Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 391 posts

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#171

Post by cindyllm »

thisislife2 wrote: post #145
NotGMan wrote: post #35

>> Witnessing such scorched-earth containment makes the modern definition of nuclear power as the ‘cleanest energy’ completely incomprehensible to me. It's called bad governing. To connect nuclear "not clean" with such bad governing is bit much.

I don't know about "bad governing". It sounds more like a rigorous containment policy when nuclear technology was at its infancy in China. ( Regulations are written in the blood of your predecessors - https://old.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/ud3lt4/lpt_osh... ). It is also about preventing accident leakage of information and preserving secrecy. For e.g. In the 1970s, India learnt that Pakistan was working to cre…

[dead]

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#172

Post by the_af »

o10449366 wrote: post #144
Aboutplants wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tip, I’d rather read slightly bad grammar due to simple translation than AI assisted interpretation of what you are wanting to say.call me old fashioned I guess

Why? Would a incorrect but literal translation be closer or further from what the author is trying to communicate? I've been seeing this take on HN a lot recently, but when it comes to translation current AI is far, far superior to what we had previously with Google Translate, etc. If the substack was written in broken English there's no way it would even be appearing on the front page here, even less so if it was wr…

An incorrect but more authentic translation would seem more real, like an human earnestly trying to tell a story. We would accept the imperfections and have a subjective feeling of more authenticity.

Of course, even this can be faked, sadly.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#173

Post by the_af »

o10449366 wrote: post #148
xena wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather read something in "bad English" than laundered through generative artificial intelligence tools.

Highly doubt this. Have you read a translated book? Are you looking for literal translations or a translation from someone who's an expert in both languages and makes subjective adjustments based on their experience?

No, I agree with the other commenter. I'd rather read broken English than the fake tone AI injects on everything (and the suspicion of fabrications, too).

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#174

Post by o10449366 »

the_af wrote: post #172
o10449366 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Would a incorrect but literal translation be closer or further from what the author is trying to communicate? I've been seeing this take on HN a lot recently, but when it comes to translation current AI is far, far superior to what we had previously with Google Translate, etc. If the substack was written in broken English there's no way it would even be appearing on the front page here, even less so if it was wr…

An incorrect but more authentic translation would seem more real, like an human earnestly trying to tell a story. We would accept the imperfections and have a subjective feeling of more authenticity. Of course, even this can be faked, sadly.

When the translation differs so much from what the author is trying to say in their native language, it loses its earnestness.

That's why translation is a job in the first place and you don't see publishers running whole books through Google translate. No one, least the authors, would accept that.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#175

Post by NonHyloMorph »

martin-t wrote: post #37
tomcam wrote: post #10

My father-in-law worked there as a programmer during the Cultural Revolution. There were always guards on the other side of the (locked) office door. Sometimes they’d shoot at random things to remind the nerds just who was in charge. When I worked at Microsoft the biggest complaints were parking and the variety of subsidized foods at the cafeteria.

While I absolutely agree that in the current state of things most western people are so well off they can't even imagine what it means to actually be oppressed and suffer, I can't help but notice that the current state of things can quickly change and that we're in a constant yet barely visible struggle with forces that want to bring about just that kind of oppression here and that we're slowly losing it. You might t…

I have come to that conclusion as well. Curious if there is some political or cultural theorisation efforts out there on this?

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#176

Post by amdivia »

the_af wrote: post #169
saltwatercowboy wrote: post #159

Something about this feels off. Anyone else?

It feels off to me as well. It's the kind of unverifiable story that we would like to believe, but there's almost zero way of having independent confirmation. The photos could be from anywhere. The author seems likeable and writes an interesting story, but who knows how much of it is true. The story seems almost tailored to cater to HN, with secret projects, nuclear power, China, and secrecy.

Feels AI-ish as well, and OP used em-dashes in some of their replies. But it could be attributed to a language barrier of sorts requiring the use of LLMs to communicate

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#177

Post by jdietrich »

crazygringo wrote: post #109
Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #2

Hi HN, OP here. I grew up in "Factory 404," a secret nuclear industrial city in the Gobi Desert that officially didn't exist on public maps. This is a memoir about my childhood there. It was a surreal place: we had elite scientists living next to laborers, a zoo in the middle of the desert, and distinct "communist" welfare, all hidden behind a classified code. This is Part 1 of the story. I'm happy to answer any ques…

> 404 is a classified code for a nuclear industrial base. Can you expand? A code under what system? What were some other code numbers and what (unclassified) things did they refer to? Did each code refer to a specific city or specific factory? Or were all cities/factories dedicated to a certain type of industry or military objective classified under the same code? Why did they teach you this code number growing up? I…

Most things in the Chinese military system are numbered rather than named. Military units are numbered twice - a public cover designator and a private true unit designator, originally four and later five digits. Factories got a three digit number - 296 for the small arms factory in Jiangshe, 816 for the uranium enrichment plant in Fuling and so on. Everyone in and around Factory 404 would have known it as such, but the mere existence of Factory 404 was a state secret.

The existence of such a large and conspicuous secret might seem bizarre to the post-cold-war mind, but it was fairly common in the West too. For example, the British Telecom Tower in central London stands at 189 metres tall and had a revolving restaurant that was open to the public, but was also a designated site under the Official Secrets Act.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#178

Post by marcellus23 »

yorwba wrote: post #163
marcellus23 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: nevermind I don't know if those coordinates are correct. They seem to be the exact coordinates of Jiayuguan City [0], but then the article also says that the 404 site is located "100 km west of Jiayuguan City," with living areas later relocated to Jiayuguan. So I think the article authors just put the Jiayuguan coords there. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiayuguan_City

40°10′49″N 97°16′36″E is not exactly 39°46′24″N 98°17′18″E. Did you maybe copy the wrong coordinates? Anyways, have an OpenStreetMap link https://www.openstreetmap.org/?#map=11/40.1243/97.3375

You’re right, I think my confusion was that they’re both labeled Kiayukwan in Apple Maps.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#179

Post by qingcharles »

Were there any birth defects from the radiation? I'm still haunted by a BBC report I saw when I was a kid of residents who lived near some Chinese nuclear test facility and it showed the unbelievable birth defects their children were suffering.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#180

Post by [deleted] »

the_af wrote: post #169
saltwatercowboy wrote: post #159

Something about this feels off. Anyone else?

It feels off to me as well. It's the kind of unverifiable story that we would like to believe, but there's almost zero way of having independent confirmation. The photos could be from anywhere. The author seems likeable and writes an interesting story, but who knows how much of it is true. The story seems almost tailored to cater to HN, with secret projects, nuclear power, China, and secrecy.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN