Capitalism.
Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
131–140 of 146 posts
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read the article. I see how much published work on the problem is mentioned, and where is it published. In this case, not much. If a mathematical problem is really hard, and really important, of the type to reasonably qualify as a "25 year old problem", you will see a lot of partial results, many different approaches, connections to other ares of mathematics, a lot of work by many people. Nothing like that happened…
It's an educated guess, which is fair, but it came off as a matter of fact in the way you articulated your claim
What I said is that "very few people cared" is a better description than a "25 year old problem". It is better because it better aligns with the facts presented in the Wired article above and other similar sources, due to reasons above. Nothing here is a guess.
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's formal. It's not insulting. It can be both. Many do consider it insulting.
It can be both. Many do consider it insulting. Personally insulting, or are these people who feel insulted for other people? The reason I ask is that the women I know who use this convention are not shrinking violets. This is not being imposed upon them by some male-dominated relationship. They are all strong-willed individuals. One is a C-level at a global company.
I know more than one person who would take it very, very personally.
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true of any prehistoric invention. Same goes for the wheel, the flint axe, the spear, and the bow + arrow.
All of these were probably also invented independently by multiple people, because whenever one human culture has made first contact with another human culture, they typically have many of these things already. For example, the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, one of the last uncontacted peoples in the world, have bows and arrows. Also, they tend to use those bows to shoot arrows at everyone who attempts to appr…
The invention of the bow predates mans immigration from Africa so isolated tribates having access to it doesnt mean that they invented it independently. And fire is even older.
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be both. Many do consider it insulting. Personally insulting, or are these people who feel insulted for other people? The reason I ask is that the women I know who use this convention are not shrinking violets. This is not being imposed upon them by some male-dominated relationship. They are all strong-willed individuals. One is a C-level at a global company.
I know more than one person who would take it very, very personally.
I’m not sure I understand. What kind of a person is offended by how someone else chooses to write their name?
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of brainpower in that room is incredible. Now think about it this way: probably half of what was available at the time got lost somehow. Makes you wonder where we'd be technologically if we had not systematically repressed one half of the possible scientists. On the positive side: probably a lot of that research got done anyway, with some guy taking credit for it.
It's way more than half. All those people are still white.
If you want to go down that route - which is definitely your right - you could re-shoot a similar picture today and it probably would not show a major shift in demographics. Sad but true.
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know more than one person who would take it very, very personally.
I’m not sure I understand. What kind of a person is offended by how someone else chooses to write their name?
That's the whole point. Their name is /not/ "Mrs. [husband's first and last name]"
There are definitely people I know that would be okay with being addressed this way. There are many I also know who have expressed that this makes them feel less like an individual human and more like an accessory to their husband.
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know more than one person who would take it very, very personally.
I’m not sure I understand. What kind of a person is offended by how someone else chooses to write their name?
It's not about how. I don't think anyone would mind an honest spelling mistake for example. The issue is what you're saying about them. If you call them by their partner's name it may mean you either don't care about them more than "they belong to Mr X" or that person's life is defined by the existence of their partner. Those kind of views are decades old and some people will actively fight them.
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#139Do we also get to include inventions where the inventor is no longer known - such as the wheel?
i reinvent the wheel every day
Re: Ask HN: Famous anonymous inventions other than Bitcoin?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 1911 Solvay Conference photo illustrates just how exceptional a woman scientist was then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference she's there at the table with Henri Poincaré.
The amount of brainpower in that room is incredible. Now think about it this way: probably half of what was available at the time got lost somehow. Makes you wonder where we'd be technologically if we had not systematically repressed one half of the possible scientists. On the positive side: probably a lot of that research got done anyway, with some guy taking credit for it.
I may be going on a limb here, but I have a sense of the same broken logic here as the ubiquitous argument of lost revenue[1].
To be clear, I don't argue the point of suppression and cultural standards affecting the scientific (or, not specifically, any other) thought, but using such simplistic way to quantify that effect.