pfranz (u/pfranz) - Readit News

pfranz commented on Ford locking basic navigation behind a subscription old.reddit.com/r/LinusTec... · Posted by u/aquir

nativeit · 3 months ago

My 2012 VW Passat’s system was the most responsive and dead-on accurate GPS I’ve ever used in a car or a phone. The only thing that beats it are handheld dedicated GPS units designed for ships and rescue workers.

That said, the maps got out of date and couldn’t be updated without a $200 SD card, which was annoying.

pfranz · 3 months ago

I have no idea about Android, but my understanding is for wired CarPlay a GPS in the dash is optional and for wireless CarPlay its required. The thinking is you can use a larger, better placed antennae. If you're using wireless CarPlay you may have your phone hidden away.

pfranz commented on Static sites with Python, uv, Caddy, and Docker nkantar.com/blog/2025/08/... · Posted by u/indigodaddy

zahlman · 4 months ago

This just seems like several unnecessary layers of complexity to me.

For making a static site that you're personally deploying, exactly why is Docker required? And if the Docker process will have to bring in an entire Linux image anyway, why is obtaining Python separately better than using a Python provided by the image? And given that we've created an entire isolated container with an explicitly installed Python, why is running a Python script via `uv` better than running it via `python`? Why are we also setting up a virtual environment if we have this container already?

Since we're already making a `pyproject.toml` so that uv knows what the dependencies are, we could just as well make a wheel, use e.g. pipx to install it locally (no container required) and run the program's own entry point. (Or use someone else's SSG, permanently installed the same way. Which is what I'm doing.)

pfranz · 4 months ago

> why is obtaining Python separately better than using a Python provided by the image?

I mostly work in a different domain than webdev, but feel strongly about trying to decouple base technologies of your OS and your application as much as possible.

It's one thing if you are using a Linux image and choose to grab their Python package and other if their boot system is built around the specific version of Python that ships with the OS. The goal being if you later need to update Python or the OS they're not tethered together.

pfranz commented on Steve Jobs' cabinet perfectdays23.substack.co... · Posted by u/padraigf

dang · 5 months ago

Wow, the interesting part there—at least for anyone who already knows the cabinet story—is how it ends:

"Well, that was a difficult part to layout because of the memory bus.", Burrell responded. "If we change it, it might not work as well electrically".

"OK, I'll tell you what," said Steve. "Let's do another layout to make the board prettier, but if it doesn't work as well, we'll change it back."

So we invested another $5,000 or so to make a few boards with a new layout that routed the memory bus in a Steve-approved fashion. But sure enough, the new boards didn't work properly, as Burrell had predicted, so we switched back to the old design for the next run of prototypes.

That's interesting because (a) it's a story of how the cabinet principle didn't prevail, and (b) it's a brilliant example of how to communicate.

pfranz · 5 months ago

There was a similar story where he insisted on painting manufacturing machines for aesthetic reasons. It cost a lot of money, the paint caused problems with the machines, and the stuff they were manufacturing didn't sell well. I think I heard it in the Isaacson book, but here's a site telling the same story. https://professornerdster.com/from-steve-jobs-life-a-clean-f...

pfranz commented on What is HDR, anyway? lux.camera/what-is-hdr/... · Posted by u/_kush

arghwhat · 7 months ago

The problem is that it just doesn't work on modern, fast displays. Without motion smoothing on a fast and bright screen, 24fps/30fps goes from "choppy" to "seizure inducing and unwatchable". Older sets would just naturally smooth things out.

Even on my LCD TV, smooth motion like credits at certain speeds are extremely uncomfortable to look at at these frame rates.

I consider it borderline irresponsible to continue using these framerates, forcing users into frame interpolation and horrible artifacts, a decision the manufacturer might even have made for them. 120 Hz is finally becoming the norm for regular content (with monitors going to 500+ nowadays), we should at least be able to get to 60 Hz as the lower bound for regular content delivery.

Going further down for artistic value, e.g. for stop motion or actual slide shows is less of a problem in my opinion. It is not as disturbing, and if regular content was appropriately paced there would be no need for interpolation to mess with it...

> Just look at the trend of frame size.

Frame size is different from the other parameters, as it is solely a physical practicality. Bigger is better in all directions, but a cinema screen needs to fit in the building - making a building much taller is less economical than making it wider, and making it whatever it isn't right now adds novelty.

The content needs to be made for the screen with the appropriate balance of periphery and subject to not be completely wrong, so screen technology and recording technology tends to align. Economy of scale causes standardization on lenses and image circles, and the choice of aspect ratio within that circle on the film, forming a feedback loop that enforces the parameters for almost all content.

If some technology somewhere else in the stack causes a change, some will follow for the novelty but others will simply follow the reducing cost, and soon all content aligns on the format, and the majority of home TV sets will be shaped to fit the majority content it can receive.

pfranz · 7 months ago

> The problem is that it just doesn't work on modern, fast displays.

I'm very confused by this. From what I've seen it's been getting a lot better (since transitioning from CRTs). At least for television, frame-rate matching is becoming more of a thing. Higher frame rates really help. Calling everything fps for simplicity; 120 divides evenly by 24, 30, and 60. Lower values wont match and cause issues.

Similarly, (maybe back in the 90s?) projectors in theaters would double-expose each frame to reduce the flicker in between frames. With digital, they no longer have to advance the film between frames.

> smooth motion like credits at certain speeds are extremely uncomfortable to look at at these frame rates.

I think scrolling credits are the most difficult use case: white on black with hard text and no blur. DLP projectors (common 10+ years ago) drive me nuts displaying R G and B separately.

Outside of credits, cinematographers and other filmmakers do think about these things. I remember hearing a cinematographer talk about working on space documentaries in Imax. If you panned too quickly, the white spaceship over a black star field could jump multiple feet each frame. Sure films shot today are optimized for the theater, but the technology gap between theater and home is nowhere near as crazy as CRT vs acetate.

> Frame size is different from the other parameters, as it is solely a physical practicality.

I'm still struggling to see how its that different. Widescreen meant a lower effective resolution (it didn't have to--it started with Cinerama and Cinemascope), but was adopted for cost and aesthetic reasons.

> If some technology somewhere else in the stack causes a change…and soon all content aligns on the format, and the majority of home TV sets will be shaped to fit the majority content it can receive.

And the industry and audiences are really attached to 24fps. Like you say, home televisions adopted film's aspect ratio and I've also seen them adopt much better support for 24fps.

As kind of an aside, I wonder if the motion blur is what people are attached to more than the actual frame rate. I assume you're talking about frame rates higher than 30? Sure, we have faster films and brighter lights, but exposure time is really short. I saw the Hobbit in theaters in both high frame rate and 24fps and the 24fps one looked weird to me, too--I meant to look it up, but I assume they just dropped frames making the blur odd.

pfranz commented on Have I Been Pwned 2.0 troyhunt.com/have-i-been-... · Posted by u/LorenDB

throwaway8eor · 7 months ago

I think this would have a negative effect.

Getting a company to publicly announce a breach is hard today. Your suggestion would make it even harder, and more data breaches would be kept from the public because of the consequences.

I would rather know that a company messed up and change my password, than not knowing

pfranz · 7 months ago

> I think this would have a negative effect.

How? Disclosure should already be legally required--class-actions and lawsuits should already be a thing. The Have I Been Pwned data sets aren't volunteered by these companies. It's a catalog of leaked data.

The class-action response of "identity monitoring" is nonsense. More companies, if they can't afford to or don't want secure data, shouldn't collect it or should aggressively purge it. User data should be a liability.

pfranz commented on What is HDR, anyway? lux.camera/what-is-hdr/... · Posted by u/_kush

brokenmachine · 7 months ago

OK, so it doesn't mean real HDR but simulated HDR.

Maybe when proper HDR support becomes mainstream in 3D engines, that problem will go away.

pfranz · 7 months ago

Right. Just like the article, HDR is too vague to mean anything specific and a label that's slapped onto products. In gaming, it often meant they were finally simulating light and exposure separately--clipping highlights that would have previously been shown. In their opinion, reducing the fidelity. Same with depth of field blurring things that used to not have blur.

pfranz commented on What is HDR, anyway? lux.camera/what-is-hdr/... · Posted by u/_kush

arghwhat · 7 months ago

> Things like lens flares, motion blur, film grain, and shallow depth of field are mimicking cameras and not what being there is like

Ignoring film grain, our vision has all these effects all the same.

Look in front of you and only a single plane will be in focus (and only your fovea produces any sort of legibility). Look towards a bright light and you might get flaring from just your eyes. Stare out the side of a car or train when driving at speed and you'll see motion blur, interrupted only by brief clarity if you intentionally try to follow the motion with your eyes.

Without depth of field simulation, the whole scene is just a flat plane with completely unrealistic clarity, and because it's comparatively small, too much of it is smack center on your fovea. The problem is that these are simulations that do not track your eyes, and make the (mostly valid!) assumption that you're looking, nearby or in front of whatever you're controlling.

Maybe motion blur becomes unneccessary given a high enough resolution and refresh rate, but depth of field either requires actual depth or foveal tracking (which only works for one person). Tasteful application of current techniques is probably better.

> High FPS television can feel cheap while 24fps can feel premium and "filmic."

Ugh. I will never understand the obsession this effect. There is no such thing as a "soap opera effect" as people liek to call it, only a slideshow effect.

The history behind this is purely a series of cost-cutting measures entirely unrelated to the user experience or artistic qualities. 24 fps came to be because audio was slapped onto the film, and was the slowest speed where the audio track was acceptable intelligible, saving costly film paper - the sole priority of the time. Before that, we used to record content at variable frame rates but play it back at 30-40 fps.

We're clinging on to a cost-cutting measure that was a significant compromise from the time of hand cranked film recording.

</fist-shaking rant>

pfranz · 7 months ago

> Ugh. I will never understand the obsession this effect.

All of it (lens flares, motion blur, film grain, DoF, tone mapping, and exposure, frame rate) are artistic choices constrained by the equipment we have to collect and present it. I think they'll always follow trends. In my entire career following film, photography, computer graphics, and game dev the only time I've heard anyone talk about how we experience any of those things is when people say humans see roughly equivalent of a 50mm lens (on 35mm film).

Just look at the trend of frame size. Film was roughly 4:3, television copied it. Film started matting/cropping the frame. It got crazy with super wide-screen to where some films used 3 projectors side-by-side and most settled on 16:9. Then television copied it. Widescreen is still seen as more "filmic." I remember being surprised working on a feature that switched to Cinemascope's aspect ratio and seeing that was only 850 pixels tall--a full frame would be about twice that.

To me, high frame rate was always just another style. My only beef was with motion-smoothing muddying up footage shot at different frame rates.

pfranz commented on What is HDR, anyway? lux.camera/what-is-hdr/... · Posted by u/_kush

glenngillen · 7 months ago

I had a similar complaint with the few 3D things I watched when that has been hyped in the past (e.g., when Avatar came out in cinemas, and when 3D home TVs seemed to briefly become a thing 15 years ago). It felt like Hollywood was giving me the freedom to immerse myself, but then simultaneously trying to constrain that freedom and force me to look at specific things in specific ways. I don't know what the specific solution is, but it struck me that we needed to be adopting lessons from live stage productions more than cinema if you really want people to think what they're seeing is real.

pfranz · 7 months ago

Stereo film has its own limitations. Sadly, shooting for stereo was expensive and often corners were cut just to get it to show up in a theater where they can charge a premium for a stereo screening. Home video was always a nightmare--nobody wants to wear glasses (glassesless stereo TVs had a very narrow viewing angle).

It may not be obvious, but film has a visual language. If you look at early film, it wasn't obvious if you cut to something that the audience would understand what was going on. Panning from one object to another implies a connection. It's built on the visual language of still photography (things like rule of thirds, using contrast or color to direct your eye, etc). All directing your eye.

Stereo film has its own limitations that were still being explored. In a regular film, you would do a rack focus to connect something in the foreground to the background. In stereo, when there's a rack focus people don't follow the camera the same way. In regular film, you could show someone's back in the foreground of a shot and cut them off at the waist. In stereo, that looks weird.

When you're presenting something you're always directing where someone is looking--whether its a play, movie, or stereo show. The tools are just adapted for the medium.

I do think it worked way better for movies like Avatar or How to Train Your Dragon and was less impressive for things like rom coms.

pfranz commented on What is HDR, anyway? lux.camera/what-is-hdr/... · Posted by u/_kush

brokenmachine · 7 months ago

I'm with you on depth of field, but I don't understand why you think HDR reduces the fidelity of a game.

If you have a good display (eg an OLED) then the brights are brighter and simultaneously there is more detail in the blacks. Why do you think that is worse than SDR?

pfranz · 7 months ago

Check out this old post: https://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/thought-for-the-day/

HDR in games would frequently mean clipping highlights and adding bloom. Prior the "HDR" exposure looked rather flat.

pfranz commented on What is HDR, anyway? lux.camera/what-is-hdr/... · Posted by u/_kush

Terr_ · 7 months ago

> Our eyes can see both just fine.

This gets to a gaming rant of mine: Our natural vision can handle these things because our eyes scan sections of the scene with constant adjustment (light-level, focus) while our brain is compositing it together into what feels like a single moment.

However certain effects in games (i.e. "HDR" and Depth of Field) instead reduce the fidelity of the experience. These features limp along only while our gaze is aimed at the exact spot the software expects. If you glance anywhere else around the scene, you instead percieve an unrealistically wrong coloration or blur that frustratingly persists no matter how much you squint. These problems will remain until gaze-tracking support becomes standard.

So ultimately these features reduce the realism of the experience. They make it less like being there and more like you're watching a second-hand movie recorded on flawed video-cameras. This distinction is even clearer if you consider cases where "film grain" is added.

pfranz · 7 months ago

https://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/thought-for-the-day/

It's crazy that post is 15 years old. Like the OP and this post get at, HDR isn't really a good description of what's happening. HDR often means one or more of at least 3 different things (capture, storage, and presentation). It's just the sticker slapped on advertising.

Things like lens flares, motion blur, film grain, and shallow depth of field are mimicking cameras and not what being there is like--but from a narrative perspective we experience a lot of these things through tv and film. Its visual shorthand. Like Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica copying WWII dogfight footage even though it's less like what it would be like if you were there. High FPS television can feel cheap while 24fps can feel premium and "filmic."

Often those limitations are in place so the experience is consistent for everyone. Games will have you set brightness and contrast--I had friends that would crank everything up to avoid jump scares and to clearly see objects intended to be hidden in shadows. Another reason for consistent presentation is for unfair advantages in multiplayer.