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

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

#381

Post by cwmoore »

embedding-shape wrote: post #52
cwmoore wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“inhumane prisons” is as redundant as “ink pen”

Not every implementation of "prisons" in the world is about payback or keeping harmful people out of society, some places focuses on rehabilitation, and more often than not, those prisons are not inhumane at all, because that would defeat the very point of the prison. Maybe if you consider "Can't walk wherever I want" as inhumane, all of them are, but there is definitely a difference between a prison in Rwanda vs one…

USA here.

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

#382

Post by thomassmith65 »

the_af wrote: post #379
thomassmith65 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a mystifying comment. Cheers, though.

What is mystifying about it?

With respect, you seem immediately to have started out on the war path, and since then have been arguing with some imagined opponent (is he modeled on the 'love it or leave it, Tommy' character in Born on the Fourth of July?).

Responding to your criticisms today - and hopefully you're just having an off day today - is a dull task. They show little engagement, aside from the fixation with small phrases like 'useful idiot', with what I actually write.

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

#383

Post by the_af »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #382
the_af wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is mystifying about it?

With respect, you seem immediately to have started out on the war path, and since then have been arguing with some imagined opponent (is he modeled on the 'love it or leave it, Tommy' character in Born on the Fourth of July?). Responding to your criticisms today - and hopefully you're just having an off day today - is a dull task. They show little engagement, aside from the fixation with small phrases like 'useful id…

I wouldn't say "on the war path", but specifically about your dismissal of other narratives than the dominant one. I engaged you after I read more replies by you that confirmed my suspicions about your initial question.

It's not just about the term "useful idiot"; if you're being honest you'll admit you stated more things, including a bizarre strawman about people arguing "China is freer than the US". Do you deny this?

In another comment I went into more detail, but I guess if you're comfortable deflecting and claiming "you can't be bothered" that's ok.

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

#384

Post by seanmcdirmid »

the_af wrote: post #366
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, the US perspective is pretty dominate in the US. But still, I never went through a protest that ended in a massacre before, I never had to apply for travel permits to leave my town, nor did I need an exit permit to travel abroad. My first trip to China was in 1999 and things were pretty trippy even that late in their development. The US...what sort of stories do you get told? Are they experiences that…

> But still, I never went through a protest that ended in a massacre before Yet these happened in the US. Bizarre and secret government projects also happened. Executions also happened. That you didn't witness them doesn't mean much. I'm sure most Gen X Chinese, as you call them, had pretty uneventful lives without any massacres either. I do think this is a case of laser-focusing on those who had more "interesting" l…

> Yet these happened in the US. Bizarre and secret government projects also happened. Executions also happened.

Are you confusing GenX with Baby Boomers?

> I'm sure most Gen X Chinese, as you call them, had pretty uneventful lives without any massacres either.

Most? Maybe, I've never met one that hasn't though. So maybe the selection of people I meet is biased?

> It does reinforce the narrative that China = bad, US = good (though this is harder to believe in the Trump era).

Something that was true pre-1995 hardly says anything about China today. Stop reading into supposed western bias where there is none. You would never compare China to North Korea today, but 30 years ago there were some remaining resemblances that quickly dissipated as China hit 2000.

> plus every HN reader "knows" this is life in China, they are authoritarian, etc etc.

Again, you are just projecting some sort of insecurity with this statement.

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

#385

Post by saltwatercowboy »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #286
saltwatercowboy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sells a storytelling course... perhaps this is meant to be a 'gotcha' where he reveals the con after the fact? My guess is there are people reading this who know something isn't quite right.

And how did you know I sold storytelling course before, did I mention it somewhere?

You mention it on your Wordpress.

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

#386

Post by swe_dima »

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe wrote: post #349
swe_dima wrote: post #27

My grandfather, who is a nuclear scientist, and my mom also come from a small closed-off city in Siberia (Russia). Visiting my grandparents I remember we had to go through a sort of border control to get there. My mom told stories of how the government would change the asphalt every year in that city to cover the nuclear dust.

Interesting. Though I had heard that in vety cold climate (Siberia in that case) replacing the road asphalt every year is common because of the inevitable cracks caused the the temperature variation anyway.

in the ideal situation - yes, but since Russia is big and the climate is cold almost everywhere the government usually does not do it except in big cities.

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

#387

Post by the_af »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #384
the_af wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But still, I never went through a protest that ended in a massacre before Yet these happened in the US. Bizarre and secret government projects also happened. Executions also happened. That you didn't witness them doesn't mean much. I'm sure most Gen X Chinese, as you call them, had pretty uneventful lives without any massacres either. I do think this is a case of laser-focusing on those who had more "interesting" l…

> Yet these happened in the US. Bizarre and secret government projects also happened. Executions also happened. Are you confusing GenX with Baby Boomers? > I'm sure most Gen X Chinese, as you call them, had pretty uneventful lives without any massacres either. Most? Maybe, I've never met one that hasn't though. So maybe the selection of people I meet is biased? > It does reinforce the narrative that China = bad, US =…

> Are you confusing GenX with Baby Boomers?

Maybe it was Baby Boomers, indeed.

> Most? Maybe, I've never met one that hasn't though

I'm sure you acknowledge you're not an expert on general Chinese experience. You were an expat, surely while your first-hand experience was valuable it was also heavily limited to what a Westerner in China would see and be told?

> Something that was true pre-1995 hardly says anything about China today.

"Hardly says anything" is a bonkers statement. The recent past of any country definitely says something about its present. We agree China 30 years ago was different from China today, but what does it have to do with anything?

Do you disagree there's a strong anti-China bias on HN? (Whether justified or not).

> Again, you are just projecting some sort of insecurity with this statement.

Insecurity? I think it's an accurate assessment of groupthink about China here. I may have misinterpreted what you were trying to say though, in which case I apologize.

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

#388

Post by morserer »

embedding-shape wrote: post #222
panic wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

While reading through the post, I too felt it being similar to LLM generated text, but the stories and the perspective is uniquely human, or is there something specific that sticks out as inhuman from the text? Specific parts that sounds implausible? It obvious that something was used to do the translation, but it doesn't feel worse than any other machine-translated texts, as long as I get the gist and the overall id…

Yes, the author used an AI translator to transcribe his original article, written in Chinese.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46414040

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

#389

Post by nonninz »

satvikpendem wrote: post #378
Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much! I hope LLM didn't ruin the vibe, so I edited many times, but still, english is not my first language, so it probably still "looks like AI". I will try my best and I will post part 2 on Monday.

Try machine translation not general LLM based ones. Google translate does use an LLM, Gemini, now for translation, but it preserves the nuances of your own speech instead of injecting the clear markers of LLMs like you'd get if you tried to do it via Gemini or ChatGPT directly. So, write your replies in your native language then post them into Google translate, I guarantee it'll sound better and people won't think it…

Oh, I never gave Google Translate a chance since chatGPT came out.

Are you saying it's not anymore as bad as is was a few years ago, and it's preferrable to use that? Does it also work for English to German?

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

#390

Post by satvikpendem »

nonninz wrote: post #389
satvikpendem wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try machine translation not general LLM based ones. Google translate does use an LLM, Gemini, now for translation, but it preserves the nuances of your own speech instead of injecting the clear markers of LLMs like you'd get if you tried to do it via Gemini or ChatGPT directly. So, write your replies in your native language then post them into Google translate, I guarantee it'll sound better and people won't think it…

Oh, I never gave Google Translate a chance since chatGPT came out. Are you saying it's not anymore as bad as is was a few years ago, and it's preferrable to use that? Does it also work for English to German?

https://blog.google/products/search/gemini-capabilities-tran...

TLDR yes it now uses Gemini which actually understands idioms etc over the previous Google translate. More importantly, it doesn't rewrite your text to sound more like AI which you see on this thread already with OP using ChatGPT to translate. Works for any language.

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