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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: September 20th, 2024

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  • We do live in a world where simply mentioning the bad shit people do can get you in trouble.

    Over on another forum site I mentioned that border security in Egypt made a British 15 year old girl strip in an airport and I received a 3 day ban off admins for “Inciting hatred based on identity or religion”.

    I never mentioned religion or any identity. I just said “Egypt made a 15 year old girl strip naked in an airport and that was a pretty shitty thing to do.”


  • I worked for an ISP that uses Openreach’s infrastructure in the UK. In order to make changes to customer installations or repairs we had to call an Openreach Contact Centre. These were basically big call centres in India. Many of my customers got contacted by scammers from India shortly after me contacting Openreach about their accounts using information like their address, contact details and information about the work they were receiving, and demanding things like card details to ensure the work went forward.

    It was obvious Indian workers in those call centres were taking pictures of customer account details and using that info to scam those customers, but my company refused to do anything about it because we “lacked evidence” and just told us to let customers know any communication about their accounts would come directly from us and we’d never ask for any card details etc.

    I’m certain any other companies, whether UK or US, that use centralised admin from India and similar places with poor security will be plagued with these exact same issues.





  • Egg_Egg@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlcurved it is
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    1 month ago

    There was nothing inherently low quality about using iron sand anyway. Impurities were carried away by slag and the iron in the sand was easily recovered using washing and later electromagnetism. Imports were used as demand increased.



  • Egg_Egg@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlcurved it is
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    1 month ago

    What century of katana are you speaking about? Many katana were used with modern metallurgy technology and imported steel. Do you think modern Japanese created cars are also made from steel refined from sand? Do you think the guns Japanese Samurai used were made from steel refined from sand?


  • Egg_Egg@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlcurved it is
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    1 month ago

    The Japanese used western imported iron a lot, as well as western imported guns.

    It’s difficult to get historic figures for this, but in the early 20th century anywhere between 70-90 percent of iron ore used in Japan was imported, and even almost 100% in some years. There’s highly likely to be history to this importing going back a long while. https://d-arch.ide.go.jp/je_archive/english/society/wp_je_unu33.html

    Tamahagane steel, the stuff produced from sand, was likely much more popular for ceremonial blades whereas imported steel for blades meant for actual combat. This means the historic examples we have left are more likely to be Tamahagane steel, but if a western swordsman and a Japanese swordsmen were in a position to fight, both would likely be using steel of a similar quality as they would both be using steel from similar places.

    One thing to remember is that the empires at the time were very competitive and if Japan was fighting with one of the imperial powers, you can be damn well sure a rival imperial power is supplying Japan with the best equipment to fight back.

    Both Europe and Japan had lots of different types of sword, ranging from short to long and light to heavy. You should compare like for like.

    Both Europe and Japan used weapons both in warfare and ceremonially.


  • Egg_Egg@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlcurved it is
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    1 month ago

    Yeah they’re a bit better at slashing whilst a straight sword is slightly better at thrusting. Typically a curved sword is a bit better whilst on horseback or whilst fighting unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents and straight blades are a bit better whilst fighting one-on-one and against somewhat more armoured opponents.

    But these are slight differences and sword styles are also varied in each region, so the Japanese did develop swords which were more adapted to thrusting with reinforced tips and Europeans did develop swords which were more effective at slashing.

    I think some people obsess over what swords are the best and the worst. In reality the style of sword was unlikely to be the major deciding factor in a one on one fight. The amount and quality of armour and the skill and capacity (Size and strength) of the fighters themselves are much bigger factors.


  • Egg_Egg@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlcurved it is
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    1 month ago

    The whole “Japanese steel was really weak” thing is as much of a myth as the whole “katanas are super powerful superior weapons” thing.

    They’re all just swords, and don’t make that much of a difference either way.





  • Egg_Egg@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlAs a Brit. I see nothing wrong here
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    1 month ago

    Yep, just seems disingenuous to act like the history of the spice trade hasn’t affected our food culture when it clearly has massively. Hell, even curry in Japan is popular not because of India but because of British influence. The reason “Katsu Curry” is called Katsu is because of the English word “Cuts” referring to the cuts of meat in the curry, which is Japanese sounds like ‘katsu’.




  • Not sure how it works in Japan, but in many nations you have to file for a patent before or pretty soon after you release your product / service. In the US I think there’s a 1 year grace period. It’s a pretty common sense thing that stops whole businesses springing up and then being shut down by patent creation just like we are seeing here.

    There are many games out there now that involve catching monsters and making them fight for you, Nintendo would be shutting down 100s, if not 1000s of developers if they wanted to go ahead with this and have it be taken seriously.

    Anyone that has played Palworld will tell you that it much more resembles ARK than it does any Pokémon game or experience anyway.