tbabb (u/tbabb) - Readit News

tbabb commented on Some people can't see mental images newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/petalmind

bigyikes · 2 months ago

I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer.

——

“So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?”

Yeah!

“And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?”

Yeah, you don’t have that?

“So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“

Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it.

——

…and around we go.

Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. I can recite the qualities of an object, and this generates impressions of the object in my head, but it’s not really seeing. It’s vibe seeing.

tbabb · 2 months ago

Here is some context: Early in the aphantasia discourse, someone asked a group I was in to do a mental exercise: Imagine an apple. Can you tell what color it is? What variety? Can you tell the lighting? Is it against a background? Does it have a texture? Imagine cutting into it. And so on.

For me, not only was the color, variety, lighting, and texture crystal clear, but I noticed that when I mentally "cut into" the apple, I could see where the pigment from the broken skin cells had been smeared by the action of the knife into the fleshy white interior of the apple. This happened "by itself", I didn't have to try to make it happen. It was at a level of crisp detail that would be difficult to see with the naked eye without holding it very close.

That was the first time I had paid attention to the exact level of detail that appears in my mental imagery, and it hadn't occurred to me before that it might be unusual. Based on what other people describe of their experience, it seems pretty clear to me that there is real variation in mental imagery, and people are not just "describing the same thing differently".

tbabb commented on A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material nytimes.com/2024/06/11/st... · Posted by u/65

tkgally · 2 years ago

Both HN itself and prolific HN contributor simonw get shoutouts in the article:

“The term [‘slop’] has sprung up in 4chan, Hacker News and YouTube comments, where anonymous posters sometimes project their proficiency in complex subject matter by using in-group language.”

“Some have identified Simon Willison, a developer, as an early adopter of the term — but Mr. Willison, who has pushed for the phrase’s adoption, said it was in use long before he found it. ‘I think I might actually have been quite late to the party!’ he said in an email.”

The first substantive discussion of the word here seems to be this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40301490

tbabb · 2 years ago

They don't mention Twitter, but that's where Willison got it from.

tbabb commented on Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions · Posted by u/nineplay

makecheck · 4 years ago

I’m sure there are talented recruiters but generally I’m lucky if they connect any dots properly. Things like: “I see you have years of experience on X, here’s an opening in Y”, or “I found your resume <that clearly states objectives, including where I would work>, here’s a job in $faraway_city!”.

In other words, they barely seem to read resumes or anything else so if they totally screw up key details of the position, that is probably par for the course.

(Insert rant about losing StackOverflow Developer Stories, which actually allowed explicit tagging of things like preferred tech which made matching really easy.)

tbabb · 4 years ago

Recruiters use automated tools to scrape LinkedIn profiles and send what amounts to customized spam.

tbabb commented on US Senate votes unanimously to make daylight savings time permanent twitter.com/senatecloakro... · Posted by u/enraged_camel

moffkalast · 4 years ago

I feel like the permanent DST option is a bit stupid in principle since as the other guy says it's about switching time zones and time zones should be primarily longitude based, not I-feel-like-being-in-whatever based because that's nonsense.

As an example France and Spain have no business being in CET/GMT+1 at all. France is geographically entirely in GMT, while some of Spain is in GMT-1 even, I mean what the actual fuck.

Time zones should be based on science, and work/school schedules should be flexible enough that people can decide on a company/institutional level when to start. If you want to start later, start later, don't fuck with the countrywide clock and make timekeeping a nightmare you goddamn idiots.

tbabb · 4 years ago

On the one hand, yes.

On the other hand, clock time is entirely a social construct whose whole purpose is to coordinate social and business activity, so it should be specifically designed around social customs in order to serve that purpose.

tbabb commented on Show HN: hue.tools – open-source toolbox for colors hue.tools... · Posted by u/pabue

pabue · 4 years ago

First of all thanks for the comments and info. I'm actually not doing the color interpolation myself. I'm using chroma.js[1] for the most part.

You can actually change the interpolation mode on the bottom below the color boxes. The default is LCH because I think it looks the best most of the time, but you can use LAB if you prefer that.

[1] https://gka.github.io/chroma.js/

tbabb · 4 years ago

Aha! That was a bonehead miss on my part. Very nice, and very slick interface. :)

tbabb commented on Show HN: hue.tools – open-source toolbox for colors hue.tools... · Posted by u/pabue

tbabb · 4 years ago

EDIT: Author has pointed out that the interpolation mode can be changed. Very slick!

It looks like this is interpolating in HCL or HSV space— that tends to produce unexpected results, including intermediate colors with unrelated hues (pink between orange and blue?), or sharp discontinuities if one of the endpoints changes slightly (try mixing orange and blue, and then shifting the blue towards teal until suddenly the intermediate pink pops to green).

This document[1] also illustrates pretty well.

Interpolating in RGB space has its own issues (more so if gamma is not handled correctly) due to the human visual system's differing sensitivity to different colors— the result is often that two bright colors will have an intermediate color which is darker than either endpoint.

There's a known solution, thankfully: Mix colors in a perceptual color space like Lab or Oklab[2]. The behavior is very predictable and aesthetically pleasing.

[1] https://observablehq.com/@zanarmstrong/comparing-interpolati... [2] https://bottosson.github.io/posts/oklab/

tbabb commented on A baby saved ‘Toy Story 2’ from near complete deletion (2021) insidethemagic.net/2021/0... · Posted by u/walterbell

adrianomartins · 4 years ago

Wow, this makes me think, do animation teams don't really use a version control system to have multiple people contributing to the same movie at the same time? Does anybody knows how that works?

tbabb · 4 years ago

Pixar used RCS at the time. Problem is, when you run `rm -rf /`, that deletes the RCS directories as well.

tbabb commented on A baby saved ‘Toy Story 2’ from near complete deletion (2021) insidethemagic.net/2021/0... · Posted by u/walterbell

diego_moita · 4 years ago

John Catmull (correction: sorry, his name is Ed Catmull, as tbab corrected me), Pixar co-founder and president wrote a book ("Creativity Inc") where he tells that story in detail.

He wrote that everybody in the team had forgotten about Sussman's copy and she is the one that told in a meeting the copy existed, to the astonishment of everyone else. The van that went to pick up the computer on Sussman's house was equipped with pillows because they were scared even from the road's vibrations.

tbabb · 4 years ago

Ed Catmull.