Hacker News Reader

H_Lon Darktable 4.0

Took a quick look at some posts there and this stood out: https://discuss.pixls.us/t/extreme-highlight-recovery-in-dar...

In my opinion, the Lightroom edit in the OP is the best. Many of the replies with Darktable edits look extremely bad. Some have extreme color artifacts.

H_Lon Swift on the Server (2020)

Swift is absolutely an afterthought on non-Apple platforms.

Apple doesn't even provide ARM slices for the official Swift Docker images (https://hub.docker.com/_/swift?tab=tags) which makes server-side development on their own cutting-edge M1 (ARM) machines basically impossible.

H_Lon iMac with Retina 5K display

The jump from 3840x2160 to 5120x2880 is nearly 2x, in pixel count. That is not just a 'tweak existing technology' kind of jump.

TCON's that can handle a single logical 4K display are just hitting the market, and Apple has one shipping today to handle 5K. A timing controller may be simple tech, but it's cool that they're so far ahead of the curve.

H_Lon Multiplayer Game 'Eve Online' Cultivates a Most Devoted Following

No. Under Time Dilation, everyone on the node is affected equally. This gives you more reaction time, but your opponent gets the same benefit.

Edit: I see what you were saying now. Actually yes, I believe that there have been cases in which capital ships are tackled in TiDi systems. This puts them at a disadvantage since the corporation who captured them can quickly respond, and it takes them much longer to try and escape tackle.

H_Lon Wikileaks Says Aaron Swartz Was a Possible Source

Is this an attempt to spark some inane conspiracy theory?

A suggestion that Aaron's involvement as a 'source' made him a target of the government, so his suicide was not actually a suicide but rather a targeted attack?

H_Lon Apple’s stock price falls to lowest point in six months

"The stock has been artificially inflated for too long and this was bound to happen some time."

Actually, Apple's P/E ratio has been fairly modest for a long time, especially compared to other tech companies that don't rake in as much cash. Microsoft's P/E is nearly 15, compared to Apple's 12.

H_Lon Adobe Edge Web Fonts

I feel that this is effectively:

Adobe® Edge Web Fonts: Paid for graciously by the users of Typekit.

H_Lon A device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious

Maybe not a putdown, but it's silly to view Apple's defining characteristic as their ability to assemble a device from available parts.

If that ability is what makes them successful, then their rival phone manufacturers should be even more successful since they often use faster processors and bigger screens and more RAM than Apple.

H_Lon Mars rover camera project manager explains 2MP camera choice

Everyone is missing the point here. The problem isn't that these cameras are old tech and using outdated CCD censors. If these were the best images we've seen to date of Mars, you're right, there'd be a "Good Enough Factor" — the best images we've seen from a NASA mission, but not as good as modern DSLRs. Understandable.

The problem, that I think a lot of people are missing, is that Viking 1, from 1976, took higher quality pictures of Mars. http://f.cl.ly/items/0k2w2d1C1O3w3e0t300f/NASAQualityDegreda...

H_Lon First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

Some of the images, and the one I used for my comparison, are from the Mastcam, I believe.

The MAHLI is the only visible light camera that hasn't been used at this point.

H_Lon First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

While yes, the full color image I posted was re-compiled from the original red, green, and blue channel images sent from the rover by a non-NASA source, even NASA's B&W images look better back then than they do now.

I made an image to illustrate this: http://f.cl.ly/items/0k2w2d1C1O3w3e0t300f/NASAQualityDegreda...

H_Lon You Either Die A Hero Or You Become The Villain

False dichotomies are fun and all, but let's be honest. Does it really either have to "die a hero" or "become the villain"?

The whole point is that Twitter has become the villain, and that App.net is providing an API infrastructure, not a closed social media experience owned by advertisers.

H_Lon Daring Fireball: App.net

App.net is not Twitter. It's an infrastructure, upon which new social services can bloom. It's AWS.

H_Lon First full-resolution images of the Martian surface

While yes, the original pictures from the low res camera look bad, the new raw pictures from the higher-resolution cameras aren't really that much better. Better than the images from the iPhone 1, probably. But better than Viking 1 images from 1976? Honestly, it doesn't look like it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Mars_Viki...

Just look at the detail per pixel. It's amazing. You can see tiny details in the sand. It's looks like if you took an image on a 20 megapixel DSLR with a high-quality lens, then scaled the image down to web size. The resolution isn't higher than a camera-phone, but the detail is remarkably better. And that's from nearly 40 years ago.