You also believe that AI will replace mathematicians?

Best comment here

You know that tax money is taken from people who could buy art with it? Or, maybe buy food and other things that they need even more than art at the moment.

In a society with a progressive tax system these things are overwhelmingly paid for by people who have vastly more money than they need to survive. Taxation when done correctly is a good thing.

What about SimpleX? Is it good? Did somebody try it?

It's basically a replacement for SMS, not anything near what Discord does.

Nice post, but the flashy thing on the side is pretty distracting. I liked the tuples and maybes.

Not distracting at all, it feels nostalgic to me. Id rather have these flashy things than a million popups and registration forms following you around, which is basically the modern web. I hate it so much. This site is pure balsam for my soul.

Both nostalgic and distracting for me.

At my university (Charles University in Prague), we had oral exams for 200+ people (spread over many different sessions).

> spread over many different sessions

this is also known as 'logistical nightmare', but yeah it's the only reasonable way if you want to avoid being questioned by robots.

Ah yes, the logistical nightmare any hair salon or nail studio handles just fine.

these shops do nothing but 'exams'. no teaching, no research, no papers, no students. comparison is valid for ~2 weeks in a year, maybe.

Impressive!

I think the most I experienced at the physics department in Aarhus was 70ish students. 200 sounds like a big undertaking.

However, ads are also the reason why many services on the Internet are free. So maybe they are not completely bad.

HN complains about any monetization strategy including recurring payments, yet complains if the company revenue is low. Almost all of the internet is paid by ads, users almost never pays. Company pays, but then the company is paying the money that they directly or indirectly earned through ads.

Recurring payments are fine for services that have a recurring cost, which is often not the case.

How do you feel about news subscriptions?

Development cost is recurring cost.

Great, then let me buy a specific version as a single purchase.

Would you be fine if that version is affected by botnet in the future, or if the documentation is not updated for newer windows version unless you pay.

And would you be willing to pay $200 one time or $10/month(say assume the average subscription time for users is 2 years), so to recoup the amount they need to increase the cost a lot.

There is a lot of software sold as a single-time purchase for a reasonable price, so it’s certainly possible to make it work.

Most ad-supported things also should not exist.

Although Stack Overflow, terrible as it is, is not one of those.

HN is ad supported (in that it's marketing for ycombinator) should it not exist?

It’s not free you’re just paying with your attention which is the most valuable and scarce resource you have. Its value is convertible into money, it’s just not obvious from the user’s perspective how. From SV’s perspective is crystal clear. Every moment your mind is focused on an ad is a moment it’s not focused on something more important to your life. Some people don’t value their time or attention and Silicon Valley is happy to agree.

Your attention is convertible into money through showing you which things you should spend money on. You can also convert your own attention into your own money by not spending money on those things.

At least it was originally like that. Nowadays political propaganda is also massive. The monetary value to Russia or Israel, of the majority of the USA supporting their side of their war, is immense.

Which thing you should spend money/attention/energy on is the primary task you have at any given moment of your life. It’s maybe the one decision that is not appropriate to outsource. Consider fine, but dictate no. And if you don’t find the next most important investment in your life by pull, not push, you’re lost. Which is okay but when I’m lost I’ll take my inspiration from somewhere other than, anywhere actually other than, Madison Ave. Or anyone’s political agenda for that matter. Thanks but no thanks.

I don't think it is as clear with the Russian word for market (торг) being derived from the name of the Finnish city, because related words (trh in Czech, targ in Polish...) (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/t...) are used in most Slavic languages, so this origin explanation feels a bit strange.

The other way around, the city of Turku was named after the word for marketplace, "tǔrgǔ". The word's origin has been traced to the Novgorod area.

Read it again:

> The Finnish city of Turku [...] derives its name from [...]

Wikipedia:

> Elbakyan was in conflict with the liberal, pro-Western wing of the Russian scientific community.[8] According to her interview, she was attacked on the Internet by 'science popularizers' who supported liberal views that led to the shutdown of Sci-Hub in Russia in 2017 for a few days.[59] In particular, Elbakyan was strongly critical of the former Dynasty Foundation (shut down in 2015) and its associated figures. She believes that the foundation was politicized, tied to Russia's liberal opposition, and fit the legal definition of a "foreign agent".

> She has also done work on religion,[57] and has argued that Stalin was a god of science, and an incarnation both of the god Thoth and the Christian God.[58]

Idk but this sounds so sus that I don't believe her with anything. Arguing that Stalin was good is very similar to arguing that Hitler was.

> She has also done work on religion,[57] and has argued that Stalin was a god of science, and an incarnation both of the god Thoth and the Christian God.

I took the time to follow the link and read her very short essay on Stalin the God and it's very clearly parody and an attempt at absurdist humor. Russians and Kazakhs can do dry/straightfaced humor as well as the Brits.

Misrepresenting the essay as her honest beliefs is like arguing Monty Python really cannot tell a dead parrot from a live one.

(Shrug) If her support for Stalin and Russkiy Mir in general is parody, she fooled me.

Elbakyan comes across as ten pounds of crazy in a five-pound bag, but that doesn't mean she isn't doing awesome, vital work.

(Read until the end, I'm merely commenting on the Stalin God thing, I do agree some things are weird).

I just read it, and the excerpts, the random images she chooses to include in it, the straightfaced giant leaps in logic (Thoth was the Egyptian god of knowledge, the Christian god came from the Middle East, therefore they -- and Stalin -- are one and the same), all reek of something that could have been posted in Something Awful.

I mean, come on:

> Hence Stalin was not just an ancient pagan god - but he was that God christians believe in. In a critical moment for the country and for the whole humanity he came down to Earth, wearing a cool mustache avatar, and restored the order: he revived economics and created the powerful science. He created a communist paradise for righteous people, while bad people were sent to GULAG. He won the war against the evil forces of Hitler, and even restored Israel, as he promised to do long time ago.

"Wearing a cool mustache avatar"? You really believe she wrote this in earnest?

Russians have a warped sense of humor. Though I suppose in this day and age, it's impossible to tell when someone is being sarcastic on the Internet ;) I know I can't anymore!

Edit: I do admit her subjects of interest are all over the place though. I'll grant you that!

Having heard her before, I can assure you she's not sarcastic. This completely fits her character of a pure, devoted paladin of a totalitarian imperialistic communist (heh...) religion of her own making, with a bizarrely self-contradicting pantheon in her head. Putting it bluntly, she's batshit insane. Which is probably the only kind of person that can be good at this sort of work.