Related. Others?

Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26826585 - April 2021 (10 comments)

Death Note: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20617325 - Aug 2019 (139 comments)

Death Note Anonymity: L, Anonymity and Eluding Entropy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9553494 - May 2015 (23 comments)

Who wrote the 'Death Note' script? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5010846 - Jan 2013 (79 comments)

The analysis forgets the very first problem after someone is killing criminals visibly: Light relies on TV to find them. You could tell it's Japan without doing any math about time zones or anythING, as TV itself brings in the bias. To pretend you are elsewhere, you have to be consuming foreign news to even begin to have a chance to hide yourself

At the end of the article:

> Selecting criminals could be based on internationally accessible periodicals that plausibly every human has access to, such as the New York Times, and deaths could be delayed by months or years to broaden the possibilities as to where the Kira learned of the victim (TV? books? the Internet?) and avoiding issues like killing a criminal only publicized on one obscure Japanese public television channel. And so on.

Less than a quarter of the way through the article:

> Worse, the deaths are non-random in other ways—they tend to occur at particular times! Just the scheduling of deaths cost Light 6 bits of anonymity

Have you seen the show/read the manga? That's precisely the first tactic L uses against Light - he broadcasts that he has precise knowledge that he's somewhere in the Kanto region of Japan based on this timing. It's also mentioned in the article which you claim forgets to cover this.

OP is talking about different things which is also mentioned in manga.

to be more precise, OP says L should use the fact that Light selects criminals only when they appear on Japanese TV.

In the manga, L did track down earliest of murders to Japan and therefore started his "world" broadcast from one region in Japan.

Light got angry at broadcast's message.and lost his cool, and fell into the trap of "world broadcast"

I’m failing to see any distinction.

I would highly recommend the 2006 deaths note films.

I found the manga and anime to have too many side stories. Fans of them love these near miss stories, but I found them like a bunch of dead ends.

The double feature is well made and much more focused on the core story, imho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Note_(2006_film)

They're not dead ends per se because their purpose is growing the characters and revealing more of them to the audience. The movie streamlines and speed runs all that, for better or worse.

I also thought the the L spin-off was pretty good.

Couldn’t disagree more. Both the manga and the anime are masterpieces.

Ehhh, they're masterpieces and then a second half happens. Still ends up quite good.

Indeed the first half is supreme. I really enjoyed watching Light's downfall though.

This essay nerd sniped me hard into information theory. Absolutely love it.

> How much positive evidence for guilt is necessary before we decide that some man should be put away?

Isn’t this what “beyond a reasonable doubt” is doing? It’s obviously not precise but it’s an intention of the current system.

> How much positive evidence for guilt is necessary before we decide that some man should be put away?

The answer to this question is ZERO. We are human, after all (and the corollary is that no amount of evidence will tip the scale for someone we don't want to put away). How much positive evidence for guilt ought to be necessary for a society to remain moral/egalitarian/equitable is a different question entirely.

I think you’re taking “necessary” literally, whereas the author is posing a question about morality.

Zero evidence is required to lock someone up?

Correct. The only thing required to lock someone up is power.

Well, power is another euphemism you could deconstruct as well. But that doesn't mean that you can just lock people up, in most countries. I certainly can't.

Uh, power is a euphemism? For what, pray tell?

In this case, for the ability to communicate to people who are strong to physically move someone somewhere else in a way that they will listen to. In that sense, you don't need power; you just need to be strong enough to physically move someone into a room and lock the door from the outside. Have I disproven the existence of power, or just described a component of it?