Hacker News Reader

SnooSuxon Science Fiction Movie Lettering

Definitely! You can tell that the idea of what constitutes high-tech changes over time. Alphaville (1965) has letters that look like they're made of stiff wires and The Terminator (College Roadshow Version) (1984) uses a 7-segment display style font (with plenty of liberties taken). Both of these look old-fashioned in retrospect but at the time probably evoked very modern imagery.

SnooSuxon A non-technical explanation of deep learning

I've barely forgiven him for explaining genetic algorithms and acting like they have any relevance to contemporary ML research.

The footnote video was an alright explanation of backprop. If that were part of the main video that would have been reasonable.

I really like his history/geography videos but anything technical leave a lot to be desired. And don't get me started on Humans Need Not Apply.

SnooSuxon The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

I've always found the discussion and community around a hobby can be as important as the hobby itself. There's lots of books I like but can't talk to anyone familiar enough to care.

SnooSuxon Ask HN: Are there 3D twisty puzzles that can only be simulated on a computer?

It was once believed that 6x6 and higher Rubik's Cubes would be impossible to physically make. In the real world, the outermost edges have to be a little thicker or the faces rounded in order for the puzzle to stay together while being turned. Nowadays they're widely available on Amazon.

The Megaminx puzzle is a dodecahedron, having 12 faces. Would it be possible to make a similar puzzle for an icosahedron? What about the stellated polyhedra? Or semi-regular polyhedra? There's no reason we have to stick to the platonic solids, right?

I'm no expert in 3d geometry or twisty puzzle manufacturing but maybe this helps?

SnooSuxon Introduction to Autoencoders

Explaining Autoencoders seems to be a rite of passage for ML bloggers. It's conceptually understandable but has broad applications and is a jumping off point into other architectures.

Educational content tends to have a bias towards concepts that are easier to explain rather than what is most useful. But as far as the latter goes, Autoencoders are a good place to start.

Do NUCs have GPIO or do I have to stick to a SBC for those?

SnooSuxon Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

There was a point where Duolingo was trying to teach languages including endangered ones as their primary goal. But it feels like every year they're moving more towards making money as their main main objective. I'm not optimistic about them expanding their list of languages. Most of their lesser known languages are getting fewer updates than Spanish, French, Japanese. It makes business sense to focus your hours on features and languages people are actually using but it's still frustrating thinking of what Duolingo could have been and used to promote vs what it turned out to be.

SnooSuxon The Camera-Shy Hoodie

I work with IR sensors at work and modern smartphones pick up NIR frequencies as well. It's picked up by the red channel so combining that with the blue is probably what's making the purple color.

My guess would be that something bright enough to wash out the red channel would still leave the blue and green intact. So there should be enough information that the image is degraded but not necessarily blinded.

But I could be wrong, depending on how independently the color sensors and processing work.

SnooSuxon Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

I got a guitar pick with a bit of texture on the part you grip with. I have really oily hands so glossy picks just slip through my fingers.

I've also tried angling the pick so I have more surface area to grip with.

SnooSuxon Origami is yielding new applications in spacecraft, architecture, and medicine

There have been a lot of attempts at foldable kayaks in recent years. From my understanding they are more fragile and don't do as well in shallow waters. Plus they're more expensive than standard ones for obvious reasons.

I was looking to buy one but it didn't make sense with where things are at now. But maybe in a couple years when construction and/or cost gets a little better.

SnooSuxon Make a Resume in LaTeX

I've handed my resume at career fairs and I twice they noticed and pointed out that it was LaTeX and it impressed them a little bit.

But I was a EE student so maybe it'd be different in another field.

SnooSuxon Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription service for PC

This is something I'd like to check out! Have you given any thought to curation? I would play more indie games but frankly many just aren't worth my time.

SnooSuxon Moonwalkers: Shoes that make you walk faster (pre-order)

Wanna split it? I'll take the left shoe, you take the right?

SnooSuxon Moonwalkers: Shoes that make you walk faster (pre-order)

> USD $1399

Oof

Ideally the product does well and release a more affordable version later.

I don't have a use for it but there's definitely people this could help..

SnooSuxon Blender 3.4

> bpy 3.4.0 is available on PyPi, and can be installed through pip install bpy.

Does this mean you can run Blender from Python without the command line?

https://docs.blender.org/api/3.4/info_advanced_blender_as_bp...

SnooSuxon Build List: A directory of on-demand manufacturers for your creative projects

Are the regions strictly where they're based or where they serve? I've used PCBWay and JLCPCB for projects and had the boardś mailed from China to the US. But can I take it for granted that I could do this with the rest of the suppliers?

FWIW both services provided excellent boards, even with an order of only 5 units.

SnooSuxon A Vim Guide for Advanced Users

If I could add one thing to the list I would include `cib` as equivilent to `ci(` for changing everything in a set of parentheses (or brackets for the mnemonic's sake). For me at least the `b` is easier to reach than the `(`.

I need to use `z` for refocusing more

SnooSuxon The Balenciaga Controversy

Is staged the right term? I would call it planned or intentionally provocative.

I don't follow fashion at all; the last I heard of Balenciaga was their Simpsons short. But a handful of people are some level of outraged about this which causes articles like this to get written which is somehow newsworthy enough to reach HN.

SnooSuxon Go Style

I started using ii as my iterator variable name for similar reasons. Easier to highlight and Ctrl-F for. Also removing ambiguity when using i as the imaginary constant.

SnooSuxon Demystifying Fourier analysis

I have a Bachelors and Master's in Electrical Engineering and do some signal and image processing as part of my job. I've been working with FFTs since undergrad and I thought a good understanding of what it does and how it works. But that Veritasium video helped me put all the pieces together in a way that made things click.

The famous 3Blue1Brown video is also very strong and maybe explains why complex numbers are used better.

Of course both videos leave stuff out in the interest of time but they should both be part of a signal processing curriculum.

SnooSuxon FTX’s balance sheet was bad

Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff

SnooSuxon There was a stretch where phone design went bananas

Sounds like the buttons are all real, there are just only 10 of them.

SnooSuxon Doing what you love when the money won’t follow

A bit of both according to a coworker who left that space.

There are more Aerospace Engineers that want to build the greatest latest rockets than there are positions so they have to settle for lower pay.

And working on planes is a lot of contract work so the job situation isn't ideal.

Picking a boring field is definitely a path to job stability.

SnooSuxon My dad's resume and skills from 1980

Interesting that this is like a cover letter and resume in one.

SnooSuxon Every Door – OpenStreetMap editor for POIs and entrances

> terabytes of XML or PBFs.

I have a snapshot of all of OSM for a given date (conveniently called planet-XXXXXX.osm.pbf) and the compressed version is 62GB. And the format is optimized for reading certain chunks (as well as updating with new data). Plus there are libraries that do the heavy lifting for you in little time at all.

The size is really not as big of an issue as you think it is.

SnooSuxon Netflix might get into cloud gaming, forms another new game studio

> I can't imagine trust for a new cloud gaming provider being super high

The target audience for Netflix shouldn't know they're playing a cloud game. Netflix is too big to cater to power users, casual gamers are a much much bigger group.

I think there's some hope. Netflix has good expertise in streaming infrastructure and if they play to cloud gaming's strength like turn-based games, they have a chance to last longer than Stadia (RIP).

SnooSuxon Ask HN: Why is Japan so insular?

> I aimed to elicit the response from Japanese people about their own culture

This is overly optimistic in my opinion. When I wrote my original comment I didn't see any indication that any of the other commenters had any connection to or expertise regarding Japan, they were speculating based on their own cultures and their own knowledge. In my experience expert opinions are very likely to get buried in a forum like this unless they agree with the mainstream, non-expert view.

> I think this is overcautious--and actually too dismissive of the views of non-japanese people

I never said you should ignore or dismiss people's views completely, just that you should be cautious. There's a lot of speculation going on that you should avoid putting too much faith into.

> so the opinions of other cultures and their experiences of Japan is vitally important

I'll concede that I hadn't considered that point. But on the other hand, do you really trust people getting little information from a insular country to make well-informed opinions. It's part of the story, but stay skeptical of anything you hear.

I brought things up because of my own frustrations with social networks, particularly Reddit (see my username). Lots of Redditors repeating stuff they saw on Reddit with little critical thinking was part of the reason I strayed away and moved here (also the more technical focus here) Any time Redditors discuss topics or cultures that I'm familiar with, I can tell a lot of people are talking out of their ass.

> question has been flagged--for some reason?

This is unfortunate. I do think there is some interesting discussion to be had. As long as you do your due diligence on any discussions here.

SnooSuxon Ask HN: Why is Japan so insular?

While I respect you asking a legitimate question, I would recommend being cautious while reading this thread. Discussions about Japanese culture, and foreign cultures in general, tend to be dominated by westerners retelling ideas they've read by other western people on the internet.

Japan not having a large presence in American social networks makes it especially vulnerable to exoticization, speculation, and exaggeration of issues in the country. Especially when the discussion is largely (not always) the result of a long game of telephone.

I'm sure the commenters mean well, just take everything with a grain of salt and do some of your own research into the ideas presented here.

SnooSuxon In a Way, 3D Scanning Is over a Century Old

I assumed the OP was talking more about the math, which is also not true. The method mentioned in the article only takes into account the silhouette of the target. In my experience, that's where a lot of the information comes from, but to get that fine detail most contemporary methods incorporate a lot of information about the target itself like keypoints and lighting interactions.

SnooSuxon Ukraine officially recognized the Northern Territories as part of Japan

https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/territory/index....

I wasn't aware of the controversy until now and I assume most people didn't either. This declaration will likely raise awareness but I'd be surprised if it did much else.