Why don't Americans understand science better? Start with the scientists. - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/07/26/why_dont_americans_understand_science_better_start_with_the_scientists/ <comment><USER2> Or, start with the various leaders who discovered that anti-intellectualism is a great defense against criticism of bad ideas that they want to do anyway. This tactic isn't new -- remember Adlai Stevenson? Notice that the issues where public and scientific opinion diverge the most are the most politicized ones? It doesn't just happen in America; this is the effect of politicians and religious leaders targeting mindshare while scientists simply can't make that the priority. We eggheads don't stand a chance unless our research lines up with someone else's goals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or that our research aligns with the public's needs. That's what I take away from the miles of unused tubes in Texas.

The other problem is scientists aren't very good at organizing and lobbying. The biggest neuroscience organization, the one I belong to, has a well-known health care lobbyist representing them. His name? Newt Gingrich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Scientific literacy is no shield against anti-evolutionists or global warming deniers, for example, who are often scientists themselves, who couch their arguments in sophisticated scientific language, and who regularly cite articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Having the knowledge equivalent of a PhD is more along the lines of what's necessary to refute them, and even then, the task requires considerable research and intellectual labor, far more than most people have the time for._

As a "global warming denier", now I'm being lumped into the anti-evolutionist camp. What's next? Sticking us in with the flat-earthers and the folks who believe men didn't walk on the moon? Perhaps we can be included with the holocaust deniers. That's a fun group.

Science is about adbuction (inferring patterns from data), deduction (inferring rules from patterns), and induction (inferring new data from rules). You hypothesize and test to validate, and it's always provisional.

That means that science doesn't play the role of the oracle of ultimate truth. As the article points out, for scientists to take on this role is counter- productive.

Taking a cheap shot at the critics of current global warming theory is just so much political genuflecting. The article could have done without it.

<comment><USER4> _"As a "global warming denier", now I'm being lumped into the anti- evolutionist camp. What's next? Sticking us in with the flat-earthers and the folks who believe men didn't walk on the moon....Taking a cheap shot at the critics of current global warming theory is just so much political genuflecting."_

Misuse of the word "theory" to imply debate where none exists puts you squarely in the same rhetorical camp as anti-evolutionists. It's not a cheap shot to group pseudo-scientific criticisms based on the common logical fallacies used to advance their respective agendas.

<comment><USER3> Hypothesize and validate. It's as simple as that.

If that puts me in some rhetorical camp of yours (or anybody else's) then I'm happy to be there.

<comment><USER4> Show me the part of your comment where you advance and validate a hypothesis.

<comment><USER5> You didn't understand him.

Just "having no debate" is NOT a good way or determining "this is science". Until a hypothesis has been tested, it's not science.

Global warming has not been tested. It's not even a theory, it's a conjecture, or a hypothesis.

Science is not done by majority vote, I don't care that more scientists that not believe in it. By that criterion phlogiston and luminiferous aether were both science. Until you test it, it's just an idea.

<comment><USER4> I understood him perfectly. There have been multiple, public IPCC reports, summarizing _thousands_ of peer-reviewed, scientific journal articles documenting global warming in fields as diverse as oceanography, geology, biology, ecology and chemistry over the last 30 years. Meanwhile, neither of you have provided evidence for your own opinions, yet you have the gall to characterize an entire _field_ of scientific research as completely false.

This exchange is a case study of why global warming critics are rhetorically identical to anti-evolutionists and flat-earth believers: it's trivially easy to throw stones from the fringe of a scientific debate, then hide behind the fallacy that that you're the unsung outsider, defending science from the bad logic of the mainstream. It's a remarkably convenient position, since it allows you to criticize everything, but provide evidence for nothing.

<comment><USER6> Yes, yes, and the maligned hockey stick graph swifted through IPCC and made it to justify Kyoto protocol.

I'm actually in favor of Kyoto agreements, but please, it's more complicated than Al Gore vs. ignorants.

<comment><USER4> The IPCC reports have a lot more than just the "hockey-stick" graph. The "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change" report alone has over 500 citations to peer-reviewed papers.

Given that the report is public and free, I think you might want to take a look at it, rather than debating a straw-man.

<comment><USER3> This is a very simple argument.

Given fixed inputs, produce a testable, repeatable output.

It has nothing to do with peer reviews, political committees, cited papers, consensus or any of that. Nice try, but no banana.

So predict the worldwide temp in the year 2029. We'll wait around and see if that prediction holds true. As far as I know, nobody has yet been able to actually forecast climate and validate it. It's just all arm-waving and hysteria. That may pass as science for you, but it doesn't work for a lot of other people. Their position, which is mine, is that unless science is falsifiable, it's not science, no matter how much you gussy it up with anything else.

 _It doesn't even have to do on whether mankind is changing the climate_ \-- that's a whole nother can of worms. Along with whether and how much we should do about it if we are. Or the role of science in politics (hint: both will have a corrupting influence on the other) Or the question of what the perfect climate should be, or how fast it should change. This is just about whether or not you talk about global warming with the confidence as you do gravity, integrals, or electromagnetism.

<comment><USER4> That is, indeed, a simplistic argument. Unfortunately, it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've said here. I have not -- and would not -- suggest that science is a matter of consensus. The IPCC is relevant only in that it acts as an excellent, public summary of the scientific knowledge on global warming. It's a review article, not a popularity contest.

Your comment is only interesting in that you have, once again, used a favorite rhetorical tool of the pseudo-scientific debater: a faulty redefinition of "science". By your standards, a scientific experiment must:

 _"Given fixed inputs, produce a testable, repeatable output."_

which is supposed to imply that global warming can't be science, since we can't predict the weather next Wednesday, let alone a random Wednesday in 2030.

Unfortunately, while this line of faulty reasoning is superficially appealing to those untrained in scientific thinking, this definition excludes 99.9% of all scientific research done today. We can't evolve a complex organism in the lab -- yet we know that it happens in nature. We can't grow a human in a dish -- yet we've been able to do a huge amount of research into human embryonic development. We can't do repeatable experiments with nearly any human genetic disease -- yet here we are, making measurable scientific progress year over year in nearly every field that touches human genetic medicine.

A scientific theory needs to produce a testable _hypothesis_ , nothing more. The experiment doesn't have to be practical on any particular time-frame. And since you've (rather conveniently) provided a experiment for any theory related to global warming, you've refuted your own straw-man attack. Global warming theory is quite obviously within the domain of "science". It is patently absurd to suggest otherwise.

<comment><USER3> _The IPCC is relevant only in that it acts as an excellent, public summary of the scientific knowledge on global warming. It's a review article, not a popularity contest._

It's not a review article, it's a political statement put out by a political organization in order to effect political change. Read some of the dissenting opinions.

 _which is supposed to imply that global warming can't be science, since we can't predict the weather next Wednesday, let alone a random Wednesday in 2030._

Sometimes I think you're just talking to yourself, timr. Nobody is talking about the weather. Pick _any_ inputs, predict _any_ outputs. Take projected levels of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere (what are those, anyway?) and predict average global temperature. Take solar input and predict cloud cover. You choose. For us to have any sort of reasonable discussion about this "science" of yours, _you actually have to make some testable hypothesis_. Without that we have bupkis go on. _You're_ the person saying something bad is going to happen. Logically you have to have some idea of what output amounts to "bad". It's your problem, not mine.

Have the conversation that we're having, not some other conversation you wish we were having.

We have no idea how gravity works, yet we are able to model it quite accurately. Why? Let's take a look at your examples to see what we can learn there: life evolving, embryonic development, etc. These examples are complex systems that we can only make Bayesian links between. Why would we do that? Because we're still in the process of abduction in a lot of these areas. Nothing wrong with that. With gravity we've moved to induction. But it means that the science in those fields has not advanced to the same point as physics, for instance. Various fields of science are harder or softer than others.

Because you choose to conflate all of this for purposes of argumentation, let me give you an easy discrimination rule: the amount of data observed makes correlation more reliable even if hypotheses are flimsy. To give a real-world example, if I go to my doctor with cancer, he prescribes some medications. Now _even though he may have no idea of how cancer works or be able to predict how it will progress in me, I can have confidence his treatment will be "mostly" good._ Why? Because he has a million other cancer cases to statistically draw on. He may have not idea why the treatment he is using works (he may have not deduced any rules), but he knows from the patterns of a large set of data that, given a certain treatment, most patients get better. (He has abductively progressed)

Compare to those millions of patients (or millions of embryos or millions of cells to use your example) to the global warming guys who have one earth and about a hundred years of data. That's like me going to a witch doctor for brain surgery. Ain't happening.

The problem we have is that the softer the science and the sparser the data, the more easily Kuhn's observation of scientific paradigms plays itself out in research. In other words, groupthink takes over. It's very difficult to get anybody to believe that scientific consensus means anything when talking about integrals, but if you're talking about something like psychology consensus is really all you have. That's because without an inductive model we're stuck looking at data and attempting to find patterns. Biology sits nicely between hard and soft sciences. So it's a good example. The basic chemistry we have down. Some of the other stuff we're just guessing.

So while I think it's very interesting that current scientific thinking is that some sort of string theory explains the universe, I'll feel a lot better when we have a theory that can't be bent into saying whatever you'd like it to say. While I think evolution is a profitable and reasonable generally good thing for folks to believe, I don't think it's the answer to every open biological question there is. It's simply the best we have to address the big questions. And while I'm certain the absorption spectra of various greenhouse gases are well known and reliable, I'm completely unwilling to take that simple piece of data and extrapolate it using various forms of cellular automata into predictions of world-wide catastrophe. Yes, scientists are doing all of these things, and I'm sure it would hurt their feelings to hear that they're just blowing smoke up each other's posteriors, but that's all it amounts to. Guesswork. Relying on the paradigm because that's all we have. It's a great starting place. Now just complete the circle of the scientific method to get something useful out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> PZ Myers's blog has a good comment on this opinion piece:

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/solution_blame_sc...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/solution_blame_scientists_add.php)

Earlier on his blog he provided detailed criticisms of the book by the same authors.

<comment><USER8> Actually, that's not really much of a comment. Based on your pitch I was expecting a nice little tear-down, instead it's just drive-by on a book they wrote.

<comment><USER9> The "nice little tear-down" is in the book review mentioned, but not linked, by the parent ([http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/unscientific_amer...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/unscientific_america_how_scien.php)). Apparently these guys aren't very fond of PZ, and he isn't very fond of them either.

<comment><USER8> Should've linked that one first!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article starts by complaining about lack of basic knowledge "what is a stem cell", and then ends with complaints about the unwashed masses not toeing the line on global warming.

Science used to be only about testable things. Not anymore, now if you think about it really hard, and everyone else does too, and no one can find a flaw, it's science.

Global warming, evolution, and most of cosmology are not testable. Are they true? Maybe. But they are not at the same level as the rest of science. Will they be testable? I hope so.

So I'm not surprised that many people don't believe in those things, and scientists too. It's for a good reason. And complaining when scientists dispute global warming, when they have every right to is part of the problem! This article does EXACTLY what it itself is complaining about.

<comment><USER10> How are global warming, evolution and "most of cosmology" untestable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You might look at Aubrey de Grey's thesis on this topic. His focus is applied biogerontology, but the general incentives and situation he describes can be applied just as well to any field of science. See the diagrams in this short article:

The Curious Case of the Catatonic Biogerontologists [http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?articl...](http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=19)

</comment><comment><USER12> The author seems to think that real science is a subcategory of political science.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty sure that what science is is taught pretty early in school.

"Scientists must make it clear that while they don't have all the answers, science is about searching for the truth, an imperfect process of doing the best one can with the information available"

Really? I'm pretty sure I knew this when I was given an overview of scientific process in grade school.</comment>


New Proof Shows Infinite Curves Come in Two Types - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-proof-shows-infinite-curves-come-in-two-types-20181107/ <comment><USER2> The headline seems inaccurate to me.

The proof in the article states that there is a 100% chance of a random elliptic curve being either rank 0 (50% chance) or rank 1 (50% chance).

However, the article also informs us that there are an infinite number of elliptic curves with rank 2 or more. For example, the elliptic curve `y2+y=x3+x2−2x` is of rank 2.

So is it truly accurate to say that elliptic curves come only in two types?

<comment><USER3> I'm an undergrad taking some measure theory right now.

This is probably not exactly the mathematical formalism they are using, but it could be similar.

If I asked you to pick a random real number from 0 to 1, what do you think the probability is that the real number is rational? A natural way to answer this question is to try to generalize the way we say the interval from 0 to 1 is length 1 to more kinds of sets. Measure theory does exactly this, but we find out that the measure of the rational numbers is 0! This means that the probability of picking a rational number is 0. But that's clearly impossible you say, because there are an infinite number of rational numbers from 0 to 1! But in a precise mathematical way, the probability is 0.

Now a funny think I said was "pick a random real number". Since the computable numbers are also a measure 0 subset of the real numbers, it's literally impossible to randomly pick a real number with a computer...

<comment><USER4> Hey, non-mathematician computer science type here.

If I follow correctly, the issue with randomly picking any real number in that interval is that irrational numbers would require infinite computational steps to resolve. So the probability is really 0 that you'll get an irrational. If you have a finite number of computations, you're guaranteed to resolve to a rational, while if you have an infinite number of computations, you never resolve to anything.

Is that a decent lay interpretation?

<comment><USER5> Uniformly at random picking a number from the interval [0, 1] isn't possible with a turing machine (even giving it access to random coins). I.e. it's not a computable function.

It doesn't even really make sense, you can't represent uncountably many numbers on a turing machine, so it isn't even possible to return all but a tiny subset of the space.

You're imagining some turing machine that attempts to compute it anyways and thinking about the output. You seem to think that you can make a turing machine that

\- In the probability 0 case that we should output a rational, will output that number

\- Will otherwise infinite loop

This is randomized, so we are getting our randomness from some kind of "coin flip" like process. To know that we are in the that probability 0 case of outputting a rational, we will need to have seen infinitely many coin flips. If we've seen only n coin flips, there is still 1/2^n > 0 of the probability space that we haven't explored. So in fact any such turing machine has to loop infinitely in the rational case as well.

<comment> man-and-laptop Replace the role of Turing Machines with Type 2 Turing Machines. Then it _is_ possible. And it's got absolutely nothing to do with computable functions.

[edit] The downvoters can't argue with facts. I am _not_ deleting this comment.

<comment><USER5> Computers are not type 2 turing machines, nor are any other physically existing thing that we know of. They aren't really turing machines either because they have a finite tape, but since we are only interested in running the turing machine for a finite amount of time and thus accessing a finite amount of tape that distinction is unimportant.

The standard definition of computable is on a turing machine, not a type 2 turing machine. Of course we can define an alternate model where more things are computable. Edit: And the standard definition of computable is relevant because it happens to be the exact set of functions we can compute on real computers.

While Weihrauch [0] does introduce a _different_ definition of the word computable, that would in a randomized setting allow for sampling from the interval [0, 1] (and not just for rationals as I understand it either). Any algorithm on his "oracle turing machines" will still have to take an infinite amount of time, even to return the rationals. He just allows that in his definition of computable.

[0] [https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82440448.pdf](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82440448.pdf)

<comment> man-and-laptop Type 2 Turing Machines are a conservative model of computation. They are as realistic as Type 1 Machines. Both models involve an infinite tape. Your previous comment used the Turing Machine abstraction, so my response was entirely valid, suggesting that replacing your abstraction with another equally valid, and I believe more appropriate for this purpose, abstraction eliminates the problem.

Also, by the way, the distinction between "complete" and "potential" infinity is useful here. The Type 2 Turing Machines features only a "potential" infinity, the same type that's common throughout Theoretical Computer Science. A real number is a only a "potential" infinity -- a process of sorts. You seem to be demanding that a real number be represented as a "complete" infinity, but this isn't needed for anything in physics or engineering or anything else. The demand you're making, which would imply that an infinite amount of time is needed, is unreasonable.

And by the way, the downvoter is somebody who can't argue with facts.

<comment><USER5> I suppose the argument you are trying to make here is basically "having a machine that if we run it for long enough, will tell us any particular digit of a number, is as good as having that number".

In the concrete example, you would argue that if a machine which after n time steps specifies which 1/2^n sized interval the randomly generated number lies in, then having that machine is equivalent to having the randomly generated number.

I disagree. If I come up with any property of the number that requires seeing arbitrarily many digits to specify (e.g. "is rational", "contains more 1s than 0s", etc) you can never tell me whether or not the number your machine specifies has that property. That said, I can see where you are coming from. There is at least some argument that under this model it's not the number which can't be computed, but the "is rational" function.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about the downvotes. Internet points aren't important in life anyways.

<comment><USER6> What does "to have a number" mean?

A program isn't a black box. The number specified (in binary) by this program

        emit "0."
        loop forever:
            emit "110"

is both rational and contains more 1s than 0s. You no more need "run the program forever" to determine these of the number it presents than you need to perform an "infinite amount of long division" to determine it of the number presented by 6/7.

<comment><USER5> For arbitrary turing machines, determining what they will output solves the halting problem. E.g. the following machine is pi if M' halts else 0.

        simulate machine M'
        emit pi

Because of the halting problem you more or less do have to treat arbitrary machines as black boxes.

<comment><USER6> So? That's no different than a number specified in a "conventional" way, ie. by some mathematical formula in propositional logic. Let x be 0 is P if true and pi otherwise.

<comment><USER5> I'd recommend reading the relevant portions (or just all of) this paper: [https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf)

The conventional way of knowing a number is specifying it in a way that we can _quickly_ determine what it is and operate on it.

If I say "the next prime after 9^9^9^9^9^9^9^9^9", or indeed "the next prime after busy beaver(1000)" I have specified a precise number. But you don't think I _have_ it in any useful sense, because I can't compute it quickly (or in my second example at all).

Edit: And it should be noted that the above is more akin to the busy beaver example, no matter how long you operate that turing machine, if M' happens to be of the sort that doesn't halt but doesn't provably not halt, then you will never be able to tell me whether the number I "have" is 0 or pi.

<comment><USER6> But you haven't cleared anything up at all! What do you mean "determine what it is"? Do you mean compute its digits? Can you __have __an irrational number? a rational number with a non-finite decimal expansion? And what do you mean "operate on it"? By which operation? And what do you mean "quickly"?

In any case, the relevant program (assuming a fast random oracle)

        emit "0."
        loop forever:
            x := query random oracle for one bit
            emit x

seems to fit all your criterion. You can compute as many digits as you like very quickly. If you can have pi I don't see why you can't have this number (if you can have any random number at all).

<comment><USER5> We have branched into two different discussions it seems.

Does having a turing machine that will eventually output a number x suffice for having the number x.

And does that specific turing machine suffice for having a random number in range [0, 1].

As for the second, I have misgivvings about it but there's certainly an argument that that machine does work. The argument against that I currently find most convincing (that you don't have a classical representation that you can make two isolated copies of) is outlined here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18424725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18424725)

The first discussion is more nuanced. The meaning of knowing/having a number is not something I claim to have an exact answer to (and indeed since it's an english term it probably doesn't have an exact meaning). It's clear however that having a turing machine that eventually outputs the value is not the same as knowing the value.

What operations is really the most fundamental question, I'd argue that it's clear that if you know x you can at least tell me what the n^th digit of x is. An arbitrary turing machine fails this, an arbitrary turing machine fails being able to tell me what the _first_ digit is, let alone the n^th one.

I'm not going to take the stance that being able to compute its digits quickly is sufficient for having a real number, but I also won't argue against it. Personally I'd like to ask for equality testing too. I'm willing to yield that since I'm pretty sure that man-and-laptop will disagree and argue that being able to test for closeness is good enough, and he has a point even if I'm not convinced.

As for your the other questions you put to me, they aren't relevant for the turing machine part but:

Quickly, means in at most polynomial time. It might actually mean something stricter, but polynomial time seems to be a pretty clear upper bound on the amount of computation time you can need to find something while still being able to claim to know it. (See the paper I linked above)

We can certainly have a rational number with a non finite decimal expansion, you just need more creative forms of representing the numbers than listing digits. For instance the common method of putting a bar on top of the repeated ones, or alternatively quote notation is rather cool: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_notation)

<comment><USER6> > I'd argue that it's clear that if you know x you can at least tell me what > the n^th digit of x is. An arbitrary turing machine fails this, an arbitrary > turing machine fails being able to tell me what the first digit is, let > alone the n^th one.

Sound good (assuming we accept the 999... problem of non-uniqueness). So let's assume the machine makes progress in finite time ie. there is a sequence of natural numbers a(n) such that after time a(n) the machine has emitted at least n digits.

There's another possibility you mentioned above about a machine taking an input n and finding a value within 2^(-n) of the number. A machine that keeps emitting numbers on either side of an integer, eg. 2.1, 1.99, 2.00001, etc. fails to tell the first digit. But these numbers are arguably even more physical that programs-emitting-digits. They're roughly the real numbers you'd get from doing actual (classical) physical measurements.

> Personally I'd like to ask for equality testing too.

You didn't answer the question about irrational numbers but do you think we can have pi? It seems infeasible to mechanically determine that an arbitrary program you are given is a valid pi-digit-calculator though.

If you don't think you can ever have irrational numbers, then I think I see where you're coming from now. Having a number could be having a finite representation of the number that can be mechanically tested for equality (in time polynomial in the sizes of representations): a string of digits, a ratio of strings of digits, a string of digits with decimal point and a bar over the repeated ones, etc. IOW a normal form in some finitary data type.

> Quickly, means in at most polynomial time.

In what? You want the nth digit printed by time O(P(n))? If so, that is strictly stronger than finite time progress so we could dispense with that. But polynomial time doesn't make any sense for a machine that emits a finite string of digits and halts because it doesn't have an input.

> or alternatively quote notation is rather cool

Hah, I was going to ask about p-adics (do I have -1 if I have the machine that emits an infinite string of 1s?).

<comment><USER5> > 2.1, 1.99, 2.00001

I'm really not satisfied with saying that a machine that gives smaller intervals like that is fully sufficient, on the other hand that's really all we're doing when we specify digits...

> They're roughly the real numbers you'd get from doing actual (classical) > physical measurements.

I'd argue that a series of physical measurements don't give you a number so much as a probability distribution, even classically.

> do you think we can have pi

I'm not sure.

The problem I have with denying pi is it doesn't make much more sense than denying 1. Base pi is a perfectly rational numbering system. It's perfectly possible to introduce a special 'pi' symbol (rather like 'i') and define rules of arithmetic so that things work with both rationals and rational multiples of pi. And everything I said just applies to infinitely many other irrationals as well (e.g. 2^(1/n))

> It seems infeasible to mechanically determine that an arbitrary program you > are given is a valid pi-digit-calculator though.

Indeed, this is true even if you replace "pi" with "1" though, that's another reason why having a program that calculates the digits isn't sufficient.

> Having a number could be having a finite representation of the number that > can be mechanically tested for equality (in time polynomial in the sizes of > representations)

Yes.

> In what? You want the nth digit printed by time O(P(n))?

It's a vague definition anyways, polynomial in the sum of everything that is relevant... probably O(P(n + the number represented)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do you think the article garnered 7 comments on its website, but 25 here on HN?

<comment><USER8> A lot of people were confused by the paper's probabilistic claim, and tried to correct each other. At the time I'm writing this comment, only one of them has done so accurately and germanely, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER9> It's not unexpected for people to be confused when the article is stretching the truth to the breaking point.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Best Buy Uses WebGL to Create Interactive Appliances - <AUTHOR> http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/1540319/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a project my team has been working on a very long time and I'm really excited to see it in the wild.

All the 3d urls:

      * 4-Door Refrigerator - http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/5258309/

      * Top-Load Washer - http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/8822012/

      * Front-Load Washer w/ Steam and Water Jets - http://esd.bbystatic.com/3d/4995705/

<comment><USER2> I don't suppose you guys have found a way to make it economical to model, texture and animate products en masse? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> LoL, it is not fully automated. Unfortunately, the economics isn't something I can talk about.

<comment><USER2> Figured as much. I've worked on projects before that have tried to make it work financially, but 3D capture always falls short on quality (and I'll bet the specular highlights on those appliances caused you guys many hours of fun if you tried that approach too!) and it's too expensive to hand-craft all the assets. Hope you guys make it work! It's a cool area and I'm sure you'll have clients queuing up if you can!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On mobile there's no navigation back to the product page? What if I want to buy it?

Be interesting to hear if this is actually useful for people or just tech for the point of tech. The zoom to see the controls I can see the benefit of, the underside of the washing machine less so!

<comment><USER3> Just to add, nice implementation, worked smoothly on an iPhone 6.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're very proud of what we've built, though we're still working on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As much as I would like to be enthralled by such technology, it seems we have hardly progressed at all in the last 10 years wrt 3D web technology. For example, look at this demo of VRML shader technology which is 9 years old: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFz7-RbGV8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFz7-RbGV8s)

Now, where are the game changers?

</comment><comment><USER5> There is no discharge port.</comment>


After the riots, how security expert got back his MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3297317/after-the-riots-how-security-expert-got-back-his-macbook-pro/

<comment><USER2> Is it really needed to post the same crappy story 5 times on HN?

He's not a security expert either. Hacking doesn't always mean security expert. Lots of times it means programmer, engineer, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the story reported three days ago, with a great deal of discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878055>

It's also been posted here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2890714>

</comment><comment><USER2> Exactly. There are actually 2 more links on HN also. Like said, this is the 5th post for the same thing. Come on guys!</comment>


EFF'ing Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/617-EFFing-Up.html

<comment><USER2> I think the article misses the point of Tor (and why the EFF suggests it's use).

Tor is not about, nor promises to make you secure. It's an anonymization proxy, which makes you a little harder to be "snooped" on by really anyone.

The EFF is suggesting people take additional steps, or everything they can to make the job of the NSA (or anyone else trying to snoop) that much more difficult. And to that goal, Tor does a decent job when used in combination with other methods such as SSL, etc.</comment>


8K is now being broadcast in Japan - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsshooter.com/2018/12/01/8k-is-now-being-broadcast-in-japan/ <comment><USER2> There are a lot of comments debating whether 8K is worthwhile vs 4K, and whether we can see a difference. I decided to do some math.

Let's assume someone has a 65in (165cm) TV and sits 6.5ft (~2m) away. This is a larger TV than most people have, and a closer viewing distance than most people sit. Let's also assume that the viewer has 20/12.5 (6/3.75) vision. 20/20 (6/6) is the low end of normal, and it isn't uncommon to have slightly better vision. My optometrist (my fiancée) can correct me to about 20/15, but 20/12.5 is unusually good.

The screen width is 56.65in. At this distance, that subtends an angle of about 40 degrees:

        >>> math.degrees(2 * math.atan(56.65475464133182 / (2 * 6.5 * 12)))
        39.9191582380095

20/12.5 vision corresponds to 48 cycles per degrees, or 96 pixels per degree, distinguishable (20/20 is generally accepted to be 30 cycles per degree). Therefore, the viewer can distinguish 96 * 40 = 3840 pixels horizontally. Which is UHD 4K resolution.

I chose the inputs to get to that result, but my point is that viewers would need to have unusually good vision, and unusually large TV, and be sitting unusually close to hit the limits of 4k. And that's only for very high contrast images, like black text on a white background. Our eyes are less sensitive to low contrast transitions, as found in most videos. Try reading an eye chart with the letters printed in gray on a lighter gray background. It's more difficult!

I think there are much better things we can use our limited bandwidth for than increasing resolution: we could use better compression codecs at higher bitrates, reduce or eliminate chroma subsampling, increase color depth and/or gamut for HDR content, or use higher framerates for content where that is appropriate.

EDIT: Here's a source for 20/20 = 30 cycles per degree, and 20/12.5 vision being unusually good: [https://www.opt.uh.edu/onlinecoursematerials/stevenson-5320/...](https://www.opt.uh.edu/onlinecoursematerials/stevenson-5320/L08Acuity.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I'm sitting about 1.8m away from a 720p television showing a standard definition UK terrestrial signal (which is 576p) and I'm honestly baffled how anyone could want any higher res. In fact the only issue I notice is the poorer picture quality on some of the lower bitrate channels, the major channels are as clear and sharp as I'd ever want.

<comment><USER4> I agree. 720p is good enough. And a 65" screen in a living room is obscene.

<comment><USER5> What about in a home theater setup?

<comment><USER6> its better to have 4k projectors because you can really see the difference but its pretty much only Sony that makes consumer ones and they are super pricey still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a movie nerd I was interested by the bit about the broadcast being in 120hz. This is... unusual for most visual content.

Where video games strictly benefit from a higher framerate, adding more frames does weird things to movies and television. As you may know, most movies are shot at 24 frames per second, which is low considering humans can see far more fps than that.

This lower FPS means movies are actually impressionist paintings of reality. The framerate blurs what is being filmed so it looks less like a set and more like what we've been trained to think of as a movie.

Movies that experiment with high framerate like Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (120 fps) find it makes selling the fiction harder. Viewers can see the cracks in everything a lot easier. This is one reason people disliked Peter Jackson's 48 FPS version of The Hobbit. Instead of seeing a group of dwarves, high frame rates made them look like a bunch of guys in funny costumes.

All this is to say it's _interesting_ they are making high frame rate a part of their video future when its future within movies and TV is undecided.

<comment><USER8> Personally, I'm very disappointed that the higher frame rate of The Hobbit has been interpreted as bad. For 3D, in my opinion, it was a much better experience than using a lower frame rate for 3D. In my opinion, using a lower frame rate for 3D has been a bug ever since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I saw 8K demos at Yodobashi Camera a few years ago, and I couldn't tell the difference between 4K and 8K.

I can tell the difference between HD and 4K, so my eyes aren't completely shot. But I think we're getting to the point of resolution for resolution's sake. Like having a speedometer that goes to 200 MPH, when the legal limit in your state is 85, and the car simply isn't capable of 200.

I remember back when the Amiga came out. My friend who had one said it showed 4,096 colors because that was the limit of human perception. Now I know he was wrong, but it made sense at the time.

<comment><USER10> "car simply isn't capable of 200"

what if it's going down a steep hill?

<comment><USER9> If it's my car, the wheels will fall off before it reaches the bottom. Mine starts to shake around 90, then smooths out until about 120, then starts to shake again.

My mother-in-law in the back seat was not happy.

<comment> think-about-it And you think it's because of the bumpiness of the ride? You're going to kill someone driving like that on public roads.

I was in the backseat of a car driving like that in high school. Driver lost control while changing lanes, we swerved across multiple lanes of traffic, exited the interstate and flipped five times. The two people in the car not wearing seatbelts were thrown from the vehicle as we rolled.

Nobody died, but by rights any or all of us should have.

Seriously, stop.

<comment><USER11> It is absolutely common to drive that fast on German roads. With less accidents/mile than America. It needs good driver education, good roads and good cars, and then it's fine.

<comment> bn-usd-mistake It's 200 MPH, not KMH. Going ~320 KMH is not absolutely common on German roads

<comment><USER12> Even seeing cars capable of going 200mph is a rarity. Very few cars can go 200mph and they're all rather expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Extrapolating from current consumer situation, we can expect 8K huge ass TVs which display cringingly poor picture and users won't care. As usual contemporary digital TV setup is:

1\. set top box is by default sending only 720p to the TV

2\. HDMI input on the TV is by default in "video mode", where it rescales the picture even when fed native 1080p

It took me months to eventually figure this out, and now I have sharp pixel- perfect FullHD picture...that makes compression artifacts pop up :(

<comment><USER14> The overcompression/poor compression of streaming video is scandalous. Netflix cannot even offer a decent DVD quality stream, it seems perverse for them to even offer 4K.

<comment><USER15> I have far, far worse compression artifacts in cable broadcast (apartment provided, can't opt out) than from Netflix, and I can only pick out artifacts in Netflix 4K if I'm actively trying.

Where streaming services do fall down for me is audio stream handling. If you stream high quality in most services on most dedicated streaming devices you get 5.1/7.1 by default, with awful, unconfigurable downmixing to 2.0/2.1 that makes you crank the volume to make dialogue audible but is still immediately drowned out by the slightest peripheral foley effect. Amazon video is the worst about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article says they're not just broadcasting in 8K, but 8K at 120 fps!

How many displays are actually capable of not just displaying 120hz, but actually accepting a 120 fps input (as opposed to just interpolating)?

<comment><USER17> 120fps is the real news here. Most people will see no difference between 4K and 8K, but 120fps is an immediately obvious improvement. People will probably attribute the sharper image to the higher spatial resolution, but it will really be the result of reduced sample-and-hold blur. I'd take 1080p120 over 8Kp60 any day.

<comment><USER18> > is an immediately obvious improvement.

Technically, yes.

I'm one of those weirdos who thinks movies aesthetically look better at 24 frames for the "dreamlike" quality. Racing/Action Sports, yes, please more frames.

<comment><USER19> A movie at a frame rate higher than 24 looks strangely "cheap" to some of us. I believe it's because on a subliminal level, the higher frame rate reminds us of a television broadcast.

<comment><USER20> Also known as the "soap opera effect": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation#Soap_oper...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation#Soap_opera_effect)

<comment><USER21> This is definitely real.

This was quite noticeable to a trained eye in the finale episode of David Lynch's Twin Peaks returns season.

As I was watching it, somewhere mid episode where the story moves between two realms of reality, I noticed the image suddenly had a much more real (or "cheap") appearance.

I was in awe. That was a super nice touch done a technical level which really helped elevate the story itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To the question of how much resolution is enough, my answer is: can you see the pixels when you approach your eyeball to the screen? If yes, then resolution can be improved. If no, then there is no need for more pixels. On modern big television (e.g. > 45in) then the resolution required to pass this limit is well, well beyond 8K.

You can argue that because you look at the screen from a distance this criteria is irrelevant, but there are all sorts of discussions and argument about perception of clarity and whatnots which makes calculations based on distance hard to defend properly. The only way to be sure is to be unable to perceive pixels even if it's right in front of your eyeball. Like actual things in life.

I'm convinced resolution will improve until this limit is reached, as it should.

<comment><USER23> No, it should not. No one puts their eyeball to the screen under any normal circumstance. And each additional pixel has implications for bandwidth. Bandwidth is a limited commodity. I don't want my internet bandwidth reduced by your desire to watch TV from less than an inch away.

<comment><USER24> We need smaller pixels because the next gen tv will be a millimeter away from your eyeballs

<comment><USER23> Yes, we need smaller pixels for that, but that doesn't mean we need more than 4k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow, and I haven't even jumped up to 4K yet. It seems like technology might be advancing faster than many producers can keep up.

As I understand it, in the anime world most airing shows are still being animated at 720p or at slightly higher resolution, with a handful of them occasionally being animated at 1080p. Although the best studios typically clean things up and make a huge number of improvements for their 1080p BD release. Movies are generally animated at 1080p.

Older cell-drawn anime are being scanned at 4K / 5K to produce new 4K releases, and I'm told the level of detail in those is incredible, which makes sense given that they're hand-drawn with extreme care. Currently the best known release is probably Ghost in the Shell (1995).

Even the incredibly popular movie Your Name was animated at 1080p. The special edition is upscaled 4K with HDR.

The high cost of 4K releases also creates a barrier. A standard 4K Blu-ray movie seems to go for around ~$80. If you want both the English and Japanese versions of Your Name at 4K you're looking to pay around ~$195, admittedly that's for the 5-disk collector's edition. Compare that with a typical ~$20 1080p Blu-ray release.

Being unable to prepare a personal backup is also a problem. Ideally I'd dump the movie right away so the physical medium can be stored in as pristine conditions as possible. It would feel very frustrating to spend that much money, only to have it casually damaged.

<comment><USER26> Storing 8k media is going to be very expensive for a common man.

<comment><USER27> The common man will stream 8k. Discs are slowly on their way out and local media servers are for people on hn doing their own and rich people buying things like the Stratos s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I saw nothing about bitrate? I can't help but thinking that the same bitrate would look better at 4k, or even 1080p.

<comment><USER29> Sometimes higher resolution can even reduce the bitrate, since jagged edges become smooth transitions. Basically, the codec has the freedom to reduce the resolution if that's what will maintain the most quality.

I only know about this practically in regards to 10-bit anime being more compressible than 8-bit, but I assume the same logic applies.

<comment><USER30> I don't think so. 10-bit improves compression because posterization leads to noisy patterns that must be encoded. By smoothing the posterization out, encoding a gradient, and having the decoder produce the noise, you can save bitrate.

But the equivalent in spatial resolution is encoding near-horizontal lines... which isn't a common situation (unlike gentle color gradients) and isn't a problem in the first place.

<comment><USER31> How does posterization differentiate from banding? I know when I encode videos from an 8-bit color space, I sometimes have to generate an additional layer of noise so that I don't end up with those horrible macro-blocking blotches you get with banding.

<comment><USER30> Posterization is the technical term for this sort of banding.

Banding can refer to all sorts of things that form bands, like fixed pattern noise from a camera sensor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember original starcraft, 256 colors and 640×480 it was a feast for my eyes. It will always be about content, not the medium.

<comment><USER33> You're absolutely right about that. I always thought getting a bigger screen would dramatically increase my viewing pleasure but I don't think it hardly even counts for 5%. Content still is king.

<comment><USER34> there is actually a standard distance away from a screen that determines maximum viewing pleasure , I think it is 10ft but that is a rule of thumb it changes due to screen size.

[https://www.crutchfield.com/S-2baTDHKQBkY/learn/learningcent...](https://www.crutchfield.com/S-2baTDHKQBkY/learn/learningcenter/home/TV_placement.html)

I think it has something to do with full vision of the screen at any time so your its centerted and a particular percentage of your field of vision. I couldnt find the study which was for sports and movie watching but I bet such a standard is even more important for gaming.

Basically relatively speaking your screen should be the same size in your field of view but the fact that its bigger allows for better detailing.

4000px from 5 feet doesnt look at good as 8000px from 10 feet even thought they fill up the same area in your field of view

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Been waiting and looking forward to 8k. It would make a significant difference for me.

I use a UHD/4k 40" TV as a monitor, running at native resolution. It's essentially four 1080p 20" screens in one. The pixel density is pretty good, but not "retina"/high DPI level.

Things can be a bit too small as I sit further from the screen than a regular monitor.

With 8k, it'll be four 4k 20" screens in one.

I'd be able to go to a larger screen without sacrificing much on pixel density. I would no longer have to zoom in on certain websites and can just get a larger screen.

<comment><USER36> I've seen setups like this but have never really understood the point. You're either left sitting far away and scaling everything up (reducing the resolution) which defeats the purpose of having a larger display or you're exposing your eyes to the constant light of more screen space than you can actually see and putting up with the eye strain of looking at a 1:1 virtual- to-physical pixel ratio. It seems to embody the stereotype of American consumer logic, i.e. bigger and more is always better.

<comment><USER35> The setup is fantastic for me, and would be even better with 8K screens.

I'm running at native resolution, so not doing the "sitting far away" option.

"More screen space than you can actually see" \- This is somewhat true. There's an upper limit to the size where it becomes impractical for most use cases. I'd say that limit is 40"~55", and mitigated somewhat by curved screens.

It's not too different from having a large quantity of screens you'd see at say, a trading desk, but all conveniently in one screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> _To be able to watch 8K you not only need an 8K capable television_

Why is all this high-resolution media walled behind decoder boxes and DRM? 4k blu-rays have some fairly intrusive DRM as far as I understand, and then there's 4k streaming like on Netflix, which requires hardware DRM to playback on PC.

<comment><USER38> Consumers need to speak with their wallets if they want to impact change in this arena.

<comment><USER39> That isn't quite fair.

Consumers aren't told about DRM. The spec sheets don't speak about what restrictions are in place. You only discover after the purchase that some capability you had assumed you could do no exists.

E.g. for me I've had this twice. Trying to view an HD movie over a component cable—nope not allowed. And second my daughter discovering she can't use music from a streaming music service in a home video. Both occurred well after initial purchases.

<comment><USER40> "my daughter discovering she can't use music from a streaming music service in a home video"

Can you say more about where the DRM applied in this case? I would expect it to kick in, say, if you upload a home video to YouTube that incorporates copyrighted media, but I would be surprised if something prevented you from making a video (say on your phone) that included whatever music playing over speakers.

<comment><USER16> I imagine the OP was more referring to trying to whip something up quickly in iMovie (or similar). If you own the track, this is trivial. If you're used to Spotify, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The environmental impact of all the TV churn... :/

<comment><USER38> Agreed, I'm still not convinced I really need to upgrade to 4k yet let alone 8k.

<comment><USER42> If you're happy with your 1080p TV, you'll probably continue to be so, unless you get a 4K OLED TV, which may blow your mind a bit.

<comment><USER43> > 4K OLED TV, which may blow your mind a bit. reply

Genuine question: does it display movies in a "natural light" the same way as a plasma TV does or does it display it under a "fake light", the same way as the LED screens do? (even the 4K ones). I'm asking because I'm a movie buff who's really attached to his plasma TV but looking at the available LED options up on the market I don't see anything that satisfies me. Yes, the image is "clearer" on the latest LED 4K screens but it also looks "fake-ish" when it comes to watching movies.

<comment><USER44> OLED is not back lit, so it probably looks better than plasma once you account for the higher pixel density. I haven't done a side by side comparison though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> 8K sounds scary but if you think of it as a sequence of 33MP photos it starts to sound quite OK. Plenty of cameras shoot photos with higher resolution than that already.

</comment><comment><USER46> I used to be skeptical of very hires video but two weeks ago I got a System76 laptop with a 4K display - I love it.

I think that people are missing the value of 8K which in my opinion is home (or business) video walls as seen in the 1990 sf movie Total Recall. When walking up to part of the wall, you still get hires anywhere you look. And oh, I want that to be touch screen.

</comment><comment><USER47> I want 8k, especially for when OLED on plastic comes out and it becomes less expensive for massive screens.

But as a current owner of a 65" 4K LG OLED, while I can see a difference between 1080p and 4K, HDR is a significantly bigger deal to me for picture quality than 4K is.

HDR and going to an 11.2 (from 7.2) Atmos setup have had the biggest impact on my movie viewing at home. The 4K upgrade was nice, but if I had to choose between HDR and 4K, it wouldn't even be something I had to think about.

Another big upgrade for very specific types of movies has been getting a Dreamscreen, which is similar to the Philips Ambilight TV setups. I like it a lot for sci-fi movies with lots of action and scenes with a variety of colors in high contrast situations. I keep it turned off for most other types of movies, so it's pretty niche.

</comment><comment><USER48> So a 4k H265 HVEC stream is 12mbit./sec. I assume 8k is the double, 24mbit/sec. That doesn't sound too outrageous from the point of view of media consumption. Syndication, multiplexing, production, post production and handling of 8k .. sounds harder

<comment><USER49> 8k has four times as many pixels as 4k, so at the same bitrate/pixel it would be around 48mbit/sec

<comment><USER50> You don't need 4 times the bitrate because compression technology scales better than linear the higher the resolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Does that camera have an SFP+ port out the back of it?

<comment><USER52> Yup: [http://www.sharp.co.jp/business/8k-camera/download/catalog/p...](http://www.sharp.co.jp/business/8k-camera/download/catalog/pdf/catalog201711.pdf)

Makes sense. You probably won't want to pop out the 2TB SSD every time you need to get data off, and 8K footage takes a ton of bandwidth.

It looks like the newest versions of USB and Thunderbolt support comparable speeds, but SFP+ has been around for a while and is probably much more widely supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Steve Yedlin (cinematographer of The Last Jedi) posted an excellent analysis of image resolution in cinema on his website. It utterly convinced me that resolution beyond 2K/1080p is superfluous on most normal-sized cinema screens at normal viewing distances. IMAX will, however, benefit noticeably from higher resolutions.

[http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html](http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html)

<comment><USER54> I just can't believe this. Watching Mad Max in 4k on a 65" from 12 feet away there's still an obvious difference in detail and texture. You can see the bumps on skin, and grains in the sand.

So many ppl ITT throwing around equations but I have both 4k and 1080p content and all I can say is the difference is very real. Planet Earth II vs Planet Earth I is another example. Netflix 4k vs 1080p shows. Things like forest scapes, schools of fish, snowy mountain ranges all have just awesome differences in detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Dithering in lossy compression algorithms destroys picture quality for me. No matter if it's 1080 or 8k. Particularly with dark scenes. Anyone else feel this way?

</comment><comment><USER56> I worked with NHK on the London 2012 Olympics. It was unreal. Generally more static shots as that much screen real estate / clarity gives you so much to look at. Probably not that important at home though, as there's a golden ration of distance/pixel density+size and 4k is probably at that edge, even HD is fine for small front rooms (unless you've got a very large front room and TV). Better pixels, not more pixels

<comment><USER57> >Probably not that important "at home" though

Exactly. So what is the point in terms of 8K Broadcast, where I presume it is targeting precisely, at home?

Not trolling, but a genuine question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> What really matters now is directors moving to HFR or 60fps to shoot movies. Resolution is already good enough that fps is lagging behind.

<comment><USER59> I don't think audiences want HFR movies. It's fine in sports and gaming but you pretty much have to upend the entire movie industry to get HFR not looking like crap. The more frames you're shooting per second the more light you need to use on set to capture the movement.The more light you use the more you see make-up and how bad some costumes actually look IRL.

Look at Peter Jackson's The Hobbit movies or Ang Lee's Billy Lynn.

<comment><USER5> > The more frames you're shooting per second the more light you need to use on > set to capture the movement.

You don't think cameras will improve enough that 8k can be shot with same or even less lighting than is used today? Is it a physical limitation?

<comment><USER60> Yes it's physical. The max exposure time is inversely correlated with the framerate. If you shoot at 100fps for example you cannot keep the shutter open (and capture photons) for longer than 10ms, as you need to close and start the next frame, and it will look dark. And the standard for movies is to use 180° exposure meaning half the inverse of the framerate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> 4K TVs at normal distance already exceed the resolution the eye can see.

This seems impressive, but also seemingly pointless.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/why-ultra-hd-4k-tvs-are-still- stup...](https://www.cnet.com/news/why-ultra-hd-4k-tvs-are-still-stupid)

<comment><USER62> I recall in the 90s when they said a 640x480 image was the equivalent of a 3x5 photo print. I think it's naive to assume our vision can be diluted down to a fixed resolution at a given distance.

No, I cannot see the pixel grid of my 55in 4k OLED TV at a viewing distance of more than about a foot. However I can see a single pixel illuminated at about 25ft.

So to say there is not benefit to 8k is like saying we'll never need more than 640k of RAM.

<comment><USER63> > I think it's naive to assume our vision can be diluted down to a fixed > resolution at a given distance.

You have an alternative theory of vision where resolution is not limited by photoreceptor density? Look, there are only so many cells on your retina.

> However I can see a single pixel illuminated at about 25ft.

And you can see a star (which subtends a MUCH smaller angular size than that mere pixel) at hundreds of light years. Yet it takes a skyscraper-sized telescope and mindbendingly crazy interferometric and occlusion techniques to detect even the planets in that system, much less the disk of the star itself.

No, this is wrong. Your eyes can't detect the difference between 4k and 8k at routine (i.e. 90 degree width or so) distances. They just can't.

<comment><USER64> People can tell the difference between a 4k and an 8k TV. 4K is still only 2,160 vertical pixels. That's normally plenty but some images have really obvious issues at that resolution. EX: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiré_pattern](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiré_pattern)

PS: Eyes have 120 million rod cells, and 6 million cone cells. Further, those cells are not in a grid pattern. A 4K TV is approximately 8.3 million pixels so it's approaching the right order of magnitude, but still has some room before you can individually activate each cell.

<comment><USER65> Yes bad mastering is an issue; a properly anti-aliased 4k master would not have any moire effects. By all means shoot in 8k or 70mm film and then master it to 4k, but 8k broadcasts are silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Resolution like this helps experiment with breaking the 60/120 Hz paradigm by refreshing multiple overlaid 4k displays at varying frequencies to to improve realism.

Also has application in AR/VR which can use more pixels up close to the eye to improve clarity.

</comment><comment><USER67> "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need."

However, I would like the redundant bandwidth and computing power to be used to implement HDR first. It's a more perceptible and immediate improvement than 8k.

</comment><comment><USER68> I thinks this cameras could become really useful in an indirect way, just something that come to my mind is the ability to have zoom crops in post production still keeping the 4K final render.

</comment><comment><USER69> 8k broadcasting could be the path to realistic 360/3D videos -- where at each moment your eye gets only some fraction of full resolution video.

<comment><USER16> You're likely going to want more than 8K for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> 8K is completely pointless, you need to be sitting about 50cm from your already-giant TV for it to make a difference over 4K.

</comment><comment> oh-kumudo How many people have the TV/Monitors to actually watch 8K? This is impressive yet feels like redundant innovation.

<comment><USER71> Would your adoption plan have been to not provide any 8K channels until a sufficient number of people had bought 8K capable sets without anything to watch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I found 720p quite sufficient for almost everything. I think I once selected 4k on a YouTube video that was showing how to do something technical and didn't zoom in close enough to really see what was going on. The extra pixels were helpful there, but a better detail shot would've been better.

</comment><comment><USER73> It seems more likely every day the 2019 Mac Pro will be an 8k editing monster.

<comment><USER74> And cost north of $10K.

<comment><USER73> quite possibly. I think it's clear it will blow the iMac Pro out of the water, which is already not cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I was perfectly fine with my 24in CRT TV set (and a DVD player that produced the amazing picture on it) until they came out with the 32in flat screens... I think it's all in the head.

</comment><comment><USER76> Unnecessary traffic for satellites.

</comment><comment><USER77> Youtube has had it for a while now, and at 60fps, no less.

Example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1La4QzGeaaQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1La4QzGeaaQ)

<comment><USER75> Looks good on a 9" iPad, too!

<comment><USER78> Apple's product can only watch 1080p Youtube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> now you can wank in super hd #motherfuckers</comment>


Parboiled, the PEG parsing framework for Java and Scala - <AUTHOR> http://parboiled.org/ <comment><USER2> If you are in the market for a Java-based parsing framework then also take a look at lingwah: <http://code.google.com/p/lingwah/>

Lingwah is a parser combinator library written in Java

With lingwah you can express a context-free grammar directly using lingwah's combinators. Unlike most other parsing tools, you don't have to refactor your grammar to eliminate recursion.

Lingwah uses the memoization and 'continuation-passing' techniques described in the paper "Memoization in Top-Down Parsing" by Mark Johnson

</comment><comment><USER3> I played around with this framework this afternoon and it's pretty slick. I am especially fond of the examples that it ships with, which include, but don't stop at, the ubiquitous calculator.

It suffers from Yet Another Build System syndrome but it's a minor inconvenience compared to the gains from the actual software.</comment>


Duffel (YC S18) raises $30M for flight booking API - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/28/duffel-raises-30m-led-by-index-ventures-to-disintermediate-legacy-travel-platforms/ <comment><USER2> In a world where consumer spend is going to be shrinking amidst an upcoming downturn and consumer CAC going through the rough "vertical enterprise software" is going to be the next megatrend.

Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software solutions exist that people could "Duffel?"

<comment><USER3> > Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a > better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software > solutions exist that people could "Duffel?"

I could enumerate 100's of these problems, but this really isn't the right question to ask. The only reason this startup is possible is because the IATA allowed them to be. So perhaps the question should be "how many industries are ready to standardize their communication protocols via modern APIs?"

Great example - providing a unified banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business. But it requires the network effect of all of the banks to be involved. This either happens via industry groups or via regulation.

<comment><USER4> > banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business

Why?

AFAIK most big banks have APIs, and it would seem to me the use cases for needing to access an account programmatically are few.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Most big banks require a ton of red tape to use those APIs. Even if you're using modern technology with a top tier dev team, this is still a 4-6 week endeavor at its absolute quickest turnaround.

2\. All ACH transfers, for example, have to clear the Fed, which is done via FTP.

3\. The consumer use cases are endless (make payments, analytics, etc). Just look at Mint, Truebill, etc.

4\. The commercial user cases are endless (treasury management, AP, AR, etc).

<comment><USER5> (Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Duffel) Totally agree with your point above re: IATA. They made it possible but for a different reason, they opened the door to competition.

Standardisation of communication protocol can only do so much, especially when the standard is built to accommodate the needs of 100s of airlines using 100s of different host systems.

Also, there is ton of red tape around airlines' APIs as well, I'd say probably as much as in banking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this aimed at the existing travel agent industry or at _an entirely new class of travel professional_? If it's the latter, I'm pretty excited about this. I have several friends who I've leaned on for helping with travel plans (who essentially acted as my API for international travel). I could see plenty of businesses created out of this - imagine turning a travel blogger into a travel planner with minimal additional effort on the part of the blogger. Airline points writers would also seem to be an ideal user of a suite like this.

<comment><USER5> THIS THIS THIS!

Exactly what excited us about building Duffel in the first place. (After we struggled to get access to a decent travel booking API ourselves).

We want to give everyone the opportunity to sell travel products, anywhere.

<comment><USER6> Glad to hear that! I have one friend who has built a reasonably successful luxury travel business, but I have at least 5 others who are functionally free APIs for their friends. I would love to see this as an emergent specialty space - imagine if a frequent traveller like the ones I'm referring to could plan their trips, but also easily create them to share and sell to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amadeus offers an easy-to-use and affordable flight booking API too: [https://developers.amadeus.com/self- service/category/air/api...](https://developers.amadeus.com/self- service/category/air/api-doc/flight-create-orders)

What's new here that Amadeus or Sabre do not offer?

<comment><USER8> I had to build a hotel booking platform on Amadeus a few years ago and it was a nightmare to work with their API. It would frequently break or start returning differently formatted responses. Also the support was so bad, I felt like I was the first developer the reps had ever spoken with. I hope a newcomer can unseat the incumbents in this space, it's badly needed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we are innovating in this space, perhaps it's time to address IATA's PNR (passenger Name record) Standard that is used by Sabre and Amadeus. Plenty of privacy issues in that old system.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Privac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Privacy_concerns)

<comment><USER10> The PNR is a bit of a nightmare, but you have to keep in mind that the PNR itself and the interfaces to manipulate and transfer it have been backwards compatible since the mid-70s. The PNR won't go away soon, however what is important is to move it away from the end user (whether traveller or agent) and relegate it to a low-level data format. Using PNR+last name as a form of "secure" identification is crazy for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty exciting! Some time ago I was checking the available APIs for searching flight information. I was quite surprised to find out there wasn't anything suitable for starting small.

API with a reasonable pay-as-you-go plan would enable innovation on this space.

Despite all the effort from different companies the searching/booking experience still does not feel "enjoyable".

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I had a side project I wanted to work on a few months back, and had to icebox the idea because the current flight related APIs are not great, and access is geared towards larger, established companies.

<comment><USER13> I emailed some travel related API providers for a side project a while ago and they happily offered me a cheaper price than the listed one once I explained what it's for.

Never hurts to give it a try.

<comment><USER12> I did in fact try, and was rejected either immediately or after a few weeks of reviewing my request.

IIRC one provider did let me in, but it didn't have the functionality I needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain how Duffel is different than the google flights API?

<comment><USER5> Are you referring to QPX?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congrats.

I went to their site. Too bad there is no blog or any content there beside the homepage. Hope they will create it soon.

A large portion of that $30M will go to PPC campaigns probably, instead of building a solid SEO structure that gives real value to their target audience and creates a solid brand.

<comment><USER5> More content coming soon - there is tons of stuff we want to share about the industry.

Definitely not planning to spend a large portion of that $30M on PPC, maybe just $25M _.

_ joking!

<comment><USER16> Are you calling Sabre / Amadeus APIs in the background "for now" ?

<comment><USER5> Nope, no GDS at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're integrating with Airlines' booking systems directly. This will work until you become so big that the airlines feel threatened by you, at which point they'll cut the API access and implement whatever idea you were working on.

That's how my bank operates! You can use our API but we reserve the right to shut off access at any time for any reason. Oh look, your customers love this feature you just added? Gee, we need to close your API access for _reasons_. Oh look we just added this great new feature to our app, don't you love it?</comment>


Show HN: Go-config – A simple JSON configuration file parser for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hypebeast/go-config

<comment><USER2> This is nice, I think it would be even better if it could accept any kind of reader so as to support other formats (ini, toml, etc.).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the good idea. I'll see what I can do.</comment></comment>