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Dracula's Biggest Mistake

blog.ayjay.org

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Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#11

Post by _upoi »

pvg wrote: post #6
psnehanshu wrote: post #3

[flagged]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39528000

I'm not sure if you flagged my comment too, but I'm a real person with a posting history. psnehanshu also has a posting history and contact information on their profile, so I doubt this person is a bot or a person who wrote an AI-generated comment.

I manually highlighted the key parts of the article in my comment to encourage discussion, for people who read the comments first. I'm not sure what psnehanshu posted as it's flagged, but making claims that early comments are AI-generated (especially when they are likely not the case) cuts down on discussion.

The parent to the comment you linked to also disclosed that it was AI-generated. My comment was not, and I'm willing to bet that psnehanshu's comment was not either.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#12

Post by actionfromafar »

dylan604 wrote: post #9
kevinmhickey wrote: post #5

On a related note, when I re-watch shows from the 1990's or even early 2000's it's amazing how many problems would be solved with a simple cell phone call or text message. Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be a much shorter show if the gang could just text instead of wondering where the others were or if they knew some key fact.

along the same line of applying modern day to older shows, I recently re-watched Stargate Atlantis. I found it amusing that with all of the futuristic tech, McKay still carried around a bulky laptop. Even the original Star Trek minimized the computer to a hand held device. The prop team kind of failed in SG:Atlantis on this one to me. How much easier would their off world adventures been with a tablet or other smalle…

OTOH it was kind of cool to have a more "realistic" take of what would probably happen if the US military merged with Alien tech. Contemporary tools would be used next to new gadgets.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#14

Post by pvg »

_upoi wrote: post #11
pvg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39528000

I'm not sure if you flagged my comment too, but I'm a real person with a posting history. psnehanshu also has a posting history and contact information on their profile, so I doubt this person is a bot or a person who wrote an AI-generated comment. I manually highlighted the key parts of the article in my comment to encourage discussion, for people who read the comments first. I'm not sure what psnehanshu posted as i…

Generated comments are not allowed for the reasons linked above and the GP comment says it was generated. Summary comments and comments that are mostly pastes from the article are discouraged as well for similar reasons:

See item #2 in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237697

Comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or try to summarize the article, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but please do it in your own words and share your own thinking. To simply paste a quote from the article is too superficial. On HN the convention is to assume that readers are smart enough to evaluate an article for themselves.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#15

Post by dang »

_upoi wrote: post #2

This was a fun read. Merging a few quotes to provide the gist of the article for discussion: "Dracula’s own powers – superhuman strength, the control of local weather, the ability to summon and direct brute creatures – cannot match the powers of his Enemy. And that Enemy is not Dr. Van Helsing or Jonathan Harker or any of the other people who chase him, but rather technocratic modernity itself […] "Our heroes’ long p…

I get that your post was well-intentioned! But on HN, please don't post comments that are just a summary of the article or paste bits from it. The thread doesn't need to repeat the article—users can find it easily enough.

This might make more sense if you remember that the purpose of HN threads is curious conversation. When you have an interesting conversation with friends or colleagues, the idea is not to repeat things that have already been said, but to add your own thoughts, reflections, experiences.

If you look at the other top-level comments that have been posted to this thread so far, they all have the flavor of what I'm talking about:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39529274

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39529003

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39528984

For example, they all contain some unexpected or unpredictable element—something we can be surprised by and learn from.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#16

Post by _upoi »

dang wrote: post #15
_upoi wrote: post #2

This was a fun read. Merging a few quotes to provide the gist of the article for discussion: "Dracula’s own powers – superhuman strength, the control of local weather, the ability to summon and direct brute creatures – cannot match the powers of his Enemy. And that Enemy is not Dr. Van Helsing or Jonathan Harker or any of the other people who chase him, but rather technocratic modernity itself […] "Our heroes’ long p…

I get that your post was well-intentioned! But on HN, please don't post comments that are just a summary of the article or paste bits from it. The thread doesn't need to repeat the article—users can find it easily enough. This might make more sense if you remember that the purpose of HN threads is curious conversation. When you have an interesting conversation with friends or colleagues, the idea is not to repeat thi…

That is fair point, I'll follow this guideline from now on. Apologies, I wasn't aware of this before.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#17

Post by dylan604 »

actionfromafar wrote: post #12
dylan604 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

along the same line of applying modern day to older shows, I recently re-watched Stargate Atlantis. I found it amusing that with all of the futuristic tech, McKay still carried around a bulky laptop. Even the original Star Trek minimized the computer to a hand held device. The prop team kind of failed in SG:Atlantis on this one to me. How much easier would their off world adventures been with a tablet or other smalle…

OTOH it was kind of cool to have a more "realistic" take of what would probably happen if the US military merged with Alien tech. Contemporary tools would be used next to new gadgets.

For SG:1 sure. For SG:Atlantis, they had access to all of the ancient's tech.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#18

Post by _upoi »

pvg wrote: post #14
_upoi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you flagged my comment too, but I'm a real person with a posting history. psnehanshu also has a posting history and contact information on their profile, so I doubt this person is a bot or a person who wrote an AI-generated comment. I manually highlighted the key parts of the article in my comment to encourage discussion, for people who read the comments first. I'm not sure what psnehanshu posted as i…

Generated comments are not allowed for the reasons linked above and the GP comment says it was generated. Summary comments and comments that are mostly pastes from the article are discouraged as well for similar reasons: See item #2 in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237697 Comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or try to summarize the article, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you…

I admit that I was wrong here, point taken. I appreciate the reference.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#19

Post by pvg »

_upoi wrote: post #18
pvg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generated comments are not allowed for the reasons linked above and the GP comment says it was generated. Summary comments and comments that are mostly pastes from the article are discouraged as well for similar reasons: See item #2 in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237697 Comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or try to summarize the article, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you…

I admit that I was wrong here, point taken. I appreciate the reference.

Incidentally, if you want to see comments that were flagged to death, click on your username in the top bar and then change the 'showdead' option in the profile settings from 'no' to 'yes'. Just keep in mind you'll also end up seeing some pretty shitty comments every now and then.

Re: Dracula's Biggest Mistake

#20

Post by ben_w »

dylan604 wrote: post #17
actionfromafar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH it was kind of cool to have a more "realistic" take of what would probably happen if the US military merged with Alien tech. Contemporary tools would be used next to new gadgets.

For SG:1 sure. For SG:Atlantis, they had access to all of the ancient's tech.

They had access to a lot of Ancient artefacts which they didn't really understand; despite many oddities that came to mind since first watching it, I think it would still fit the setting that they didn't know how to get the Ancient's 3D printers (or whatever) to spit out better hardware — if they could make it spit out more hardware on demand, even if they "could only find one file to print", it would radically change the show.

This also means there was no way for either SG-1 or Atlantis to sensibly continue past the SG-1 finale, when they got Asgard replicators and all the instruction manuals for them… and that Star Trek TNG onwards is best done without thinking too hard about the implications of almost any of the tech they demonstrate.

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