I get the impression that if you're uninterested in either reading enough of the press release to get to the parts where they mention what they did, or navigating to the top-level index for the blog, where what they write about is made very plain, then you're not the type of person who would give any shits about what they write about.
It’s an announcement published for their followers and distributed through their own channels to those people. That it doesn’t make sense when detached from that context and put on HN to people with no knowledge of who they are seems very much irrelevant to the goals of writing the post?
This is an employee posting it to hackernews, which lets be honest is glad for any content that isn't a repost from 15+ years ago. Most people won't have heard of this vanity publication. And if this is news then il go elsewhere
FYI: this is not Asimov's Science Fiction, the pulp sci fi magazine, found along with Analog Science Fiction and Fact at convenience stores near me, but something else.
I discovered them last year on Substack and they quickly became a priority read. A sort of Quanta for biology, taking time to explain enough for a popular audience but keeping technical rigor deep into some fascinating topics.
I see this pattern a lot -- folks start a publication, publish for a handful of years, and then shutter. I did it myself with Compelling Science Fiction magazine. This is why I settled on releasing only one book per year, it's sustainable while working full-time on other projects.
Ah, I found this particularly offensive when I heard about the naming of the parent company. Randomly nicking a famous person's name for your company is pretty rubbish behaviour IMO. The odiousness decreases as a function of time since a person's death.
Isaac Asimov has been dead for 34 years. How long should we wait to name something after someone? Not rhetorical, interested in more detail about when the odiousness crosses into being socially acceptable for you.
To flip your rhetorical trick against you: would it be ok if they did it 1 year after death? If no, then I'm "interested in more detail about when the odiousness crosses into being socially acceptable for you".
To expose your rhetorical trick: you wanted him to admit that it's ok after SOME time therefore it's ok after THIS time. You put the burden of proof for defending THIS time (i.e. 34 years) as acceptable on him. Which is hard.
Sneaky but only if don't get exposed.
Because equally correct framing is: if you accept that it's NOT ok after SOME time (1 year) then the burden of proof for defending it's ok THIS time (i.e. 34 years) is on you.
So go ahead, tell us what is the exact number of years that makes it ok. Defend YOUR number the way you wanted him to defend his.
I think 100 years after their death would be reasonable because at that point it's long enough that people won't assume there's an actual connection to the person or that it's endorsed/founded by them
It's very easy to upset a human. Is it learned behaviour? Would a kid ever take "offense" to something like this... probably not, we must have learnt this at some point
In fact, we need to provide more intellectual property rights for people over their names. Famous people's names should be blocked off in perpetuity for their families only, though resale may be permitted. It is time we formalized this universally held social behaviour.
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>We are an editorially-independent part of [Asimov](https://www.asimov.com/).
It seems to be a vanity publication for some kind of genetic engineering company.
I get the impression that if you're uninterested in either reading enough of the press release to get to the parts where they mention what they did, or navigating to the top-level index for the blog, where what they write about is made very plain, then you're not the type of person who would give any shits about what they write about.
It comes across as a putdown. Much better and just was easy is to share some of what you know with others (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=asimov.press
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov%27s_Science_Fiction
It had a unique blend of popular science writing that was sorely missing from the internet. Alas I hardly knew thee.
He was really good at explaining very complex stuff, in a simple, approachable manner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planet_That_Wasn%27t
I get MANY recommendations for books/movies/shows/topics I knew nothing about etc. here.
Just ordered this book for my 10-year-old grandson.
Judging by the .press domain it's too new for that.
A bit dishonest don't you think?
Some highlights:
https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/dna-sequencing?utm_sour...
https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/phi80?utm_source=share&...
https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/antibody-design?utm_sou...
https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/viral-capsids?utm_sourc...
https://open.substack.com/pub/cell/p/legibility-problem?utm_...
...All in the last month! At least they went out with a bang.
It’s not a business capable of operating without grants or support from its tech parent.
With eight people on the masthead, the outlays are significant for a publishing venture.
There will never be a world in which someone can sell enough books to fund 5 years of research on 1950s US-China diplomatic relations.
The problem is, they are not charging when they should.
To flip your rhetorical trick against you: would it be ok if they did it 1 year after death? If no, then I'm "interested in more detail about when the odiousness crosses into being socially acceptable for you".
To expose your rhetorical trick: you wanted him to admit that it's ok after SOME time therefore it's ok after THIS time. You put the burden of proof for defending THIS time (i.e. 34 years) as acceptable on him. Which is hard.
Sneaky but only if don't get exposed.
Because equally correct framing is: if you accept that it's NOT ok after SOME time (1 year) then the burden of proof for defending it's ok THIS time (i.e. 34 years) is on you.
So go ahead, tell us what is the exact number of years that makes it ok. Defend YOUR number the way you wanted him to defend his.