nappy · HackerTrans

8 個月前discuss

It's a surprisingly common error where someone picks up an old 35mm print and assumes it is somehow canonical... Besides whatever the provenance of these prints are (this gets complicated) the reality is that these were also made to look at best as they could for typical movie theater projector systems in the 90s. These bulbs were hot and bright and there were many other considerations around what the final picture would look like on the screen. So yeah, if you digitize 35mm film today, it will look different, and different from how its ever been been displayed in a movie theater.

nappy

10 個月前discuss

you make it very clear that you have zero understanding of what republican democracy is in the United States.

nappy

2 年前discuss

English grammar also has features for expressing uncertainty, unreality, hypothetical, wishes, demands with uncertain outcomes etc. by use of the subjunctive mood.

"If I were a bird, I would be able to fly." (were, not was) "God bless you." (bless, not blesses) "The teacher demands that students be on time." (be, not are)

Though many native speakers, even very intelligent ones, fail to properly use subjective mood at a high rate. Or otherwise do not recognize it. As some of the other comments note, there are some interesting differences around what a languages grammar will strictly enforce, where as in English, proper use of the subjunctive mood is less strict. Obviously, this is also far less expressiveness in English around this in grammar than there is in other languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_mood

nappy

2 年前discuss

I'm glad to see so much interest in devices like this. I hope they succeed. I own an Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, which I've been enjoying tremendously, and specs seem to compare favorably to this.

https://shop.boox.com/products/tab

Doesn't seem to be for sale at the moment, but the version with a color epaper layer is: https://www.amazon.com/BOOX-Tab-Ultra-Pro-Digital/dp/B0CHM54...

Do you have more details on your display technology and how it performs? Any demo videos? It sounds like this is the key selling point?

I'd also be curious to see more on the software side of this product - stock android isn't perfect for an eiknk display.

nappy

3 年前discuss

There is a lot that is wrong in this article. Broad overviews are useful to people new to a topic - this would only mislead and confuse people.

nappy

3 年前discuss

Agreed. It's an excellent book. But perhaps a little long if you are purely interested in computer history and want an introduction in a shorter volume. I recommend these two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...

nappy

3 年前discuss

Not sure about academic history, but in a single volume, this does a good job on early 20th century computer history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory

nappy

3 年前discuss

I don't recommend reading this. There are many gaps and a lot of important history missing, including:

1. Computation before ~1800. Abacus, Napier's Bones, Slides rules, Pascal's Calculator, motivations from celestial navigation and astronomy.

2. Modern analog computers ~1900-1950. The author seems to refer to them as "math machines" and leaves it at that, without exploring much deeper than that they were used for besides calculating firing solutions for artillery. I think the author lacks a solid grasp of how mathematical tables were used from 1614 onwards, and that analog computers were used to create much more accurate and complex tables which could be used for more accurate firing solutions. And for other purposes as well, beyond code-breaking.

>"It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that early, pre-general purpose computers (~1890-1950s) weren't computers in the way that we think about computers today. I prefer to think about them as "math machines"."

>"But subsequent machines were able to do math. From what I'm seeing, it sounds like a lot of it was military use. A ton of code-breaking efforts during World War II. Also a bunch of projectile calculations for artillery fire."

3. Poor description of the advent of electronic computers.

>"Then in the 1940s, there was a breakthrough.[10] The vacuum tube took computers from being mechanical to being electric. In doing so, they made computers cheaper, quieter, more reliable, more energy efficient, about 10-100x smaller, and about 100x faster. They enabled computations to be done in seconds rather than hours or days. It was big."

It was certainly a breakthrough, but the idea that computers immediately became quieter, cheaper, and more reliable is false. They were much larger, initially, compared to analog computers of the era. By almost any measure, they were also much less efficient with energy, though this may depend on what sort of calculations you are doing - I'm less sure of this.

4. Incomplete and incorrect descriptions of programming languages and the history of digital logic. No mention of information theory and Claude Shannon, digital circuits.

This is a poor analogy that misleads a reader who is unfamiliar with programming languages, it obscures the abstraction:

>"Think of it like this. It's translating between two languages. Assembly is one language and looks like this: LOAD R1, #10. Machine code is another language and looks like this: 10010010110101010011110101000010101000100101. Just like how English and Spanish are two different languages."

5. Lack of understanding of digital hardware.

The author never describes why or how vacuum tubes and then transistors allowed computers to use logic that is both digital and electronic.

The author jumbles a lot of ideas into one and does not seem to understand the relationship and distinction between the evolution of transistor technology (point-contact -> BJT -> FET -> MOSFET) and the creation of integrated circuits.

>"Before 1966, transistors were a thing, but they weren't the transistors that we imagine today. Today we think of transistors as tiny little things on computer chips that are so small you can't even see them. But before 1966, transistors were much larger. Macroscopic. Millimeters long. I don't really understand the scientific or engineering breakthroughs that allowed this to happen, but something called photolithography allowed them to actually manufacture the transistors directly on the computer chips."

6. Lack of historical context. No mention of the motivations for creating the vacuum tube or transistor: amplification and switching for use in telegraph and phone networks. No mention of the role the US government played beyond the 1860 Census, no mention of continued investments motivated by the Cold War, Apollo Program, ICBMs, etc. They briefly cover artillery firing solutions and mention code-breaking.

7. Over reliance on LLMs to research and write this.

Hard to take a history which includes this seriously:

>"And from what ChatGPT tells me, it's likely that this would have been an investment with a positive ROI. It'd make the construction of mathematical tables significantly faster and more reliable, and there was a big demand for such tables. It makes sense to me that it'd be a worthwhile investment. After all, they were already employing similar numbers of people to construct the tables by hand."

>"Anyway, all of this goodness lead to things really picking up pace. I'm allowed to quote Claude, right?"

nappy

3 年前discuss

> "starting at $3,499"

I wonder what the model that you actually want to buy will cost and what average sales price will be.

From the looks of it, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell a "pro" headband like Meta does for the Quest that has a battery pack that does better than the 2 hours of charge with the brick.

nappy

6 年前discuss

I like this, too:

> “It’s clearly a landmark,” said Chris Pickard, a materials scientist at the University of Cambridge. “That’s a chilly room, maybe a British Victorian cottage,” he said of the 59-degree temperature.