WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

mcfrankline's comments

mcfrankline | 8 years ago | on: Why Do Fantasy Novels Have So Much Food?

There is a downturn. Most people agree that Lord of Chaos was the last good book until Brandon Sanderson took over. I like to thrown in book 7 as well but RJ really did waste a whole lot of books on Ajah politics

mcfrankline | 8 years ago | on: Boycotting Amazon

Well I guess anytime the Internet has a problem these days, we are either going to delete the problem or boycott it into oblivion. If you look deeply into any giant Corp or business serving millions of people you’re going to find faults and deficiencies like this every time. Follow the production Chain of Apple, Google, Tesla etc etc you’re going to find someone at the deep end bearing the entire cost of their success.

So what happens now ? Assuming everyone boycotted Amazon and the unlikely event occurred and it shut down. What next? Tens of thousands of those works go home to what? Does the editor then start another campaign to employ all the people laid off? Think they’d be working there if they had a lot more options?

How about trying to fix the problem or at least fix as much as humanly possible? How about putting pressure on your reps to draw up some regulations? How about the government? Isn’t that what they’re there for? Do we have to resort to Social justice for everything now ? Because it obviously doesn’t work with these corporations. See Equifax, See Facebook ?

mcfrankline | 8 years ago | on: Dissident.ai

> This is a very ambitious project.

I’m quite certain the word you’re looking for “Ambiguous”. The entire landing page was confusion personified, with loads of promises and assembly-language-like marketing that only a few exceptional people with limitless amount of time will dedicate themselves to be trapped by

mcfrankline | 8 years ago | on: Teacher in Ghana has no computers so he draws Microsoft Word on the blackboard

I didn't want to comment about this, but this post was extremely hard to read. Kumasi is the heart of what remains of the old Ashanti empire that once ruled West Africa. If you had spoken about some village in the Ashanti Region, i'd believe you outright but this is the second most important city in Ghana, and even 10 years ago wasn't this bad.

* The Electricity problem isn't a part of life and definitely doesn't affect Kumasi as much as it affected other parts in the past. The country is powered by a couple of hydroelectric dams(and even supply power to a few other west African countries). The water levels were low due to low rainful and that's why these blackout began 10 years ago but it didn't really get bad till 2012...The Ashanti are a proud people, the infrastructure situatuion is not as dire as you state it.

* Air quality? Kumasi dusty? The entire city was tarred even as of 10 years ago. I'd still like to believe you spent your time in a village in the Ashanti Region but not Kumasi itself

* Literacy? Ha you based that on your two week trip to one school?

* Poverty is subjective i believe. 10 years ago, the Ghanaian cedi was pegged evenly with the dollar, and $1 usd was more than enough to feed an entire family. Food was cheap(Still largely is) and the Ashanti Region produces a massive amount of food crops. Your understanding of poverty is flawed if you're going to base it off economic theory. Most people in Africa are able to provide for their families and don't see the need past that. A lot of people are just comfortable staying in mud huts in villages, farming and going about their daily businesses. They don't really care about foreign healthcare because there's a thriving alternative medicine industry in Ghana(herbal) and most people just generally don't care. It's more about the culture, not the ignorance

* Internet 10 years ago? C'mon I'm ashamed to admit it but Ghana was on full blast for internet fraud 10 years ago. This is where the Nigerian princes picked up their skills from. Till today, Ghana is still blocked from using paypal. There was internet all over ten years ago and very cheap. We had large communities of MMO players, especially runescape and kids just go home or to an internet cafe after school to play.

*Typing skills... I don't even get this one

I know the conditions are not as bright as i've seen while travelling the globe, but this was too much like the regular "Africa is a poster child for poverty" theme that it hurt to read it

Disclaimer: I was born and bred in Ghana, and live in several cities for several years.

mcfrankline | 9 years ago | on: Regional Security Office Ghana Shuts Down Fake US Embassy

Flag and all, i wouldn't call it a "Fake US Embassy". With the high rate of Visa denials in countries like Nigeria,(and some other francophone West African countries) Ghana is a go to haven for all your visa issues. I'm quite sure most of these "victims" knew the kind of documentation they were going to get, just as long as it gets you through immigration. Scam might not be the word here, more like illegal travel facilitation.

mcfrankline | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: How would you manage listening to music while reading books?

Not an expert on Cognition or anything.

This only works very well with novels. When i was younger, i made a quite terrible habit out of this. I read the entire Wheel of Times Series with "He lives in you(Diana Ross version). It got so bad, i couldn't read any Wheel of Time book without playing that. I read the initial Mistborn set with Viva Forever etc etc. I put a stop to it a few years ago.

What you have to realize is that, this works with only soft reading when you don't really need much "brain power" to process what you're reading. Playing epic music while reading Epic fantasy helps with the visualization process and scene buildup.

I don't see how anyone is going to retain long term memory playing Viva Forever while reading Donald Knuth's TAOCP but it's just MO. If you want a more indepth look at the topic, you should try out Barbara Oakley's "A mind for numbers". Touches briefly on these kinds of background distraction while reading/learning.

mcfrankline | 9 years ago | on: Show HN: Learn to Code for Free

Roben, I'm actually disappointed to find out that you've made this course free. It seems the folk on reddit gave you a nasty bit of pressure?

Well, i don't see how you're going to be able to maintain this project(100's of hours of videos) without earning anything for it. Quality is bound to decrease in the long run. I believe you should stick with your previous model(Free for a month or two, subscribe when its useful or pay a fixed sum for lifetime access).

mcfrankline | 9 years ago | on: A curated list of Blockchain, Bitcoin and Crytocurrency resources

I have no idea what is being insinuated here, but I earn nothing from linking to Amazon. The books were initially posted without links and someone made a suggestion that linking Amazon or goodreads will make it easier for people to check out their reviews.

Secondly i was hoping for community effort to make this list comprehensive and useful for everyone. If you have any better ideas I'd like hear them please.

page 1