nimbleal

I tried with my phone vertical and couldn’t see anything. In horizontal ie bigger image it was clear as day. I think a lot of the variance is probably screens.

I see — a blog written by an unknown librarian is a better source than an Oxford fellow writing for a journal with a hundred year pedigree. No further engagement necessary, I think.

Yes, it is.

Look at your source — hardly authoritative! And the so-called evidence... Thin, entirely circumstantial, and in places actually wrong.

For example, Saturnalia went — at its longest - until the 23rd, not the 25th. Moreover, Christians likely got the 25th date based on religious calculation[1], not with reference to the one of the ancient festivals Victorian "historians" liked to speculate about.

The article attempts to link gifting verses to writing Christmas cards — a Christmas tradition not popularised until the 19th C and no older than the 17th.

Feasting and exchanging of gifts, much less the greeting "lo saturnalia" — literally the only other "evidence" presented here — need hardly be addressed, given how ubiquitous such things are with regard to festival, and how thin the apparent connection.

There is no positive evidence for this link, hence it not being taken seriously by any modern historian. It is no more than outdated speculation.

[1] https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?id=3007366&url=art...

The Christmas/ Saturnalia link is a myth.

Not sure how multiple exposures helps?

Smaller sensor, tighter aperture. So yes, more light or a more sensitive sensor.

Hmmmm. Which direction are you driving in where you can hardly understand them? I don’t think there’s a regional accent in the whole of the UK that’s “hardly understandable” spoken by anyone under 80 years old, let alone an hour from London. Especially where the conversation isn’t “in group”

I don’t think that’s an argument from authority. “Experts have been discussing X without reaching a conclusion for a long time” is a premise from which a reasonable argument can be made for the unlikelihood that an off-hand comment on HN has solved X. Argument from authority doesn't take that form though the two do have invoking authorities in common.

Zeiss cinema lenses (in particular master primes) have the least distortion I’ve come across

It was basically (no pun intended) this, though obviously not in bash:

  #!/bin/bash

  legs_out=(
  "                     "
  "        .'''.        "
  "       -     -       " 
  "       |  C  ^       "
  "        \    7       "
  "          | |        "
  "        /     \\     "
  "        |  \\ \\     "
  "        |   \\ \\    " 
  "      / |    \\ \\   "
  "     /  |     \\ \\  "
  "    /   |      \\ \\ "
  "   /    |      |\\  \\     "
  "        \\    \\          "
  "               \\         "
  "       /        \\        "
  "      /          \\       "
  "     /    / \\    \\      "
  "    /    /   \\    \\     "
  "   /    /     \\    \\    "
  "  /    \       \\    \\   "
  "   \\   \\       \\    \\...  "
  "     ____]         [    ]"
  )

  legs_cross=(
  "        .'''.        "
  "       -     -       "
  "       |  C  ^       "
  "        \    7       "
  "          | |        "
  "        /     \\     "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |  |       "
  "      ( |  |  |       "
  "        |  |   )    "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |  |      "
  "        |  |   )      "
  "        |  |  |       "
  "        |  |  |       "
  "        |  |  |       "
  "        /  |          "
  "       /   |  |       "
  "      \\..]  /    /    " 
  )

  print_man() {
    local spaces=$1
    local man=("${!2}")
    for line in "${man[@]}"; do
      printf "%*s%s\n" $spaces "" "$line"
    done
  }

  spaces=0
  state=0

  while true; do
    clear
  
    if (( state % 4 < 2 )); then
      print_man $spaces legs_out[@]
    else
      print_man $spaces legs_cross[@]
    fi
  
    ((spaces++))
    ((state++))
  
    if (( spaces > $(tput cols) )); then
      spaces=0
    fi
   
    sleep 0.1
  done

I’m afraid not. It was incredibly simple, but I just remember being amazed that such a thing was even possible.

I was talking to my parents the other day and surprised myself getting pretty chocked up remembering how my dad had shown me how to program an ascii animation on his 386, and how the wonder I felt at that in many ways led me to where I am today, so many years later. These things matter.

A video camera shooting at standard shutter speeds (ie if being used by a professional) would likely not show the bullet. If shooting 60fps for eg so 1/120 id guess the bullet wouldn’t show up. Quick Google suggests typical 3000km/h out the muzzle which would have a 7m motion blur trail? Not sure how fast and to what speed a bullet slows in air

Would plugging in your fastest external SSD and then using a hard drive read/write tester achieve some of the same ends? I've done that before with Blackmagic's disk speed test app and found it useful

Yes, or considered another way 1/25th shutter vs almost 1/2000th, ie a lot of motion blur vs. virtually nothing will be able to provoke blurring

I could see that being possible with a human language, but a non-human language? No way near enough context, I'd think.

I hope there are more models trained on more precise inputs going forward. I understand that natural language feels the most futuristic but while it has the lowest barrier to entry it’s not only imprecise but also slow. Visual approaches (for example control nets in stable diffusion, image as input in Chat GPT, though both of these are somewhat bolted on), 2D semi-natural languages all merit further inquiry.

Another (and perhaps the ultimate) possibility is to have some way —- perhaps through simulations —- to directly expose the model to the problem, rather than having a human/natural language intermediary.

I’m not sure this makes sense. Lots of phenomena — including those possessed by biological organisms — exist without there being any evolutionary imperative for their existence. For your argument to work, would you not have to demonstrate that consciousness is necessarily more like, say, animal fur than possessing mass or heat.

Or even shoot a documentary as you go. Netflix could end up paying for your time.

I agree.

I think one part of the problem is using English (or whatever natural language) for the prompts/training. Too much inherent ambiguity. I’m interested to see what tools (like control nets with SD) are developed to overcome this.

Absolutely. I suppose what I was commenting on was a pattern I’ve observed that goes something like:

1. My videos don’t look good, it must be because I don’t have a good camera/lens 2. I have a good camera lens, but my videos still don’t look good, it must be because I don’t have good lights

And a lot of people just stop there because lighting is a lot more work and a lot less fun (for most people) than buying expensive cameras, but for those that do pursue lighting, there’s a third stage:

3. I’ve got a good camera, good lights AND I know how to use them AND STILL my video looks a bit underwhelming

That’s when you realise location, art, talent etc are massively important too.

Ie you could have a truck full of Arri lights and if you have bad production design and inappropriate talent it will still look bad.

Lighting is also over-emphasised, in my opinion. The unfortunate truth is that it's everything. Production design and talent are HUGELY important. If you have an amazing art department, costume design and beautiful people your camera and lighting team can be on autopilot and it will still look pretty great.

Grip is also huge for high production value camera movement — and you'll see on the BTS video Apple absolutely don't skimp here. Pretty funny putting a $1000 phone on a $200,000 (at least! I'm not a grip guy, but that's the region) crane.

Lots of shots of Davinci Resolve, didn't spot any Premier at a quick glance? But it's not unusual for both to be used on the same production

I think the line you’re referring to is 象帝之先. I haven’t studied ancient Chinese (speak modern mandarin) but that would approximate to:

象 has the appearance of/seems to

帝 the Di, the highest or supreme deity/Zeus like king-of-the-gods

之先 A (the Dao) comes (typically chronologically or in terms of precedence) prior to B (The Di)

I think there may be an analogy to neo Platonic emanations (including as imagined by Christian thinkers ) in Western thought where the One or ground of Being comes logically prior to the gods/angels/spiritual powers etc.

Sceptical (I’m English).

And, I realise. I first learned Houdini c. 2004 so I’m aware of the technology.

Your YouTube link is a perfect example. It looks good but certainly doesn’t pass the bar for mistake-it-for-the-real-thing realism.

You’re right the VFX is often rushed and under budgeted. However realistic fire IS really hard and frankly I’m sceptical you can do it yourself on your desktop. On its own on a plain background, maybe. The moment you comp it in to a live plate our uncanny valley spidey senses kick in — to take it beyond “looks good” to “oh, I didn’t notice that was a VFX element” is still REALLY tough in many situations.

Either the most violent or the least depending on how your gerrymander your sample.

Hypothesis: violence is effectively monopolised to a degree it has never been before. So it is used far less frequently but when it is used, is far more destructive (see world wars).

Agree it has nothing to do with AI. Even if we, for the sake of argument, agree that human beings are machines, why should the appearance of human-mimicking reasoning imply sentience above and beyond any other (complex?) computation? Why are LLMs possibly sentient and not, say, pocket calculators?

Yes, it’s terrible at writing fiction. Cliché laden, dull, repetitive prose and somehow, in terms of actual content, it never generates anything of interest. Its desire to always wrap things up into a happy ending within a couple of paragraphs also means it’s almost incapable of generating conflict. At best it can generate teenage fan fiction — and bad teenage fan fiction, at that.

A stop is double the amount of light. Useful for equivalence across different ways of changing exposure. So I halve my shutter speed I’ve lost a stop. But I increase my aperture from 4 to 2.8 I’ve gained that stop back. Or I double the sensitivity of my film or sensor (eg. iso 400 to 800).

So yes, in terms of data if using linear gamma exactly equivalent to bits. This is why log gamma curves are used to store for eg 16 stops of light info in 12 bit format

Or ND the windows. Or shot on a modern cinema camera, tbh. 1000x is what, ~10 stops? Arri claims 17 for the new 35, though I’ve not had a play