I think the phrase 四季平安 is better translated as "four seasons of peace" (this one came from the translator from Korean company Naver).

Correct. Eight is by far the most common lucky number in Chinese, but six is also lucky. But I think it has to be repeated multiple times. Apparently the number 9 is also lucky.

Yes, one would think. However, if it were a matter of specific idioms, the other translation programs would capture this (Google, Bing, Baidu or Naver). But, for some reason, none of the others did. I think perhaps it is not that common an idiom. Or perhaps ChatGPT was just lucky.

I was surprised to find ChatGPT does a better job of translating than Google translate, at least for one difficult task I needed to get done.

I have been a Google Translate user for more than a decade. I use it a dozen or more times a day for multiple languages. It is a very useful tool.

I recently had to translate a passage that included this phrase: 六六大顺

Google Translate gave me: Liuliu Dashun (basically no translation, just a transliteration or romanization)

Bing Translator: Six Six Dashun (a little bit better because 六 does mean six in some contexts.

Baidu: Liu Liu (basically no translation)

Naver: Six or Six Dashun (partial translation, plus added an incorrect particle)

Only ChatGPT gave the correct answer: "Everything going smoothly"

There is a cultural context that is essential to the translation, which apparently only ChatGPT has. It turns out that the number 6 is a lucky number in Chinese. It has the meaning of being “auspicious”. In Chinese culture, there is an idiom called “六六大顺 (liù liù dà shùn)”, which means “Everything comes in a smooth way” or more naturally "Everything going smoothly".

BTW, after seeing the ChatGTP results, I found this contextual info using Google search, in a website http://www.ichineselearning.com

It is ironic that Google search "knows" (helps you find) the cultural context but Google Translate apparently does not leverage this info.

Reading the bureaucratese in the announcement, it seems he has reinvented Twitter's social policy mechanisms, except written in a lead-footed corporate HR manner.

Of interest to HN audience: "The unit was started by young university-educated Ukrainians who had been part of the 2014 Maidan uprising and volunteered to use their technical skills in the resistance against the first Russian invasion in Crimea and the Donbas region. Its founder, Volodymyr Kochetkov-Sukach, was an investment banker who was killed in action in 2015 in Donbas – a reminder of the high risks involved. The Russians can latch on to the drone’s electronic signature and quickly strike with mortars, so the Aerorozvidka teams have to launch and run.

....

In its early days, the unit used commercial surveillance drones, but its team of engineers, software designers and drone enthusiasts later developed their own designs."

"Enterprise grade" = "you can do better, but you can't pay more"

(with regard to systems from Oracle and SAP)

I just found this HN thread from 5 years ago. Some good info about other famous guitarists who hacked their guitars.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9582440

Regardless, I found your description of design process & workflow extremely illuminating (no pun intended). Have not seen this succinct and informative descrption anywhere else.

The "free media" given to Trump throughout the election process has been estimated at $3B, just in the primary season alone.

See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-has-gotten-nearly-3-b...

Looking at Reykjavik, Taipei, Lisbon, Santiago de Chile and Valencia (Spain). In addition to well-known places like Sydney, Copenhagen, Amsterdam.

Cool plot line, I'd go see that movie.

A related scenario, one that theoretically could happen today, is hacking into commercial airliners auto-pilot systems, and directing dozens of flights onto a target.

Set aside the fantasy movie plot angle, how realistic is this today? Is it any more or less plausible than the millions of cars scenario? If people are truly concerned about the car scenario, shouldn't they be worrying about the aircraft scenario?

Hilary Putnam had many achievements in the field of philosophy. Here's some context about his concept of "brain in a vat"[1], in his 1981 book, "Reason, Truth and History".

The brain-in-a-vat concept was famously used in the The Matrix films.[2]

A summary from Philosophy Index: "The example supposes that a mad scientist has removed your brain, and placed it into a vat of liquid to keep it alive and active. The scientist has also connected your brain to a powerful computer, which sends neurological signals to the brain in the way the brain normally receives them. Thus, the computer is able to send your brain data to fool you into believing that you are still walking around in your body."

"The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment is generally used to ask the question: how do you know that you are not a brain in a vat? The question mirrors an early one from Descartes, which asks how you are to know that there is not an evil demon feeding false information to your senses. The essential conclusion is that, from the perspective of the brain itself, it is impossible to tell whether it is a brain in a vat or a brain in a skull." [1][3]

___________

Links: [1] http://www.philosophy-index.com/putnam/brain-vat/ [2] http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html [3] https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20i...

I recall that he said something like: "I don't play a lot of notes. I just try to play the right ones".

I think that if a guitarist plays a lot of notes real fast, it often sounds like he or she is rapidly searching for the right one. Instead, BB played the right note at the right time -- with the right lead-in (slide up or bend).

http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2015/bb-king-gives-us-a-guitar-l...

Chinese people are amazed when they find a foreigner speaking their language. In part because they like to see themselves as speaking the world's hardest language. But also because there are not a lot of people who are able to learn and speak this, even though China is going to be the world's largest economy shortly.

I have a fond memory of Mike, with his cheery wicked smile, on a sunny afternoon riding in an open convertible, charging through traffic-clogged streets in Boston, heading over to the Bitstream offices, blasting powerful classical music (unfamiliar to me, who only knew blues and rock) on a crystal-clear sound system, which reverberated off the office buildings downtown, while Mike punctuated the music with sharp wit, deftly negotiating near-collisions at high speed.

For a poignant account of his later years, and his struggle with Alzheimers, see the blog written by his ex-wife and steady friend, Sybil Masquelier. The entry "The Farewell Tour" describes their final trip to New York in 2011 to receive the Type Designers Club lifetime achievement award.

http://mikeparkerfontgod.blogspot.com/

Yes, it is also an indicator to me that if I am a RackSpace customer, and other issues come up (could be patents, could be government surveillance, or something else) that will affect me as a developer, Rackspace is more likely to be on my side than against me.

Obviously, I expect Rackspace to pursue its own business self-interest, but often there are multiple ways to do that, and not all of them are win-win for both the hosting company and for its customers.

Looks like that got fixed by sysop gods. Thanks!

Edited title for length, because original title got truncated in a confusing fashion.

Original title: "25-GPU cluster cracks every standard Windows password in <6 hours"

Yes, it's possible that a simulation would use a non-uniform lattice-like data structure. Maybe something like a quad-tree (with appropriate dimensionality) where the granularity of the structure varies according to the local density of data.

Granted, such a data structure would need to be expressed in a coordinate system, which itself defines a grid or matrix. But can't coordinate systems use non-uniform representations? (analogous to floating-point)

Am neither physicist nor CS person, so not sure all of this holds together, just wondering.

Agree. The link title is not the same as the original article title, so why not add a date as well?

I think he is using quotemarks to highlight the revised wording, and that these are not intended for final consumption.

Yammer is Microsoft's Instagram, and not just because of the same price tag.

As did Facebook, Microsoft is buying market traction, user engagement, brand equity, UX chops, and vision.

Pragmatically speaking, the new gGTLDs are likely to fail. So why not avoid that expensive bullet?

Aside: Has anyone ever run across a real functioning site that uses the .travel suffix? That is a precursor gTLD that went live in 2006. Presumably there are a lot more people interested in travel than there are in javascript.

"Plan to throw one away."

That was Fred Brooks, not Richard Brooks.

In one of the best books of all time on the subject of software: The Mythical Man-Month.

I agree the presentation is ineffective. On my read, anyway.

There is a logical sequence to the pitch but that is not reflected in the visual structure. The top horizontal menu keeps the "Problem" disjoint from the "Solution". The precursor to this pitch deck was the DressRush pitch (http://investors.dressrush.com/), which does a better job at showing the logical sequence of a pitch, from Intro to Team to Problem to Solution.

But even DressRush is missing a key mechanism: a simple Next arrow that cycles you through all the content. After all, we are only talking about 10 screens or so. There should be no need for fancy navigational mechanisms that get in the way.

Some of the screens get truncated at the bottom but show you an arrow on the right side. The user is torn between scrolling down or scrolling right. (Violating the UX mantra: "Don't make me think").

It almost seems like the Piccsy pitch is trying to get the user to meander aimlessly through the content. And in that respect it is successful. I went through the path I thought they wanted me to follow, but then when I skipped back I found I had missed some important charts and data.

The visual appearance is over-designed and over-fontified (a made-up word) at the expense of readability. Perhaps because it is at the end of a long day for me, but at this hour I don't want to puzzle out coy infographic-style design when looking for basic numbers. The journey is not the reward.

Regarding Google my understanding is that Java is only used in a few areas, and is far from the majority of their portfolio. Most their production systems are C++, while a lot of offline processing is Python. There is even a smattering of .NET (in Orkut). I think Java was used in Wave, but that is now defunct. Likely a few of these systems are being migrated to Go.

Likewise with Amazon. My understanding, from chatting with some Amazon engineers at a conference, is that they have a pretty heterogeneous portfolio, even including some Perl and Oracle PL/SQL.

Others who are better informed, please correct.

That's why I said it was a pocket of low-priced housing.