I Have No Talent - <AUTHOR> http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2010/01/12/i-have-no-talent/ <comment><USER2> I hope that this quote isn't so well known that it's cliche but it is one of my personal favorites.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge

<comment><USER3> It's rather ironic that this quote is coming from someone who advocated doing as little as possible as president, refused to run for a second term because he felt he would be elected for too long, and very arguably contributed to the Great Depression that happened the year after his term ended.

<comment><USER4> _and very arguably contributed to the Great Depression that happened the year after his term ended._

The Great Depression was triggered by the US Fed (created in 1913), which massively increased the money supply, and the passage of the disastrous Smoot- Hawley trade protection bill in 1929.

Note that the money supply increase gave birth to the Roaring 20's, not unlike what we've had for the last seven years (up till early 2008). Note that the current US administration is also increasing trade protection as well (Chinese tires, etc.)

<comment><USER3> And by your own admission, it was through his own inaction that he let the Fed run amok. Also during his term, trade tariffs went up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I do not measure myself against the programming greats, but against those projects on my Github profile from years ago."

This is so much the key. At college I read a sports psychology textbook which described the empirical profile of a "winner". One of the traits was that winners compete against themselves, not others. A marathoner's goal should be to beat their best time in their next competitive marathon. An example of a basketball player's goal might be to improve their free throw percentage over the next 5 games.

If you focus on improving yourself, beating other people takes care of itself (if you're capable and that sort of thing matters to you). But, either way, you do the best you can and that's all anyone can ask of themselves.

<comment><USER6> > _If you focus on improving yourself, beating other people takes care of > itself (if you're capable and that sort of thing matters to you)._

As you note, unclearly, this only works if you're at the top of your game. If I do a marathon in 12 hours then beating my personal best isn't going to get me anywhere close to a gold medal. Also I've always found that competing with my betters tends to bring up my game.

I feel I have to say, to counter any false assumptions: To win at sport for me has always meant to feel I've performed well and enjoyed the game - and that's not because I'm totally rubbish. Winning is something I enjoy, but winning badly is worse than losing well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great post!

I can easily identify with OP. I also learned hard work from my father and from my first job (McDonald's), where you simply could not go home until all the work was done. I've had that same work ethic ever since.

This post also reminds me of most successful business people I've even known. Their single biggest differentiator (that I noticed) was a refusal to stop trying to get something done, not just with each business, but with every thing they did _every single day_.

The other thing I love about this post is that it's clearly by someone who has been through the wars. A poser would never even think to say things like:

 _I'm exhausted physically so I should go to bed, but mentally I feel on fire so I let the code have me for another hour or two._

 _a GitHub profile stuffed with code I regret_

 _I ran into something I did not understand and instead of giving up, I pushed through._

 _I sat there in front of my computer for hours and wrestled with class and class instance variables._

 _I have attacked each thing that I do not understand until I understand it._

 _There are still so many people out there who are far better than I am, but that does not stop me anymore._

And +1 for my favorite:

 _I beat code that isn't working into submission (though often times the code wins)._

</comment><comment><USER8> People say "I wish I could do that" about everything. Playing a musical instrument, for instance. It's not that they _can't_ \--it's that they don't have the time in their lives to devote to practicing it. "I wish I could do that" really means "I wish I had the extra time to do everything I'm currently doing, but also fit in something low on my priority list, like that."

<comment><USER9> Time rarely is the real problem. Fears, lack of energy, lack of focus, etc usually is what prevents people from doing things... And even when time _is_ the issue, often stopping yourself from wasting time is an effective solution.

<comment><USER10> That sounds corny, but… My grandmother has always said: "Don't say that you didn't have time, but only that you didn't _take_ the time".

Every time I'm tempted to say that I didn't have the time, the reality is that I wasted my time doing something else. (like writing comments about my grandmother on Hacker News)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Then your talent is the ability to work hard.

<comment><USER12> > Then your talent is the ability to work hard.

That's not necessarily a talent. You can get it from practice.

<comment><USER13> The ability to work hard seems to be even more talent-based than being smart. Executive functions [1] are supposed to be highly heritable, more so than the intelligence [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions>

[2] [http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_ge...](http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_genetic_individual_differen.php)

<comment><USER14> One of the guys I went to grad school with a was just an obsessive worker. He was the kind of person who could not sleep if a problem was left unsolved. I remember thinking that it would take more effort for him to work as (relatively) little as I did, than for me to work as hard as he did. He also finished a couple years earlier than most of the people we started with...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A key concept that is not mentioned in this article is _interest_. He is right about practicing. However, practicing things I am not interested in is drudgery, while practicing things I am interested in ... mostly just happens. The result is that most of us get very good at the things we are interested in.

Blessed are those who are very interested in something that the rest of the world values.

<comment><USER16> I have to agree with you that those that are interested in what the world values are the most blessed, but no practice 100% enjoyable. Risking misquoting him, I remember reading in one of Kasparov's books "I only love 80% of chess. I do the other 20% so that I can do the 80%".

In Ericsson's book about deliberate practice, he shows thru multiple studies that practice for world class performers is usually painful and not enjoyable at all. He even says that 'if you're sailing thru it, you're not practicing' (or I read this on an article about it).

In the end, liking what you do helps you put up with the practicing you need to do to perform what you like

edit: wrote 80% where I was supposed to write 100% (facepalm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _I used to think that I wasn't smart enough. I was jealous of those that did crazy code stuff that I couldn't even comprehend. Then, one day, I ran into something I did not understand and instead of giving up, I pushed through._

You shouldn't be jealous of people that do "crazy code stuff". It's a sign that they haven't learned how to create simple solutions yet.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily true. In my experience a "complex" piece of code is more often a piece of code you just don't understand. You should generally try to understand a piece of code before you dismiss it as overly complex.

<comment><USER17> It isn't necessarily true but it usually is. Developers spend way too much time getting cute, optimizing for the infrequent case. Choosing a slight increase in verbosity in favor of simplicity of implementation is usually a better decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I couldn't find the quote, but I think it was Wayne Gretzky who said he'd take someone hard working over someone with talent + poor work ethic. Now hard working + talent = something to really watch for.

A few I did find:

      "The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day,
       that I never dog it." – Wayne Gretzky

      "It is one thing to be talented but if you do not work hard, it is worth nothing..."
      – Wayne Gretzky

The last one might have been what I was remembering...

</comment><comment><USER20> Ahh, the half-truths that sound so nice, people don't bother to look at the other half :) Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. Talent (or genetics, or natural inclination, or a good teacher that came along early on, whatever you want to call it) is another variable that's necessary but not sufficient.

When I was just starting out my friend and I both got the same computers. Our parents sent us to the same Sunday computer class to learn. We were both pretty bright. Except I quickly excelled at it, and he was stuck. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't catch up. What came naturally to me was an uphill battle for him. If he started out again today, there's no way he'd ever catch up to me, not in a million years.

He was far better at sports than me. During gym, he'd run circles around me while I barely stood there, gasping for breath. No matter how hard I worked, I could never outdo him. I suppose if I set out to practice my running full time every day of the week, I could (with huge effort) outdo all the lazy people that have the talent for it. But it's unlikely I'd ever outdo the talented people who work for it, and I certainly have no chance in hell to outrun Donovan Bailey, not in a million years.

Oh, and talent and hard work together are necessary but not sufficient. You could work 24/7 at hammering a mountain with a toothpick, and you could get really good at it, but you still won't get anywhere. You have to have enough sense and enough luck to stumble on the right thing (or to have enough sense and enough luck to stumble onto the method or process that will help you stumble onto the right thing).

It's not _just_ hard work - that's a pipe dream. There are as many workaholics that toil for years and never see the light at the end of the tunnel as there are lazy talented people that never get anywhere. The truth is, you might never succeed at what you've set out to do despite being hard working _and_ talented. In fact, the statistics are overwhelmingly against you. It's not empowering and it's not romantic to say that, but it's the truth.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure that's really true. There was a discussion on it here about 3 weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012986>

I think there's a feedback loop of sorts, where people tend to enjoy things they're good at more, so they spend more time at them, so they get better at them, so they enjoy them more. This feedback loop gets started by what we normally think of as "talent" - inborn ability. But what if that talent is just the random chance that your first try happens to be the right way to perform that skill?

There're ways to interrupt the feedback loop too, which is why both talent and hard work seem to be necessary but not sufficient conditions. If you decide you really don't want to do something, you're not going to practice, even if you're good at it. Or if you decide you're going to keep trying approaches until you get over whatever block is holding you back, you can become talented at something even if you weren't initially successful at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great post!

I feel exactly the same way. But one thing I do think I have (and you do too, obviously) is taste. I can look at my code and see it as good or bad (most of the time bad). That means I can keep striving to make it good. And my eye for what is good and bad keeps maturing so when I go look at code I wrote two years ago that I was pretty proud of, I see bad code now.

Without the ability to see that your code can and should be better, your work ethic cannot kick in.

<comment><USER23> This video from Ira Glass (of This American Life fame) sums up the discrepancy between taste and ability beautifully.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE>

He talks about how you get into a creative field because there are works of it which you love and you can distinguish early on between good/interesting and bad/banal work.

But then you start making stuff. And for the first few years, it just isn't very good, and you realize that.

He talks about bridging that gap and how it took him eight (!) years before he started making things which he even recognized as being interesting and good.

It's probably the best piece of advice I've ever seen for people still at the frustrating end of a creative career.

I know too many kids who showed an early eye for quality in some field (architecture, CS, etc) but then gave up out of frustration when the stuff they made wasn't up their own standards.

<comment><USER24> +1 for remention of this Ira Glass video

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein

<comment><USER26> I also found this quote in the comments: "I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits." (Refactoring, Beck Fowler, 1999).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am addicted to the phase of working with something new when I feel totally humiliated because there's too much to understand. the feeling of victory when things work properly is so great, but it takes hard work and perseverance.

I'm getting back into rails for a project and this time I really try to not hold back on looking things up and doing it right. I feel I can pull it off in a rather good way this time, it takes a lot of work and research to know enough to be able to read the docs efficiently and when to expect a one-liner solution in the framework. But I still feel totally stupid. It is also easier to judge plugins. There are so many juicy things in rails these days, like nemed scopes that take lambdas, it's really getting there.

</comment><comment><USER17> _I do not measure myself against the programming greats, but against those projects on my Github profile from years ago._

This is good advice. It is the best way continually increase your status without constantly feeling like you are trying to one up your peers.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think you need both talent and persistence to be successful. And I agree that talent is generally overrated (but needed).

If you have some talent and also some persistence in things which you like, than you may still have some problems: you need some time management strategy. This is by far the key issue for me: What am I really interested in? Shall I dig deeper in that subject? Or shall I go and learn new things in which I am a beginner and not THAT interested? Shall I do things which I am really interested in, or shall I work in a day job for more money, to make enough money to take care of my family? Shall I practice creating algorithms, which I am pretty good at right now but not the best, or shall I learn more about marketing, in which I am a beginner? Shall I choose a hobby project in a theoretical territory like creating an interesting programming language, or shall I execute my other idea which is not THAT interesting intellectually, but still interesting enough, and can earn me money if successful?

So I think the key is not only persistence, but to choose what to do, to find your style, to find out what is the thing you are really talented/interested in, what you want to excel at. Hacking is still a very broad territory in itself. You cannot be the best in every aspect of it even if you practice for years or decades. To reach a very high level the key is to choose what to learn and practice very cleverly (or luckily).

</comment><comment><USER29> Talent has always struck me as a strange thing to compliment people on, much like complementing them on the country they were born in or their last name. It's not something you can really help if we accept it as something innate. If however you think that someone shows particular adeptness at a skill of some kind, imo it's more applicable to compliment hard work or to note that years of practice has clearly paid off.

<comment><USER30> People comment on good lucks all the time, and it's largely inherited. You can work out, eat right, etc, but you can't change your bone structure (without surgery, at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great advice. My Dad always told me I suck at music. But I just wouldn't give up. I destroyed one Cello bow along the way in frustration for my lacking skill, but now 20 years later I got this beast under control.

Then, of course, there are the people that are hopeless, and no amount of practice will get them over the hill.

<comment><USER32> I think there are people to whom these skills come more naturally, but people seem to underestimate the degree to which fierce determination and persistence can overcame a lack of natural ability.

This is probably less true for purely physical pursuits (athletic activities, for example), but not entirely untrue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> IMHO, this is like saying, "I am not really beautiful. It's just that my face and features are symmetric and they just happen to confirm to traditional norms of attractiveness".

A lot of what we take to be talent _is_ "hard" work, except that the work doesn't seem hard to those who love doing what they do. In other words, talent is just a transformed form of obsession with a subject. The more you work with something with the _intention_ of getting better at it, the better you get at it. And the rate of getting better just keeps accelerating until there comes a point where few other humans could hope to catch up with you in your lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for editing the title. It previously included "RailsTips by" and I thought this was for Rails developers and didn't click on it.

</comment><comment><USER34> great post, i thought i was the only one like that, sometimes i feel really stupid that i can't come up with a good solution for the problem, and in the end fail to do anything.

this really remind me: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration" - Thomas Edison

</comment><comment><USER35> I love the point that he makes.

At its worst extreme, people use the fact that "others are talented" to excuse their own mediocrity - which really just stems from their unwillingness to put in the time.

</comment><comment><USER36> This post remember the Thomas Alva Edson's. He said: "Genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration"

</comment><comment><USER37> can't good memory become very helpfull in programming? and how good is the the author working memory ? my point is that being smart is not the only important capability for programming.

</comment><comment><USER38> Great Post!

Code Forrest! Code!

</comment><comment><USER39> 'fantastic perspective.</comment>


Employers ask job seekers for Facebook passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/20/4351264/job-seekers-getting-asked-for.html

<comment><USER2> This is not this reportable?</comment>


Acqua Alta - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqua_alta <comment><USER2> We have asimilar phenomena here in Buenos Aires when there is a big storm and also the winds push the water of the river back to the city. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudestada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudestada)

It only affect part of the city, because most of the city is constructed like 40 foots over the sea level.</comment>


Security concerns over new Thunderbolt I/O technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Security-concerns-over-new-Thunderbolt-I-O-technology-1198476.html

<comment><USER2> FYI, if you're concerned about this issue with any Apple product and Firewire DMA, turning on the firmware password can block this kind of attack:

[http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.21/21.02/Securit...](http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.21/21.02/Security/index.html)

(halfway down, "Disabling Fiewire Direct Memory Access", EFI passwords on x86 do the same as OF passwords on PPC machines)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can see some concerns over this, but at the same time hasn't the conventional wisdom _always_ been that you can do anything given physical access to a machine?

<comment><USER4> The problem with this is that you can be tricked into giving access to it. I would not count plunging a display adapter into my computer giving someone "physical access" but in this case it would do.

<comment><USER5> Very true. It seems like a simple thing to loudly inform the user that a new PCI device was connected. But that would probably only help savvy people-- everyone else would just click ok without reading the dialog.

A real solution would be some sort of DMA whitelist provided by the OS driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like their scenario of a projector that could dopy the entire contents of a hardrive in the background. But that would require a projector that would do such a thing.

I think what would be an even better scenario is that, since Thunderbolt devices are meant to be daisy-chained and have 2 ports for that purpose, a 'standard' thunderbolt projector could have a homebrew device chained to it, that the presenter knows nothing of. (Hidden, explained as something else, etc). Then this standard-made projector can be made to be a malicious one simply by daisychaining another device on to it that could copy the contents of the presenter's hard drive.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of a report we got while building a unix clone. The report stated that a user could craft a setuid root program on a floppy and if any random user executed that file if the floppy was mounted, then the machine was owned.

Wouldn't true security professionals understand that once you grant physical access to the machine, that all is lost?

</comment><comment><USER8> If I remember correctly you are able to exploit DMA access through firewire by creating an iPod that would be able to dump the contents of memory to the hard drive. If you had DMA access using Thunderbolt you could dump the contents of memory in a very short time!

<comment><USER5> And even better, you can get access to the other PCIe devices--in particular the SATA devices. Though it might be tough to talk to devices that the main processor is actively using. Even if you somehow disable interrupts on the device, the potential for conflicts (leading to data corruption) seems amazingly high.

<comment><USER9> Rather than talking to the disk controller over Thunderbolt, I would use TB to insert a rootkit in the kernel that would use the standard APIs to read the disk. Similar to this: [http://esec- lab.sogeti.com/dotclear/index.php?post/2010/11/2...](http://esec- lab.sogeti.com/dotclear/index.php?post/2010/11/21/Presentation-at- Hack.lu-:-Reversing-the-Broacom-NetExtreme-s-firmware)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny the first thing I thought about when I heard about thunderbolt was "awesome! Now I can build a ghetto NUMA system". But I guess others are concerned about security.</comment>


Ask HN: Create full backup of Android device and store it on cloud - <AUTHOR> I've organized music files into various album folders on my Android device. I tried few backup apps, they did backup well, but dumped all my music files into one backup folder on Dropbox. Now, I'm unable to browse my album folders in that backup folder. I desperately need an app that maintains my albums in the backup folder as it's organized on my device. Also, it should backup my new music automatically when I put them on the device. <comment><USER2> I would be happy to know of any App that easily meets this need.

If there were an App that just backs up to cloud everything on the phone automatically, it would be very helpful. I won't need to do much, the app automatically takes a backup of all the files to cloud. Even if I loose my phone I have the data on the cloud.

<comment><USER3> Foldersync let's you sync all the folders on your Android to Cloud (Google Drive etc). Maybe you can setup folder sync to sync all of the folders to Google Drive or other cloud storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have dropbox app, and I manually upload all files. I understand it's painfully hard. But I had bad experience with Backup apps, and you're right - they flattened my folder structure, and hard to see the data if I want to selectively restore.

<comment><USER5> Great

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I too have similar requirement. I manually connect device to laptop via USB and copy files to it. Would be better if there is an app that reliably sync to my cloud account.

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried Autosync, it solves my full device sync problem, though I don't like the interface.</comment>


EBay Is Slowly Losing Its Soul - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/08/21/ebay-is-slowly-losing-its-soul/

<comment><USER2> I stopped using ebay a long time ago. You can't find any deals on there any more. + now the difference in cost on the "deals" is so little, that its not worth it to take the risk of dealing with a possible scammer when you can deal with an actual company and have the added protection you get from using a credit card.

<comment><USER3> You can still use a credit card with eBay.

<comment><USER2> most sellers don't accept them

and thats another thing, thanks to eBay used things end up costing almost as much as they do new. In fact about a year ago I was bidding on something second hand, and the final price ended up being about 15% more than the thing cost new(both online and in stores).

<comment><USER3> >most sellers don't accept them

That's not true. Very very few people are willing to pay by cash, so it's basically paypal or nothing, and eBay requires paypal accepters to accept credit cards.

I can't speak to the price, except that I find ebay items by using google product search, and price is king.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I continue to use eBay, but only for obscure collectibles and art that can't be found anywhere else. They're still irreplaceable in that respect.

Still, it's hard to imagine why they think spamming themselves with fixed- price auctions is going to be beneficial. If anything, it hurts them by drowning out traditional auctions. Fraud and flaky sellers are too much of a problem on eBay to use them for any item I can find elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> Simple: They make money on the listing fees.

Lower the prices, increase the volume.

<comment><USER4> It's self-defeating if the end result is drowning out the unique and used items that attract eBay's core customers.

<comment><USER3> Are you sue that 'unique and used items' is the core of ebay? I have a feeling it's not anymore.

Plus with categories and search, I don't think they'll be drowned out. It's not a physical store - there's no space shortage.

<comment><USER4> It's possible you're right, though I honestly don't understand why anyone would buy something through eBay when they can get an identical item through Amazon for the same price without the hassle and risk of fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel that ebay "lost its soul" when it didn't respond to sellers gaming the feedback system. If you are not familiar with this, sellers would withhold feedback to the buyer until the buyer gave positive feedback to the seller. Now, there are buyers who give negative feedback to sellers without just cause, so part of this behavior is defensive but the essence is that there grew this distrust and ebay's "karma system" just broke down. I never saw ebay doing anything to fix this and bring a better sense of trust and goodwill in the community. Anyone else have a different experience?

<comment><USER6> Sellers can't leave anything but positive feedback these days. I imagine the next step is for the system to add those "fast payment good ebayer AA+++" lines to your profile whenever you do anything.

<comment><USER5> I've not been on ebay in many months, so this is news to me. Just goes to show the trust mechanism that helped make the site popular is broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> eBay are just there to get more and more money out of you.

Every few weeks I get an email from them, I got one yesterday from them in fact. They generally contain something like this:

>> Fee changes

>> We will be making changes to our overall fee structure, including Insertion Fees and Final Value Fees.

With a link to the full changes: <http://pages.ebay.co.uk/pricechange08/>

Even with my bad math skills, I know that if I sell a £50 (ok, £49.99) item on eBay UK currently, I would have to pay them £2.25 which is 4.5%, soon though, I will need to pay them £4.95, 9.9%, thats more than double, and doesn't even include listing costs!

What I want to know, is how they dare?

Though, I'm the fool, because I'll be using them to sell stuff in future, when selling things on auction sites, the more visitors means a higher price I will get for an item. (and the more I will need to pay eBay - god dammit!)

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a good opportunity for someone to come in and make an auction site that doesn't take 70 steps in order to sell something.

<comment><USER9> Not really. From the sound of the article, Ebay is moving away from complicated, unique, one-off auctions precisely because there isn't a huge opportunity there.

<comment><USER10> "huge" is relative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was wondering when someone else was going to figure this out and write about it. I abandoned the site about 2 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> If anything, they're rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg.</comment>


Ask HN: Please include your Twitter ID in your profile so we can follow you. - <AUTHOR>

I assume that a significant percentage of HN users have Twitter accounts (I wonder how many). I would follow many people who post here if I knew who they are on Twitter. I just put my Twitter username in my profile, do the same if you are interested. <comment><USER2> You'll probably be correct quite often if you just assume that people have the same username on twitter as they have here. :-)

<comment><USER3> correct for me

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just added my twitter accounts to my profile, good idea. I am still wondering if its better to have one account, or a personal + company twitter account.

<comment><USER5> better to have two, the ability to disassociate oneself from work from time to time can be a blessing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not correct for me, my Twitter alias is my 'real name' and my username here is my online alias.

I added mine to my profile.

<comment><USER7> I am actually the exact opposite.</comment></comment>


Implementing Shazam with Java in a weekend - <AUTHOR> http://www.redcode.nl/blog/2010/06/creating-shazam-in-java/

<comment><USER2> A bit of background on this post:

[http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/08/2311225/Open- Source-M...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/08/2311225/Open-Source-Music- Fingerprinter-Gets-Patent-Nastygram)

Basically, Shazam sent the author a cease and desist. The post was removed for a bit, but it's now back up.

<comment><USER3> Interesting that they sent a C&D considering the algorithm is likely patent pending at best. Aren't there other services, like Midori, that likely use the same 'obvious' algorithm of storing a database of frequency points per song and comparing it to the sample?

<comment> j-g-faustus Perhaps that's why the post is back up - I don't believe the bits and pieces described in the article are patentable. (Fourier has been used in signal processing for decades. Adding a nearest-neighbor lookup - also know for decades - is a trivial extension.)

I did a master degree on pattern matching on text in 1999 (same year Shazam started), and it was obvious then that much of the same concepts (many of them from textbooks stemming from the 1970s) could be used for pattern matching on music. (We even discussed implementing music matching, but couldn't see a market for it.)

There may very well be other parts of music fingerprint algorithms that are patentable, but I have a hard time believing that the parts described in the article could be.

<comment><USER4> One nontrivial part is transforming the spectrogram into some representation that is robust to the things that can affect the query audio, like background noise. Another nontrivial part is figuring out, given this representation, how to quickly match the query with a song or database of songs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post only touches on the actual way that Shazam recognises music. The meat of the algorithm is in the feature detection, which must be much more robust than what the author did. His way is very sensitive to noise and maybe other manipulations (e.g. dilation), I didn't take too good a look at it.

Basically, to get good features you need to find a set of candidate features (points in the image that stand out) and then filter them according to some desirable properties (in standard image recognition, for example, you want them to be resistant to rotation, translation, stretching, etc). There exist very good algorithms for finding these features, which is what Shazam uses. Of course, after finding the features, you need to hash them in a way that is able to match any time in the song, resist noise, etc etc, so it's a very interesting application.

I was very surprised to learn that the best way to recognise a song was to convert it into a picture and then try to recognise that picture. It seems like a roundabout way to do it, but it works very well.

You can find more information in this paper: Viola and Jones, "Rapid object detection using boosted cascade of simple features"

<comment><USER6> While the paper cited by 'StavrosK is indeed a very important one in computer vision (it's the basis for almost all modern face detection algorithms), it's not the one most relevant for Shazam.

I don't know the details of what they're doing, but most likely they are using something related to SIFT: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale- invariant_feature_transfo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale- invariant_feature_transform)

This is another seminal work in computer vision, which solves both problems that 'StavrosK mentioned:

      1. Find candidate feature points that stand out, and are reliably and repeatedly
         detectable despite image variations.
      2. Get a "hash" of each point that can be used to do searches fairly quickly.

Lots of work in detecting and recognizing objects now uses some variant of SIFT, and it's finding usage in lots of other areas of vision as well. I wouldn't be surprised if as many as 10% of papers at the top vision conferences use techniques based on some variant of SIFT.

<comment><USER5> Ah, yes, I forgot SIFT. last.fm does recognition through the algorithm I mentioned, which is why that came to mind, but I think SIFT would work better, thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never realized how similar Shazam was to the first Matlab assignment we had to do for an EE class in discrete time linear processing. The only difference is we had to match whale calls to a type of whale. Spectrum analysis and everything. Never thought to identify music.

Sometimes, it's way to easy to overlook the obvious.

<comment><USER8> Still, the whale matching app space seems to be still wide open :-)

<comment><USER7> I will call it "Shamu"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Extremely cool, and the speed is more than impressive.

He also seems to be suffering from 'death by HN', the server is more 'down' than 'up', keep retrying and it will come up.

That Aphex Twin face is on a log scale, not a lin scale, on a log scale it looks much better.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would this algorithm work with music that is hummed or sung live? Shazam doesn't work for that, but SoundHound does. What's the difference in algorithm you think?

<comment><USER11> It's died down a bit, but for a while in the late-90s / early-2000s, there was a whole research subfield dedicated to retrieving audio via humming, which has some interesting stuff in it: [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22query+by+hu...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22query+by+humming%22) It's got a nice mixture of signal processing, sequence alignment, and approximate pattern matching problems all rolled together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really enjoyed that article, it was very honest and the guy obviously enjoys what he does which really shines through in his writing.

It's also nice to see the thinking process he went through when developing his solution to this.

Yes the algorithm might not be perfect, it isn't a Shazam clone, but it does demonstrate that within 48 hours he created something that could recognise music. Now that's a good effort in my eyes!

</comment><comment><USER13> The technology implemented by Shazam reminds me of an older art project that was never released. Scrambledhackz:

<http://www.popmodernism.org/scrambledhackz/index.html>

Has anyone heard anything on this?

</comment><comment><USER14> Great read, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER15> this post is just AWESOME, and i would love to see more things like this on HN.

<comment><USER16> I would love to see this technology used for article submissions on HN.

;-)</comment></comment>


You know your context – on critical thinking and thinking for yourself - <AUTHOR> http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/you-know-your-context-on-critical-thinking-and-thinking-for-yourself/

<comment><USER2> The gist of the article -- "I don't know you or your situation; take my advice with a grain of salt" -- is reasonable. Nevertheless, it's reassuring when authors take a moment to describe their context -- it might not be clear to the reader -- or describe the limitations and potential downsides of the suggested solution, preferably both.

<comment><USER3> I do try and do this, really I do :) Right from the image spriting article:

> It is important to note that spriting images won't always be necessary > and/or possible. I'm not saying you should do it all the time, and I am > saying you quite often can't (fluid images, for example). It's just another > possible tool to put in your toolbox.

Any obvious exceptions to the rule – or any obvious contexts in which any advice would not work – I do try and mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a good point in general, however while the line:

> this is _your_ context which is away from the norm

holds really well for the first example (being unable to move away from IDs due to various constraints), it doesn't seem to hold up so well for the latter example. I guess most people do care if their logo is not visible when being printed, and if is hidden in google searches. So, would that mean that it's the author's context which is away from the norm here?

<comment><USER3> Hey, article author here!

The 'away from the norm' bit refers only to the first example:

> In the first case […] this is your context which is away from the norm.

It's not always about the norm, but about differing context. In the second example the context is balancing performance and semantics. If your context is more concerned with brand image etc then that's the difference (nothing to do with norms, really) :)

(I hope I worded that okay, it felt very clumsy!)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the clarification, and I agree. The article just read as if that idea was meant to carry over to the second example.

I'll make a point of reading your other posts, they seem to be pretty interesting.

<comment><USER3> > The article just read as if that idea was meant to carry over to the second > example.

D'oh! I'll try reword it when I get a chance :)

> I'll make a point of reading your other posts, they seem to be pretty > interesting.

Cool, let's hope they deliver!

Cheers for your feedback :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The latest HTML fad is not using IDs now? That's just absurd.

<comment><USER3> It's a CSS thing, and not a fad… I wrote more about it here: [http://csswizardry.com/2011/09/when-using-ids-can-be-a- pain-...](http://csswizardry.com/2011/09/when-using-ids-can-be-a-pain-in-the- class/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What books are you reading during self isolation? - <AUTHOR> It's time to stockpile books for the possibly long Covid-19 slog.
I just finished reading Ron Chernow's US Grant Bio, I can recommend it as long, engaging, and very poignant (esp for Americans). I'm going to read his Washington bio next, should take me a good month :)
What are you reading during this potentially long period of isolation at home? <comment><USER2> The French translation of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, a unfinished German novel that takes place in Vienna about one year before the outbreak of World War I. The narrative occasions reflections by Musil on modernism and its consequences.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Enemy series by Charlie Higson

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_(Higson_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_\(Higson_novel\))</comment>


Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk (1738) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.purdue.edu/~ipollak/ece302/FALL09/notes/Bernoulli_1738.pdf <comment><USER2> Must Read:

Peters, O. (2019). The ergodicity problem in economics. Nature Physics, 15(12), 1216-1221.

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=16380731883124301...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=16380731883124301371)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion)

<comment><USER4> See also:

Peters and Gell-Mann (2015) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0585](https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0585)

Adamou et al (2019) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.02137](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.02137)

<comment><USER5> We have done some simulations and explorations on Peters and Adamou's work:

\- [https://lambdaclass.com/finance_playground/ergodicity/ergodi...](https://lambdaclass.com/finance_playground/ergodicity/ergodicity- explorations.html)

\- [https://lambdaclass.com/RGBM_animations/](https://lambdaclass.com/RGBM_animations/)

<comment><USER6> Hihi, me too: [https://github.com/trishankkarthik/notebooks/blob/master/Eva...](https://github.com/trishankkarthik/notebooks/blob/master/Evaluating%20Gambles%20using%20Dynamics.ipynb)

<comment><USER3> Hi Trish!

<comment><USER6> Hi Stan!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The original Latin text (1738) [https://archive.org/details/SpecimenTheoriaeNovaeDeMensuraSo...](https://archive.org/details/SpecimenTheoriaeNovaeDeMensuraSortis)

</comment><comment><USER8> If expected utility is actually logarithmic, then that would an imply that a flat tax is actually fair. But a real flat tax, not the kind some Republicans have advanced in the past. It would appeal to worked/earned income and capital income.

I wonder what kind of findings there are indicating that progressive is actually more fair than flat? Perhaps most of the pro-progressive argument is just to counteract other regressive elements.

<comment><USER9> You're arguing as if the goal of taxes is to "punish" people and therefore taxing everyone the same fraction results in the same did-utility. Needless to say, there are ostensibly many other reasons/justifications for taxes.

<comment><USER10> There are arguably two competing directives, one is too get the most revenue per disutility generated, in which case the flat tax is definitely not desirable. But another is fairness, it seems unfair to only make certain people suffer disutility, this logic is commonly accepted when discussing minority rights. So maybe the flat tax is minority rights for the rich? And what societies try to find a middle ground between the two goals?

<comment><USER9> Arguably far more concrete notions of utility (such as benefits obtained, or resources consumed, and development of human potential) are preferable for basing policy decisions on, rather than such abstract notions as logarithmic utility of made-up concepts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Connected sensor changes centuries-old sport (ice fishing) - <AUTHOR> http://deepfreezefishing.com/bluetipz

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, HN. I wanted to show off the hardware startup I've been working on. It's a sensor for ice fishing that alerts you when you've got a strike. This way you can sit in your shack and drink beer without having to constantly check your holes outside.

It uses Bluetooth Low Energy, and we've got apps for iOS and Android.

We started in April and managed to have our product developed and in stores in at least 6 states by October. We're currently manufacturing it ourselves here in Wisconsin.</comment>


The sky's gone dark - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/09/the-skys-gone-dark.html <comment><USER2> If you hadn't had enough scary sounding possible future calamities that you as an individual have no control over to worry about, here's another. My anxiety system for these kinds of things broke back when peak oil turned out to not be a thing (well as described). There lots of things to be concerned about where we as individuals can make better choices, such as sustainable living and not contributing to carbon emissions, but stuff like this, while something I'm not going to ignore because it's at the very least interesting, I can't feel anxiety about.

I just don't have the capacity to be anxious every minute of my life for everything that could possibly go wrong for us someday in the future.

<comment><USER3> Peak oil kinda happened. All of the abundant easy to access oil is gone. We're gradually moving to other sources like offshore and fracking while using more technology in existing locations like pumping seawater into old wells to get more out of them.

Tech has done wonderful things to keep costs down, but it's a lot tougher to get that barrel of oil now days. I think there are, at least to some degree, costs being offset by increased risk. Deepwater horizon is a pretty obvious example. Groundwater contamination from fracking is another. I think the price per barrel has been on a steady downward trend, but I'd bet that including the environmental impact just from accessing (not burning) oil, we're paying more. I'm not aware of any such study.

In any case, we're the first, but also last technological civilization to use oil. If a wizard waved a magic wand, and we were suddenly sent back to a 1700's level of technology, i don't see how we'd be able to get much oil at all. It's not bubbling up out of the ground anywhere anymore. The easy stuff is gone. there's no way to get the hard stuff by hand.

<comment><USER4> Other than the fact that there isn't evidence of fracking contaminating groundwater...

<comment><USER3> huh. weird. I thought it was known to be happening, but not yet widespread.

[http://ofmpub.epa.gov/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_download_id=52...](http://ofmpub.epa.gov/eims/eimscomm.getfile?p_download_id=523326) "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells. The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells. "

Also the sort of vague claim with no support that "well it hasn't happened yet" is kind of annoying. Nothing is zero risk. we can argue about p(bad_things) <.001 or .1 or whatever, but i think it's foolish to just pretend everything will be sunshine and rainbows forever.

<comment><USER5> I actually asked a family member who is an ecologically minded geologist about this (while we were at Yellowstone, no less). He said the primary issues now are twofold.

1) Law relating to public land use is terrible and biases insanely in the way of leasing for exploitation. In that the government is both required by law to lease and that the price is far shy of what a market would support (as it hasn't been updated in decades)

2) Inspection and fining of terrestrial operations is typically more self- reported (though only necessary if "sufficient" oil / chemicals have spilled). Measures are then put in place _afterwards_ to monitor the well / location.

Admittedly, he wasn't in legal, but thought I'd share. Also, have to put a plug, if anyone has a lead on good-conscience geology jobs looking for someone with a BSc, I'd be thrilled to forward you on to him (contact me at {username}.co at gmail). He could have made easy money working in petrogeology but felt that wasn't something he could support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kessler Syndrome is a serious potential problem and it's certainly one people should be worrying about but it's mostly something that's only a problem for LEO where you have lots of things in a relatively small volume going very fast in different directions.

Further out in MEO where GPS satellites are there's a much greater volume, fewer satellites, and the satellites aren't moving as fast. There's no way Kessler Syndrome is going to start there. You do have a bunch of Russian satellites that loop in fast and close by the South Pole then go high and slow over the North, letting them spend most of their time being visible from Russia. Debris from from a cascade could kill one of those, which would cause debris that would kill some but not all of the GPS sats. It would be a relatively slow process compared to what would go on in LEO, though.

Satellites in GEO won't need to worry about Kessler at all. They're all in equatorial orbits, traveling in the same direction at the same speed. If one explodes its debris will only hit other satellites with the explosion velocity, not orbital velocity. So those should survive Kessler Syndrome fine, though you can't put any new ones there.

Also, Kessler Syndrom isn't forever. Satellites in LEO need to boost every once in a while to overcome atmospheric drag. As things get broken up their surface area to volume ratio increases and the fall out of orbit faster. Air density falls of exponentially with height so the lower reaches of orbit will become safe first. The inner reaches of LEO might be clear quickly but I have no idea how long it would be before orbit was totally clear.

<comment><USER7> Came here to say the same thing. Will also add: If LEO does get polluted, there are options to put (more expensive) satellites into MEO. At this point, it becomes an economic argument to "clean" or "push upwards"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Researchers at Texas A&M University[1] have been working on this problem with NASA JSC for years.

The approach has been to go after the large spent boosters (a few thousand of them), since they contain the most mass of any class of debris objects. Each upper-stage booster has a rocket nozzle that makes a great target for grappling.

As other comments have noted, the main issue is actually deciding to spend money bringing down orbital debris. As with many other issues we face, this is another case of kicking the can down the road, and we may not address it until the collision cascade has started :-/

[1] [http://lasr.tamu.edu/research/proxops/#Debris_Removal](http://lasr.tamu.edu/research/proxops/#Debris_Removal)

<comment><USER9> Having expended vast amounts of energy to get it up there, it seems a shame to bring it back down again.

I'm hoping to see a cleanup driven by a desire to reclaim the constituent metals, etc, without a need to boost them out of the gravity well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> BRUTE FORCE MODELING OF THE KESSLER SYNDROME, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [http://www.amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2012/Orbital_Debris/...](http://www.amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2012/Orbital_Debris/NIKOLAEV.pdf)

Interesting paper where supercomputer was used to simulate the increase of particles greater than 10 cm in size over 100 years with high temporal resolution.

Results for BAU (business and usual) and BAU-d business as usual with decreasing breakup rate don't look so good: _" linear growth of the catalog size with time, to ~65,000 objects by year 2100."_ 100 years from now there will be 50 conjunctions per day and 3 collisions per year.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand - what's the difference between a conjunction and a collision?

<comment><USER10> Conjunction is close approach between two orbiting objects.

Satellites may have to execute collision avoidance maneuvers and burn expensive fuel resources if the predicted trajectory brings debris too close for comfort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you would like to read a highly entertaining science-fiction novel about the stars going out, I couldn't recommend [http://www.amazon.com/Spin-Robert- Charles-Wilson/dp/07653482...](http://www.amazon.com/Spin-Robert-Charles- Wilson/dp/076534825X/) enough.

<comment><USER13> Seveneves is a bit more similar to what the article describes. [http://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Novel-Neal- Stephenson/dp/006...](http://www.amazon.com/Seveneves-Novel-Neal- Stephenson/dp/0062334514)

<comment><USER14> And a great book in general.

<comment><USER13> Eh, I thought the last third was a letdown.

<comment><USER14> I agree. I still enjoyed the book though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Practically every form of debris removal is also a pretty good anti-satellite weapon.

Additionally, a not-too-unreasonable interpretation of current international treaties would lead one to conclude that piece of junk, inoperable satellite X (or a piece of debris that comes off of it) is still owned by country Y, interfering with it is a violation of Y's sovereignty, etc. This is to be contrasted with the seas where there are some kind of established norms about the wreckage of ships, abandoned ships, etc.

I kinda want to bone up on the relevant treaties and/or agreements about Earth orbit and other planets.

<comment><USER8> > other planets

Interesting to think about, but I have a feeling that once you land on another celestial body, all property will be determined by homestead until a _significant_ number of humans arrive later.

Imagine: there you are on Mars, building your habitat structure in a nice crater when the phone rings and NASA says, "Hey, you can't build there, since that's Russia's crater." Your response _should_ be, "Well, when Russia gets here, they can move me off of their property."

The ability to enforce property rights is vastly reduced without a local presence representing your interests. Yes, there could be conflict over it here on Earth, but for the people actually off-world, it has no actual enforcement mechanism, especially on one-way missions. Any such treaties and agreements made now are purely for show and political gain by those parties involved.

<comment><USER16> > it has no actual enforcement mechanism, especially on one-way missions

Could always send some weaponized rockets. They don't need to be there in person to enforce, I'd say.

(And I'm sure this violates a bunch of treaties but... eh.)

<comment><USER8> Also a very bad PR play, especially since there are no humans going to possess the property. It's just a rocket sent to blow up the trespassers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't most of the debris moving in the same direction? I'm imagining that being in orbit is like being on the freeway, where the traffic is all running the same direction. Yes, getting hit by a car going 70 MPH would normally be catastrophic, but two cars bumping into each other around 70 MPH is not always a big deal.

<comment><USER18> Enough satellites are in polar/retrograde orbits to be an issue. Explosions from Chinese/US anti-satellite tests and accidental collisions go every which way, as well.

<comment><USER6> The satellite that the US shot down was in a swiftly decaying orbit. That means that the periphrasis for all the debris was at least that far down and with the smaller ballistic coefficient of the debris it's all gone now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Even a fleck of shed paint a tenth of a millimeter across carries as much > kinetic energy as a rifle bullet when it's traveling at orbital velocity

True, but most of the other objects near it are _also_ at or near orbital speed, so what's the kinetic energy when compared to an object it would actually be likely to hit?

(The situation in _Gravity_ made no sense to me. The shuttle encounters the debris field every 90 minutes...why was that debris not also orbiting the earth with roughly the same period as the shuttle?)

Is the solution a matter of countries agreeing to "lanes" for orbits that differ non-trivially? (e.g. 300-330km is reserved for equatorial orbits, 340-360 km is reserved for polar orbits, 380-400km is reserved for retrograde orbits)

<comment><USER20> If they orbit in opposite directions, the relative speed is twice the orbital speed. Low earth orbits go in all kinds of directions. In geostationary orbit everything is moving in more or less the same direction and speed.

<comment><USER19> I really didn't think there was that much variety in LEO due to the cost of launching in a retrograde orbit. I thought it'd be mainly prograde plus some normal velocity due to inclination.

<comment><USER20> Retrograde orbits are uncommon as far as I know, but polar orbits are common for earth observation. A satellite going south could meet one going north.

Also unless you launch from the equator inclined orbits are cheaper to reach than equatorial. The ISS for example goes just far enough north to pass the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Dumb question, but can't we put some giant blocks of single-piece kevlar-ish material in orbit? I imagine they would have no chance for breaking apart and would just serve as "bullet" catchers for these small pieces of debris.

<comment><USER15> Hypervelocity is very high velocity, approximately over 3,000 meters per second (6,700 mph, 11,000 km/h, 10,000 ft/s, or Mach 8.8). In particular, hypervelocity is velocity so high that the strength of materials upon impact is very small compared to inertial stresses. Thus, even metals behave like fluids under hypervelocity impact.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervelocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervelocity)

The orbital velocity needed to maintain a stable low Earth orbit is about 7.8 km/s, but reduces with increased orbital altitude.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We'd have to adapt.

Plans to colonize Mars and the like would have to be postponed.

Important satellites would have to hug Earth's atmosphere to stay (somewhat) safe. They could look somewhat like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Field_and_Steady- State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Field_and_Steady- State_Ocean_Circulation_Explorer)

More fiber optic cabling would be required. Local stations to retransmit information would have to be created (or existing infrastructure, such as cellphone towers, would be retrofitted).

And so on. We'd do fine, I guess. But not without an enormous cost.

</comment><comment><USER23> Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Seveneves, starts with essentially this premise, but with debris of the Moon.

<comment><USER24> The Planetes manga starts with space debris and the risk thereof, but terrorists outright attempting to trigger a Kessler event is a big subplot

<comment><USER25> There's an anime adaptation that's very well done. It explored the ideas of debris in space and clean-up efforts surrounding it pretty neatly.

<comment><USER26> Planetes is my favourite anime, though granted I haven't watched many.

I'm not sure if the logistics make sense though, I haven't done the math but I would imagine that the amount of fuel needed to change orbits would either be prohibitively expensive or you would spend months before returning to the base station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> NASA has an Orbital Debris website.

[http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/](http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/)

It has some nice photos of some of the impacts that spacecraft have had.

\---

Reading cstross's post at a tangent: I'm interested in how viable it is for a well funded technological terror group (like Aum Shinrikyo used to be) or "rogue nation" to dump a few tons of sand and grit (or depleted uranium, for the mass) into the correct orbits.

</comment><comment><USER28> Stross has rarely-found pragmatism and realism in personally-held and publicly-shared opinions about space colonization for a popular science fiction author. While professionally he writes about a human future where we travel the stars, the TL;DR is personally, he holds that with our current understanding of physics, our meat sack bodies will never colonize space. Explore yes, but mass-exodus-colonization or even plant-seed-colonization-for- independent-colony is a pipe dream; he doesn't see the proof that we are capable of even colonizing the solar system, but leaves an open door to invite in that proof.

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/space- ca...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/space-cadets.html)

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2007/06/the_high...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html)

So a Kessler Cascade definitely sucks, but it isn't an "OMG, humanity loses its 'birthright to the stars'!" catastrophe because we can't GET to the stars for the foreseeable future, barring a Copernican-grade revolution in physics and accompanying engineering that opens a hitherto-unknown means of multiple magnitudes FTL transportation of the peta- to tetra-tons of mass associated with an en masse out-migration to the stars scenario.

This has interesting implications (I happen to strongly agree with his analysis) for how we set and carry out future policy, if you want to figure out means of nudging our species' survival odds upwards over the long haul (Long Now Foundation, millennia to millions of years scale).

</comment><comment><USER29> isn't the likelihood of a cascade very low because of the orbit thing? I.e. object X hits Y, they both spin out of control but most likely they will either go towards earth or go away from it, so they chance of them hitting something else is very limited, it's not like billiard balls that would eventually hit each other.

<comment><USER30> There's also a really, really large amount of space for maneuvering up there. Keep in mind the surface area of the sphere that's at 36,000 km from the ground (approx. average satellite orbit height) is ~22,567,880,697 km - that's entirely disregarding vertical room for maneuvering.

<comment><USER31> I am sure there are hot spots or rings of higher density corresponding to earth locations. Still, it's big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Even a fleck of shed paint a tenth of a millimeter across carries as much > kinetic energy as a rifle bullet when it's traveling at orbital velocity,

Relative to an object stationary on the ground, yes. But every satellite is already moving at orbital velocity itself. If two satellites are orbiting in the same direction and one blows up, its pieces will not hit the other with full orbital velocity.

> any launch at all becomes a game of Russian roulette.

Maybe if the situation gets this bad, then the mitigation actually gets easier: just send up a lot of cheap big rockets on parabolic trajectories to orbital height. They will get hit, all the pieces will fall below orbital velocity, and fall down into the atmosphere. We could even launch cheap parabolic trajectory "blockers" to clear holes in the debris field for launches to higher orbits or escape trajectories.

<comment><USER33> They aren't all moving in the same direction. Have a look: [http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Do we really believe that science, if faced with the immense challenge of orbiting debris, won't find a way to regain access to orbit?

When did we become so pessimistic?

<comment><USER10> Economics is usually more important factor than science. Science provides possibilities, economics selects those possibilities that are realized.

Instead of building those sci-fi space stations and exploring plants that has been scientific possibility for decades, we have realized and exceeded our sci-fi dreams in computers, internet and mobile phones.

If billion people spend $10 per month on something, there is economic incentive to spend billions in technological research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Even a fleck of shed paint a tenth of a millimeter across carries as much kinetic energy as a rifle bullet when it's traveling at orbital velocity"

Just wow.

<comment><USER36> XKCD What if: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/)

<comment><USER37> "This means that if an astronaut on the ISS listens to I'm Gonna Be, in the time between the first beat of the song and the final lines ... they will have traveled just about exactly 1,000 miles."

[https://www.google.com/webhp?q=1000%20miles%20%2F%208%20km%2...](https://www.google.com/webhp?q=1000%20miles%20%2F%208%20km%2Fs)

WHOA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> On that subject, I recommend to read _Spin_ by Robert Charles Wilson. It is not exactly a Kessler syndrome, but for some reason, one day a kind of dome/membrane encloses the Earth blocking communication with every satellite. (Physical objects can still go through as far as I recall, but since you can't communicate with them, it is not that interesting)

This is good sci-fi book who won the Hugo award about the societal impact (with somewhat weaker sequel, but still enjoyable in their own way)

</comment><comment><USER39> Webcache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.a...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.antipope.org%2Fcharlie%2Fblog- static%2F2015%2F09%2Fthe-skys-gone- dark.html&oq=cache%3Awww.antipope.org%2Fcharlie%2Fblog- static%2F2015%2F09%2Fthe-skys-gone- dark.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.871j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><USER40> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Future business opportunity: Space Garbage Reclamation. I'm only half-joking here, it would be a net benefit to anyone trying to put things into space by avoiding Kessler Syndrome and the junk itself could be valuable. Once we have space-based fabrication facilities, any materials that are already in space are much more valuable than those same materials on Earth.

<comment><USER42> I believe there's an Anime series around this idea:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes)

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r If this comes to pass, Google's project Loon won't look so looney. [http://www.wired.com/2014/06/google-balloons-year- later/](http://www.wired.com/2014/06/google-balloons-year-later/)

Unfortunately I don't think there's any feasible replacement for GPS satellites.

<comment><USER43> Ground stations can replace GPS. It might not be universal, but it for people inside a country it would work.

[http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-08/ground- base...](http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-08/ground-based-analog- gps-could-make-positioning-technology-accurate-inches)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm not read enough to understand exactly how the Kessler Syndrome scenario cstross proposes would interact with GPS, but significantly naval spending by the Superpowers is the big powers is the major effect I can easily see. When you have to protect undersea communication lines for military command and control (assuming the Kessler Syndrome would be a convenient way for hostile nations to launch attacks against other nation's orbital assets), meaning drone warfare becomes untenable outside a direct LOS engagement if undersea lines are not secured.

I also think there would be a major issue with weather satellites and prediction, causing a significant investment to be made in weather radar and alternative weather prediction and monitoring strategies.

<comment><USER45> > I'm not read enough to understand exactly how the Kessler Syndrome scenario > cstross proposes would interact with GPS

GPS needs 24 satellites to function as planned. (It might work with less, but 12 seem to be the minimum under optimal conditions).

• If a Kessler cascade happens in the GPS satellites' orbits, it will rapidly disable existing GPS satellites, and deny access to said orbits for new satellites. Replacements could be launched into safe orbits, but this will likely take years, and those orbits will have a faster decay rate and less visibility (so you'd need even _more_ satellites).

• A Kessler cascade in LEO will likely deny access to higher orbits, so while existing GPS satellites will continue to function, they cannot be feasibly replaced once their 10-30 years life span is exhausted.

<comment><USER46> I don't get how a Kessler cascade in LEO would deny access to higher orbits.

Can collisions become so common that staying in LEO for a fraction of a day is already dangerous? How many debris are we talking about here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How does space debris reach a stable enough orbit that it doesn't just fall into the atmosphere and burn up? Also (maybe depending on the first question) wouldn't the chaotic nature of space debris collisions cause less stable orbits?

<comment><USER48> The debris doesn't have to reach stable orbits. The debris gets created in orbits that are already stable. It's also important to consider that stable in this context doesn't mean that the debris stays up there forever, it's just staying long enough to be a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why not just launch a big magnet into orbit and stick 'em all together?

EDIT: serious question

</comment><comment><USER50> Couldn't researchers just adopt basic fission calculations to work for this application?

I mean its fundamentally the same problem. Large particles being impacted by smaller particles causing them to emit _more_ smaller particles. I tried to work though this yesterday, but I'm not sure how to translate the free-space constant to orbital-scale units.

<comment><USER46> At the very minimum, the elasticity is completely different. Also, in one case particles are hold within a lattice, while on the other they are completely free to move in any direction. And there are orbits to think about, while on the other case the deciding factor is particles leaving the lattice...

Well, I don't think calculations would look any alike.

<comment><USER50> From the preservative of satellites (and items ejected from them) in the same orbit, they're motions are fixed to each other. They only appear in motion from a 3rd party observer on the ground, or in a different orbital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I don't think the human beings will have no solution in hand for such a critical situation. Clearing up the debris to a good enough extent such that we can launch things normally won't be that hard at all, when hundreds of billions of dollars are at disposal. I'm not worried about this one.

</comment><comment><USER52> I was just listening to a show about predictions of the end of the world ([http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/latter-day- predictions](http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/latter-day-predictions)), which seems appropriate. The sky is falling!

<comment><USER53> The problem is that the sky _isn 't_ falling! It's just... sitting there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Basically, once we are done covering Earth in garbage we will make sure we do the same to the sky... How human!

<comment><USER55> Second Law of Thermodynamics, to call that "human" seems like unjustified exceptionalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I guess all kinds of ways to handle it will appear if it is important enough, saying it will all go dark seems a bit too strong. Shielding. Special shapes to minimize impact. Smart avoidance movements. Continuous automatic cleanup of space debris. Etc...

</comment><comment><USER57> If space debris can be detected and tracked, a fleet of garbage collector/deflector bots could clean the path in front of functioning satellites.

Though a giant block of expanding foam might be cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER58> I feel pretty confident that navigation and communications would stay about the same, at least the social aspects pointed at in the question (different tech would be used, but so what).

Weather forecasting isn't all that important, warnings for hurricanes would probably be about the same. So there would be some inconveniences, but nothing huge.

The geopolitics is the interesting question. I wonder what sort of imaging capability could be attained by strapping systems to commercial flights and fiddling flight paths to increase coverage. That would require international cooperation, but maybe there's enough political will to make it happen.

<comment><USER27> > Weather forecasting isn't all that important

Have you ever farmed? Or piloted a boat on a sea?

<comment><USER58> There is a difference between being very useful and being critical.

You list scenarios where good forecasts reduce risks, but the lack of them would not stop people farming or going out on the sea.

<comment><USER27> Okay, so these activities become drastically more expensive. That means that food is more expensive to grow, and to transport. This makes food from overseas harder to get.

(You might want to look at modern pea farming. I use peas because they don't seem like an exotic crop, but the process is pretty tech heavy. Peas are cheap (and fresh) because we have excellent short range weather forecasting.)

<comment><USER58> Your use of drastic and my dismissal of the problem look like competing opinions to me. I looked briefly for something about peas and didn't come up with anything, do you think a good discussion of the process would have clear information pointing to a drastic price increase?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> On the bright side, imagine the orbital competitions that will result between megacorps and billionaires with space hotrods. Kessler Run, anybody?

<comment><USER60> Kessel run?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> > Postulate a runaway Kessler syndrome kicks off around 2030, at a point when > there are thousands of small comsats (and a couple of big space stations), > ranging from very low orbits to a couple of thousand kilometers up. Human > access to space is completely restricted; any launch at all becomes a game > of Russian roulette.

Postulate? This article hasn't got a shred of calculation to give any hint when this becomes a problem. Is this a 2030 problem or a 2300 problem? No data.

<comment><USER62> It's a problem right now because we just don't know. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen in 2300. It's all chance. Like the example given of running across a field while machine guns blaze away. You might cross 100 times and be safe. I try to cross once and I'm gone. All we know is, our odds increase with each item we put in orbit.

<comment><USER63> Its measurable and predictable. A model has to be built is all. Nothing magical or unknowable about it. I agree with the idea that we should, fairly easily, be able to answer questions like "when will this become critical"

Further, its not a single happening - its a process modeled by a differential equation including terms for orbital decay, particle distribution over time, solar wind, new launches etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> If it got bad couldn't we just send up a big cube of ballistics gel with some rockets and grab everything with that?

<comment><USER44> Not to be flippant, but I don't think that would scale well enough.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> So a drone rocket that hovers around in orbit and shoots down debris sounds like another startup idea.

</comment><comment><USER66> >There are some proposals to mitigate the risk of Kessler Syndrome by using microsats to recover and deorbit larger bits of debris, and lasers to evaporate smaller particles, but let's ignore these for now: whether or not they work, they don't work unless we start using them before Kessler syndrome kicks in.

Lol, ok then let's ignore proposed solutions.

</comment><comment><USER67> The worst collision so far was deliberately caused by the Chinese military. Good job guys, way to show what a great country you are:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti- satellite_mi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti- satellite_missile_test)

<comment><USER68> You should read the parts where it says US has done similar tests and that "In response to US weaponisation of space, the Chinese started a space defense program, including anti-satellite defense."

That being said, this is a great example related to the OP (e.g. number and sizes of tracked debris and for how long they remain dangerous).

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Eventually we'll have to use some combination of extreme ship armor (meter- thick plating of expired uranium?) and lasers that detect and zap all particles (that aren't human shaped) within 1 km of the spacecraft.

<comment><USER70> Boosting the kind of armor into orbit that would be necessary to deal with at least the worse scenarios is unfeasible. If you think that cost-to-orbit is high _now_...

<comment><USER69> True, and probably we'd have to either mine/manufacture the armor in space, or else develop some less expensive heavy lifting technologies (which is pretty much necessary anyway, if we're going to put up more manned space stations and interplanetary craft).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback about our iPhone & facebook app Eat-a-Rama - <AUTHOR> http://www.bstage.ca/backstage/eat-a-rama.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Eat-a-Rama is basically a google maps mash up that combines restaurants & bars with google maps. It also throws in a social networking component into it and slick AJAXy interface. (It also shows alot more restaurants with clustering and what not on the map than vs the lame '10 random search results' that google maps gives you) I just recently created from start to finish the iPhone twist which gives you a list of restaurants close to you and an ability to filter them by name/tag/address/whatever. You can also call the restaurants or get directions. iTunes link: <http://www.tinyurl.com/eatarama></comment>


Intel Medfield (tablet/smartphone SoC) specs and power consumption leak - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/110563-intel-medfield-32nm-atom-soc-power-consumption-specs-and-benchmarks-leak

<comment><USER2> At this point I won't be excited about Intel in tablets and phones until a major manufacturer announces products based on Intel's SOC.

Like Linux on the desktop, next year is always the year of the Intel tablet.

<comment><USER3> ...And particularly when the resulting modern "composite" products (the processor, the battery, the software, the pricing; the whole package) are competitive with the then-current products in the market.

There have been many Intel-based tablets available over the years, and there have been issues with these products.

It's just a little odd to realize that a firm that is so supremely adept with designing and creating massive integrated circuits is so very poor at system and product-custom integration; at the next higher level of product integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Leak huh? Sounds more like well-placed PR to me.</comment>


Experimental Nighttime Photography with Nexus and Pixel - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2017/04/experimental-nighttime-photography-with.html <comment><USER5> Amateur photographer here.

This should be the future of DSLRs. Provide some sort of API so that I can create recipes for my photography project. Bonus if the hardware is powerful enough for me to process the way _I_ want to on it (as opposed to the builtin, mostly useless, features).

As a silly example, say I want to take 10 photos. I want the first photo to be 1/30s. The next 1/15s, and so on - doubling the interval each time. I just want to be able to program this, and assign it to a button/menu item, so it will do it automatically.

Or I want to do custom focus stacking. It should automatically take N shots of predefined focal distances, and if powerful enough, stack them.

I've never coded Android apps, so I don't know how much control over the camera is exposed to you, but why can't camera companies provide the same level of control?

<comment><USER6> Amateur astrophotographer here.

The techniques in that blog post are known since 10 years ago. In fact they are quite crude, as they don't account for other types of noise like readout noise, also it does not takes a map of individual pixel sensitivity taking "flat" frames.

Stacking pictures _is_ the foundation of astrophotography and there are many free utilities that does this, for example:

[http://deepskystacker.free.fr/](http://deepskystacker.free.fr/)

BTW digital cameras already take a "black" frame and substract it from the "light" frame automatically, that's why sometimes the camera takes some time to show you a long-exposure picture: it's taking a black frame with the same exposure time.

<comment><USER5> I'm well aware of all these techniques. However, I'm looking for more flexibility, like the type I mentioned in my comment.

Something like auto focus stacking. The camera need not do the stacking - <USER2> automatically focus on various portions of the scene and take pictures. I can then stack on my computer. Currently I have to focus at one spot, take the picture, then focus on another, take the picture, etc. What I'd like to do is to specify the five focus points, and have it then do the rest of the work.

The in-built bracketing capability in cameras is really minimal.

I was looking at Magic Lantern, and it has a time lapse that essentially maintains a constant brightness - so when the day transitions into night, the camera auto-adjusts the exposure to make sure the subject does not become darker.

Lots of possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Once you know some basic principles of photography, this actually shouldn't be all that surprising. The Google Nexus 6P uses a 1/2.3 inch type sensor that measures 6.17 x 4.55 mm. That gives us ~28 square mm of sensor area. The initial example image was taken with a full-frame camera with a sensor that measures 24 x 36 mm, yielding 864 square mm. That gives the DSLR ~30x the sensor area of the Nexus. Then with the same amount of light per square mm per second (measured by the f-stop of the lens) the Nexus needs to expose the image for 30x longer than the full-frame camera to gather the equivalent amount of light. It just so happens that this approach used 32 exposures - <USER3> makes sense that the results look comparable to a full-frame camera because the phone gathered just as much light.

</comment><comment><USER8> My Nexus 6p takes amazingly good photos - I rarely use an SLR now.

The main problem I have is that it shuts down after 10-30 minutes of use - <USER4> help from google. [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=227849](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=227849) Makes me want an iPhone. (see below Huawei might be fixing)

<comment><USER9> There's actually a class action lawsuit related to this issue [1]. I first read about it here [2]. I've got a Nexus 6P too and it's great except for the battery and shutdown issues. Mine will shut down at like 20% or so so it's very usable, but it's often at night when I most need to use my phone (calls, rides, etc).

[1] - [https://chimicles.com/google-nexus-6p-battery-early- shutoff-...](https://chimicles.com/google-nexus-6p-battery-early-shutoff- bootlooping-class-action-investigation/)

[2] - [https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/lawsuit-takes-aim-at- goo...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/lawsuit-takes-aim-at-google- huawei-over-nexus-6p-battery-issues/)

<comment><USER10> The 5x too. It may well be the same design flaw as the 6p.

[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37117345](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37117345)

Despite the comments there about software it is most likely about heat and a component which is affected over time.

I've had a 5x just go dead. Bought a Pixel, it died after a week (probably unrelated to this fault). The replacement is fine though and the phone is great overall and the camera is fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been pretty happy with my Pixel XL's camera (easily keeps up with the incremental improvements in cell phone cameras over the years) but I also appreciate how they didn't make this into too much of a puff piece where they "hand wave" away the amount of work still needed in Photoshop or similar.

The takeaway is that with some effort and intelligent use of other software tools, you can put together a nice image with all sorts of lower-end cameras. The bit at the end about hopefully adding some of this functionality to software available on the phone was a nice touch, as I imagine all of the big players are always working on that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> The photos are impressive. But considering the introduction, it would have been nice to have some actual side-by-side comparisons with dslr. And then just for fun, the same exposure stacking applied to dslr at max iso.

<comment><USER13> Here's the first and second-to-last image in the article:

DSLR: [https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JJORxMmYFuw/WPkESrozTuI/AAAAAAAAB...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JJORxMmYFuw/WPkESrozTuI/AAAAAAAAByU/pkjoul07knIfKWyvM- xmlaCzvODG28FJQCLcB/s1600/image5.jpg) Pixel: [https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yo9hRd3xLLg/WPkERdbOs7I/AAAAAAAAB...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yo9hRd3xLLg/WPkERdbOs7I/AAAAAAAAByk/UDE_MAh3bXszzir_Grxs672mpiKY82DlACEw/s1600/image11.jpg)

<comment><USER14> The author really should have cut down on the blue saturation for the phone examples, they're pretty ridiculous IMO. But regardless, it's an incredible result considering the sensor capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The camera cannot handle exposure times longer than two seconds."

What's the reason for this? Is it a hardware restriction? I suppose an artificial software restriction could be removed by using root / other camera software.

<comment><USER16> Mostly hardware.

Shortest explanation: The sensor exposure time register has a maximum value.

Next shortest: But it's actually in units of row readout time, on many sensors, which is also configurable, so the exposure time can be made longer at the cost of slower image readout. In normal operation, readout has to happen at 30fps at least, so extra code is needed to switch to slower readout for extended exposure values. This code then needs validation, the image processing tuning tables need to be updated and verified for the new long exposure durations, and any preview glitches, etc, from resetting base sensor configurations need to be addressed. So a lot of extra work, for a relatively niche feature on a smartphone.

Even longer: Many sensors also have an external shutter trigger signal pin, for unlimited exposure duration. But that needs to be wired to the CPU, and all the SW considerations above also apply.

<comment><USER17> Couldn't it just be a heat dissipation issue? These sensors pack a lot of photo sites into a tiny package.

<comment><USER16> To first order, long exposures are probably less power-hungry - much of the sensor power is burned in the image readout, and longer exposures mean you're reading images less often.

When collecting light, an image sensor pixel isn't really using up any active power (each pixel is basically a capacitor collecting electrons generated by light hitting the silicon).

<comment><USER18> I don't believe this is entirely correct. DSLR sensors get very hot during long exposures - to the point where excessively long exposures can introduce noise into the output from this heat. I don't see why this wouldn't apply even more so to phone sensors, with their incredibly high photosite density.

However really long exposures are going to suffer from star trail effects - the earth is rotating relative to the stars, so a long exposure changes stars from a point to a short line, which _usually_ isn't what you want. On a 35mm camera with a fairly wide lens you can get away with ~ 30s of exposure time.

On a pixel phone I think you'd be able to get away with ~ 3s exposure time, but as it's going to get pretty hot over this time I'm not sure how much extra image quality you'd actually end up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> reminds me of the low light video camera that was on here ealier. [http://kottke.org/17/04/incredible-low-light-camera-turns- ni...](http://kottke.org/17/04/incredible-low-light-camera-turns-night-into- day)

Not as fast, but the results look fairly similar.

</comment><comment><USER20> FWIW Olympus already provides in-camera shot stacking for night shots in its Micro Four Thirds cameras via their "live composite" mode. See [http://www.duford.com/2016/08/explaining-olympus-live- compos...](http://www.duford.com/2016/08/explaining-olympus-live-composite- mode/) for example shots.

</comment><comment><USER14> Incredible results!! I would really love to be able to do this on a phone.

I've tried with iPhone to take long exposures and crank up the brightness/HDR to bring out as much signal as possible. This is the best that I could do on a fully moonlit night: [http://imgur.com/a/km1D9](http://imgur.com/a/km1D9)

<comment><USER21> You could probably get better results by taking multiple independent shots and merging them later.

<comment><USER14> The app Hydra does this. It's not specifically meant for super dark photos so I don't think they extend exposures to the max.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What I don't get is why JPEG is still so commonly used when it introduces significant artifacting (even at high qualities). When a more advanced format like WebP can deliver higher quality images for the same file size.

<comment><USER23> What does this have to do with the article?

<comment><USER24> The images in the article are JPEGs with visible compression artifacts which isn't good if they want to demonstrate the quality of the photos that they can make with the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the timelapse style stars is a feature and not a defect, although it goes against the original challenge.

Although this article is about the challenge - decent photography with a mobile phone - it does outline how easy it is to layer up lots of images in Photoshop, median everything out and get a long exposure image. Taking out the sensor 'median' was clever too.

So you could use this with DSLR images too, to take better long exposure images whatever the sensor, so long as everything is fully HDR and manual.

I think that I might just give it a go. With PHP Imagemagick so that I can automate the Photoshop part and tweak settings easily.

<comment> semi-extrinsic By "taking out the median" you're talking about what's known as dark frame subtraction. I believe most DSLRs already do this internally for long exposures - try setting your camera for 10s exposure and time how long it takes before it's ready again; I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's about 20s. Smartphones can't do this because they lack an internal shutter.

On advanced models (and hacked cameras like MagicLantern/CHDK), you can turn this off and do it manually, e.g. shoot a dark frame for only the first image in a series so you can get ~95% duty cycle rather than ~45%. Especially useful if you're trying to capture a rare event, e.g. lightening.

What's weird about the technique in TFA is he takes N bright frames and then N dark frames, computes both medians and then subtracts. By interleaving bright and dark frames, and doing the subtraction before stacking, I'm pretty sure they'd get better results.

As for image stacking, there's tons of ways to do it, and quite a few turnkey apps for image stacking for astrophotography as well, e.g. here's a review from last year of a Mac app doing just this:

[https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/stack-photos-epic-milky- way...](https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/stack-photos-epic-milky-way- landscapes/)

<comment><USER26> Doing all the bright frames together and all the dark frames together is surely _suboptimal_ , but it's hardly _weird_ : there's an obvious reason for it. (Namely, that the transition between bright and dark requires covering the camera lens with black tape and it's easier to do and undo that _once_ than _64 times_.)

<comment><USER27> If the sensor is stable over the period when the frames are shot, why would subtracting the mean of the black frames from the mean of the exposures be worse than subtracting individual black frames from individual exposures? Aside from rounding errors and possible overflows the two procedures should be equivalent:

      (e1 + e2 + ... en) / n - (b1 + b2 + ... bn) / n = (e1 - b1 + e2 - b2 + ... en - bn) / n

<comment><USER26> The suggestion isn't about what order you do the arithmetic in, but about what order you do the captures in. ++++---- versus +-+-+-+-. The former has the disadvantage that if something that affects the images (temperature, say) is varying gradually, or changes abruptly at a particular point, it's easier for it to have substantially different effects on the light and the dark frames.

It's possible that something like Thue-Morse (+--+-++--++-+--+ etc.; one way to define this is to look at the parity of the number of 1-bits in the binary representation of the frame number) might be better than alternating. If whatever disturbances you might worry about are smooth in the right sort of way, it gives you more exact cancellation than alternating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> if this could become an app it'd be great

<comment><USER29> I'm even more interested in mentioned SeeInTheDark app (that's unfortunately not available yet as it's part of Google research). The video demo is so impressive. I don't really care so much about photography, but decent sensors and optics combined with innovative processing in real-time is really starting to pick up.

I've already started using phone camera app to enhance my vision for text that's too far to read. Advances in post-processing will increase our vision even more, as well as allow for night vision and understanding text in other languages. We are transitioning into cyborgs by means of android platform...

<comment><USER30> Seems like quite a cool app and simple to implement as well. Aligning the images if the phone is not held still could be a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is great that they are investing so much in camera. In modern smartphone, I do not feel any difference in performance between my moto play and s7 edge. It is just the camera that makes me keep coming back to s7 edge, despite the $300 price tag difference. It is just much more convenient and I have stopped bringing my dslr on trips now since the phone camera works really good.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think it would be interesting to compare an image shot in the daylight with the one created with this processing scheme in the same daylight. I expect the normal exposure shot to be better than the processed one, but it would be interesting to observe the difference in quality.

</comment><comment><USER33> for the stars shot the next obvious step would be to automatically segment the image with optical flow. Could also try solving the hand-held problem with ORB feature matching.

given the previous posts from the googleblog I kind of expected a bit more algorithmic involvement beyond image stacking.

</comment><comment><USER34> I know on the XDA forums, at least for the 5x, there is an app someone threw together to do long exposure times. I played with it some and got a pixelated mess, but I didn't try a tripod. Some people on the thread produced some pretty good pictures.

</comment><comment><USER35> Interesting work. However, in order to reproduce the marin headlands DSLR image the smartphone would have needed to also stitch a panorama from multiple frames (because the lens used in the DSLR shot has roughly 2x the FOV angle).

</comment><comment><USER36> >Still, this may be the lowest-light cellphone photo ever taken.

Not so fast buddy. Some of us have been playing with this stuff for a really long time :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Fascinating article. Thanks for all the work.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why take the mean instead of the median of the images? Wouldn't the median be less sensitive to outliers?

</comment><comment><USER39> Cameras, like so many things, have been increasingly software limited during recent years.</comment>