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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

It's disingenuous to say that Disney invented these "colors", or that they're "colors" at all. The article is even explicit that they are many different shades, that vary according to surroundings.

More accurately this is a color design strategy to use muddy greens to blend/hide equipment/fences/buildings, and sky blues to make buildings seem shorter and less obtrusive.

You can see stuff painted dark green in any state park, so I doubt Disney "invented" that strategy. The sky blue technique is interesting, though -- this is the first time I've heard of or seen something like that.

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The is at least one precedent for the sky blue - the underside of Spitfire fighter planes in WW2!

(Admittedly possibly with a hint of green mixed in as well).

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire#/media/Fi...

Haint blue on Southern US porch ceilings is a similar approach, to trick ghosts and for aesthetics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haint_blue

The constant witch hunt here in the comments is so much more annoying than headlines that just try to sound colorful and fail to convey the full nuance of their story in twelve words. I'm smart too, I know colors aren't invented, I'll decide what I think of the headline without warnings.

Not really; it’s all I could actually think reading the article (before I saw the comments) when it said “a darker Go Away Green” and talked about transitioning between different shades of the blue. It’s just not a color at all, but a family of colors used for a specific purpose. Still interesting but not like I came in expecting.

What did I come in expecting? A specific shade that was A/B and panel tested and perhaps shown in eye-tracking studies to minimize the attention drawn to objects painted in that particular shade. A family of colors makes more sense (because there isn’t any one right answer for all scenes), but it’s still not an “invented color” - and notice that I’m not quibbling about the “invented” bit by saying it’s been used before or it was always there but they just discovered/names it.

glances at the electorate

I think it might be important not to assume that everyone thoughtfully scrutinizes the details in publications.

But this touches on something I now notice daily on HN and elsewhere that “smart” people congregate: a dangerously weak empathy for what’s actually “typical.”

HN is very dev-heavy, and devs tend to be very pedantic. Our jobs require exacting clarity and correctness, after all.

I thought they invented some novel pigment, like Ventablack, not just they painted some buildings background colors.

Guess I'm not smart too.

> I know colors aren't invented

But what you're replying to isn't talking about whether colours are "invented," just whether Disney did it. It also discusses the article, with its full nuance, not just the headline.

So what exactly are comments for, if discussing aspects of the submission are off-limits?

And to be fair, in context it's not unreasonable to read "invented colors" as "they came up with a novel application for specific colors". Or more simply, they "invented a user for these colors".

While colors are not "invented", there use and application is material/situationally dependent. Vantablack is absolutely an invented "color" since it's use requires both the color and material application. Disney's painting of these buildings with a specific color, finish, and properties is not much different.

> Vantablack is absolutely an invented "color"

I just can't make my brain accept that vantablack is an "invented" color. It's not even an unusual color. It's black.

It's the other material properties that set it apart and qualify for the term "invented", not the color.

In the real world, the other material properties are what make the color. You can’t isolate just the RGB components, like you can on a computer.

Hmmm. I thought "color" is the mix of the frequencies of the light being reflected and/or emitted. I wouldn't call other things that affect the appearance "color" at all.

For instance, you can have a flat blue and a glossy blue that are the exact same color.

While I think you're technically correct, my practical opinion is the two are essentially inseparable. Physical properties greatly affect how a color is perceived.

The thing you are complaining about is exactly why I like coming here. I want to hear about why the pithy headline and subsequent text is slightly wrong/incorrect. If you don't want to hear opinions about the article in question, why not just read the article and avoid the discussion?

There are recorded problems with painting buildings sky blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DpOa7VPNW0

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