Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents | Hacker News Reader

Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents

nature.com

55 pointsbenbreen9 comments

If anyone wants more information about the practice of letterlocking itself, theres an informational video on http://letterlocking.org/about or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KJBA57KLBo

It's basically (very cool) a collection of methods for folding a letter to have it become its own envelope, and sealing/authenticating the resulting packet.

Personally, I'm familiar with letter locking as the technology was widely used circa 1999 in my highschool homeroom class for securing communications between peers against decoding by antagonistic interceptors.

Seconding this, it's a great hobby. The act of creating a handwritten letter can help you to think about what you really want to express with your message. I recently used sealed letters to write to some old friends of mine, and the folding pattern I used was taken from "MIT's Founder William Barton Rogers letter to his father" (also on this channel).

In combination with forums like fountainpennetwork this YouTube channel can help you reconnect with old friends by sending letters, which - like postcards - are even more fun if they are unexpected.

The next step for me is to use subreddits like penpals or fountainpenpals to find strangers to exchange letters with, which should get rid of the embarrassment about my rather bad handwriting.

Some similar techniques have been used in the past to try and read ancient scrolls that are too fragile or completely warped: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-scrolls-black...

I am fascinated by the depth of this article. I hope that the same person(s) who had the passion and drive to do this research and to write this article one day will develop a passion to solve one of mankinds greater problems, such as renewable energy, protein folding or cancer. The detail and thoughtfulness of their work is incredible.

The thing is, new technologies tend to have ramifications far beyond their original scope.

We do not know yet what impact this research is going to have on other problems, but it may be significant. Finding subtle patterns is an interesting know-how in many contexts.

On the surface, your comment sounds like praise, but then it sounds like you're saying that this finding is non-significant? Basically this is the typical HN "why?" comment but with nicer words.

Hopefully one day people can accept that people will work on whatever they want and solve their own problems, and by doing that they unlock a lot of mysteries in the world that who knows, might solve cancer or make us better at renewable energy generation.

I hope the authors continue to pursue their interests, whatever it might be, so we learn more about our world from all angles.

Edit: looking into the matter more I'm not sure aetherspawn is even serious, am I replying to a sarcastic comment? As the profile page of aetherspawn links to "https://cuedo.com.au/" which has the tagline "Intelligent business solutions", it's hard to take their "please work on hard problems" comment serious with that in mind.

My comment is only dismissive if you read it with a competitive overtone, but in reality the authors work and the fields that I listed compete barely for talent and not for funding. Yes, it's true that the instability of world conditions make some fields of research more immediately imperative (I work in these fields and in general, I am somewhat dissatisfied with the rate and quality of research done in those areas). It's difficult to find legitimate "10x talent", and I'm merely saying that the author would probably excel at whatever they put their mind to. I challenge you to express the same sentiment without being dismissive in a reasonable amount of time.

As for your the latter part of your comment, any publicity is good publicity, so thank you however you spin it.

This reads as an amazingly dismissive comment. History matters. It is one of the most valuable ways of teaching empathy. And it is done on a shoestring budget. History grants are regularly 1/100th the size of grants for CS. People are are absolutely doing valuable work even if it isn’t on one of the few topics you seem to value.

Humanities researchers already get slapped in the face constantly by budgets and broader society. They don’t need you to tell them that you think their passion is worthless.

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