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If anyone’s interested about this period of time (and the Anabaptist revolution) a great novel: Q by Luther Blisset

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(novel)

martin_balsamon EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear

+1 to Ascension, one of the most fine piece of filmmaking that tries to explain the world of today

martin_balsamon Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

I went back to his website [1] and spent almost an hour of a boring zoom call playing Coin Counter [2]. [1] https://jacklance.github.io/games.html [2] https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=9ebe1e5ad44ac222593...

martin_balsamon Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles

This interplay between different worlds reminded me of Enigmash, by Jack Lance [1]

[1] https://jacklance.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=cfdcc6e...

martin_balsamon Show HN: Unflip – a puzzle game about XOR patterns of squares

I agree the ramp up is a bit slow, but I love the concept, and the interface. I am stuck at level 26

edit: found a way to solve it in 6, but not in 4

martin_balsamon Bypass Censorshop of DEI Terms

This automatic word censorship reminds me eerily of the short story "The City of Silence" by Ma Boyong.

part 1 https://web.archive.org/web/20120118104342/http://worldsf.wo...

part 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20120201032550/http://worldsf.wo...

martin_balsamon Show HN: Kreuzberg – Modern async Python library for document text extraction

Garbage collect module (cfr. Neuköllner for the past 12 years)

martin_balsamon Stanley Kubrick did it his way

Chris Nolan famously drives all his production designers insane! No one has made more then one film with him. Apparently he also only shoots 3 or 4 takes per shot, and goes ballistic if somethings goes wrong.

martin_balsamon Gödel, Escher, Bach is the most influential book in my life (2022)

I don’t know what language you speak, but GEB it’s been translated into multiple languages during the years.

I read it in Italian as a teen, the Italian edition is beautiful, and incredibly well translated (the book includes many puns and language tricks.)

martin_balsamon Why Oppenheimer Deserves His Own Movie [video]

?? Dunkirk is imo the best one of his non-linear narratives, with 3 storylines intertwining: one taking place in the span of one week, one in one day and the last one (the plane) in one hour.

martin_balsamon Office of the President of Mongolia: Top to bottom text on the web

Wow. They only agree with “Mongolia “ and the number 80

martin_balsamon What is an eigenvalue?

But it is named after its characteristic, albeit in German

martin_balsamon Disney Filmmaking Process

Not really, yes some interpolation is done automatically, but most character animation, especially for high budget films like Pixar is hyper finely tuned to the frame level, manually adjusting the interpolation curves to get the most expressive animation.

And then you have films like Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse where they did a mix of 24fps and 12fps for a more punchy and cartoony effect. In the end it’s not about realism but emotion and artistic representation

martin_balsamon The Matrix Is Unreal

I remember reading that the end credits of Red Dead Redemption 2 was something like 7000 people

martin_balsamon The Humble Brilliance of Italy's Moka Coffee Pot (2018)

And this is the ultimate HN answer.

Even in a thread about coffee, it must mention ThinkPads

But I also have the same moka. It’s good

martin_balsamon The machine that saved Moore's Law

The number of people who believe that Moore’s Law is dead doubles every 18 months

-Jim Keller

martin_balsamon The 'impossible' crane shot from Soy Cuba (1964) [video]

Thank you! Long Day’s Journey into the Night was the first movie I watch at the cinema after they reopened in 2020. I knew nothing about it. I was very confused by the first part, but when the second part started and I noticed they weren’t cutting I was locked in like few other times. I had never seen a movie that depicts so well how it feels to dream, and be in a dream.

martin_balsamon Mars Helicopter successfully completed its second flight

Don’t forget vacuum welding

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_welding

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cementing

The first time it happened it must have been puzzling

martin_balsamon Matrix multiplication inches closer to mythic goal

I think Quanta magazine is directly funded by Jim Simons, the billionaire mathematician who founded Renaissance Technology.

martin_balsamon Implementing the Elo Rating System (2020)

Super nit-picky comment, but it’s Elo rating, not ELO. It’s not an acronym, it’s named after the physicist Arpad Elo

martin_balsamon Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The Three Body Problem”

I think Ken Liu is a writer on his own right first, and a translator second. that might be part of the reason

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

martin_balsamon Joining Apple 40 years ago

Ops...my bad. I was wondering this morning why there seams to be a tradition at Apple to hire French engineers and executives.

martin_balsamon Joining Apple 40 years ago

Sadly, he then was at the center of a non competitive fight between Apple and Google. After he left Apple, Google tried to hire him but was forced not to do it by Steve Jobs

https://pando.com/2014/03/27/how-steve-jobs-forced-google-to...

martin_balsamon I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

The daily shout is the humor section of the New Yorker. I wouldn’t take it too seriously

martin_balsamon In Search of God’s Perfect Proofs

I studied with Günter Ziegler at FU Berlin and he’s been by far the best lecturer I’ve ever had. Had a great taste in clarity and beauty in presenting rigorous proofs.

Just looking at his handwriting in the photos brings back good memories.