1. Shipbreaking
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
The artist Edward Burtynsky’s Shipbreaking photographs capture the dismantling of massive ships, which he sees as the ultimate form of recycling. Inspired by a radio program discussing the danger of single-hulled ships, Burtynsky became fascinated by where these vessels would be taken apart. Most of the dismantling was happening in India and Bangladesh, which is where he focused his work. His images depict the aftermath of industrial progress, showing how our attempts at advancement often result in destruction. Despite this, there is a haunting beauty in the vastness and perspective of these images, suggesting that nature can eventually reclaim even the most ambitious human interventions.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author reminisces about their father, an electrical engineer in India, who brought home shelves and cabinets from ships being cut up at his workplace. Despite their mismatched aesthetics, the author’s father was excited about salvaging functional pieces. The most intriguing cabinet had a white paint with green stencil printing, possibly Cyrillic script. The cabinets are still in the author’s old house, and they plan to translate the text on their next visit to discover the original intention and what their mother is storing in it.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the practice of western shipping companies sending larger vessels to countries like India and Bangladesh for cheaper repair work. However, this practice raises concerns related to the environment and the safety of human workers. The article also highlights instances where these attempts have failed, resulting in accidents such as oil spills when the vessels drift to land.
2. How terminal works. Part 1: Xterm, user input (2021)
Total comment counts : 4
Summary
This article is part of a blog series that explains how modern terminals and command-line tools work, with a focus on learning through experimentation. The author provides Linux tools to debug the discussed components and encourages readers to explore further through additional resources. The target audience is those who want to start working with command-line tools. The series consists of four parts, with the first two discussing how xterm works and the other two focusing on different features of tty. The article starts by explaining an inaccurate diagram that shows the general use case of working with a command-line shell. It then delves into the communication process between the user, xterm (terminal emulator), and bash (command shell). The article acknowledges that this model is simplistic and that in reality, the communication scheme is more complicated due to additional features implemented over time. The existence of a middleman called tty is mentioned, which will be discussed in later parts. The article continues by explaining the conversion of keyboard scancodes into GUI events and the steps involved in this process. It also mentions using strace as a practical approach to observe what a terminal writes and reads into/from filehandles while a process is running. The author provides an example of using strace to observe keypress events in xterm. The article concludes by mentioning that upcoming discussions will cover topics such as ANSI escape sequences and ASCII control characters.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is not available directly in the provided link, but the other three parts can be found by going up a level on the website.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author used to search for code in the getty.c program that allowed all capital letters for logins due to older models of teletypes and VDU terminals without a shift function. This made the author question how the password check and the strength of the crypt function would work if the case wasn’t important. These code lines were removed from FreeBSD during the 2.x series.
3. Chameleon: Meta’s New Multi-Modal LLM
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
The article discusses arXivLabs, a framework that enables collaboration and development of new features on the arXiv website. It emphasizes the importance of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy, and states that arXiv only works with partners that uphold these values. The article also mentions that individuals and organizations have embraced arXivLabs and encourages readers to learn more about it. Additionally, the article mentions the availability of receiving status notifications for arXiv via email or Slack.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article linked is a Reddit thread discussing a newly published work from Fair Chameleon. A comment in the thread highlights a Twitter thread from one of the authors, stating that the models in the paper were trained five months ago and there has been significant progress since then. Unfortunately, the article itself is not provided.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the difficulties of using softmax with different tokenization spaces and the concept of different modalities competing by increasing their own strength relative to other modalities, leading to divergence. The article suggests a fix for this problem but does not provide details. It also highlights that the problem is most pronounced when dealing with larger models. The author expresses appreciation for the publication and acknowledges the competitive advantage gained from sharing techniques and know-how.
4. Bento3D
Total comment counts : 19
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s enjoyment of a platform called Gridfinity, which allows users to customize and print compatible cases. The article provides a link to the platform’s Reddit page for more information.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a web tool called Bento3D, which allows users to create 3D printable dividers and toolboxes with millimeter precision. The precision aspect is noteworthy because it ensures accurate measurements for creating these objects. The tool is considered a CAD program and is primarily focused on handling numbers and precise measurements.
5. How Might We Learn?
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
The article discusses the different approaches to learning, specifically the conflict between implicit learning (discovery learning) and guided learning (cognitive psychology). Implicit learning prioritizes meaning and emotion, while guided learning focuses on cognition and instruction. The author suggests that a synthesis of both approaches is needed, where authentic projects are infused with guided support when necessary. The goal is to create a learning environment where one can dive into projects while still ensuring effective learning.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article expresses frustration with the unrealistic portrayal of AI capabilities in demonstrations and the lack of consideration for the risks of learners being misled. The author shares a personal experience of testing an AI, which provided completely incorrect information. They also highlight the frustration of a high school science teacher who was forced to use generative AI tutors in their classes, despite their poor testing and high confabulation rate. The author believes that while the article brings valuable insights on learning, it fails to address the inadequacy of current AI technology for the task at hand.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses key aspects of learning, such as honest self-assessment and learning to appreciate one’s own abilities. It emphasizes that learning music is a great way to learn how to learn, and encourages focusing on personal growth rather than comparing oneself to others. The author expresses concern that AI tools may hinder learning by preventing individuals from exploring their own path and passively following AI-generated recommendations. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of taking personal responsibility for one’s education.
6. City in a Bottle – A 256 Byte Raycasting System
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
The article discusses a 256-byte HTML file that contains a tiny raycasting engine and city generator. The author explains the different components of the program, such as the HTML code, frame update loop, rendering system, raycasting engine, and city generation. They also mention that the code is simple and uses basic algebra rather than advanced math or trigonometry. The article provides a breakdown of the JavaScript code and explains how the program works.
Top 1 Comment Summary
I’m sorry, but I am unable to access or summarize specific webpages or articles. However, if you provide me with the main points or key details from the article, I would be happy to assist you in summarizing it.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author is amazed at the high information density in a small piece of code. They question whether LLMs are the most effective way to model the world.
7. Sierra was captured, then killed, by an accounting fraud (2020)
Total comment counts : 30
Summary
The article discusses Ken Williams, the founder of Sierra On-Line, and his belief that the company was “murdered.” Williams argues that Sierra is mostly remembered for its 2D adventure games from the eighties and nineties, despite his intentions for the company to continue evolving and leading in other genres and software. The article explores how Walter Forbes, a board member of Sierra’s parent company CUC, approached Roberta Williams, Ken’s wife and a creative leader at Sierra, about the potential sale of the company. However, Williams does not hold animosity towards Forbes, despite comparing the end of Sierra to watching his child be tortured to death.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the downfall of Sierra, a game developer, and highlights how their pursuit of more profit ultimately led to their demise. The author argues that it would not have been enough for Sierra to remain a boutique producer of high-quality adventure games. The article suggests that if Sierra had focused on earning an honest profit doing what they did best, everyone involved, including the employees who lost their savings, would be happier today. The article concludes that the story serves as a cautionary tale, emphasizing the wisdom in the proverb “the love of money is the root of all evil.”
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article suggests that despite customers loving great products, the free market does not always reward them. It seems that customer passion is seen as an inefficiency by the market, which tends to eliminate it. The article also mentions that when a company with a beloved product is bought, it often leads to negative changes in the product quality and customer satisfaction.
8. What UI density means and how to design for it
Total comment counts : 47
Summary
The article discusses the concept of UI density in interfaces and compares the denseness of websites and applications in 2024 to their counterparts from the 2000s. It explains that density is not just about the visual appearance of an interface but also about the amount of information it provides over a series of moments. Visual density is the number of elements seen in a given space, where a visually dense interface has a lot of content on the screen. The author provides examples of visually dense websites like Bloomberg’s Terminal and Craigslist. However, visual density can be subjective and biased, so the article suggests aiming for a consistent and meaningful definition of density. The concept of information density is introduced, which measures the useful parts of a visualization in relation to the total ink used to print it. The goal is to have a high ratio of data-ink to total ink. Information density and visual density are often correlated, with higher information density resulting in a more visually dense visualization. The article includes examples such as a train schedule from 1885 to illustrate this concept.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article argues that physical restaurant menus are superior to mobile site menus. The author mentions that while viewing a restaurant’s menu on a phone, they always prefer to look for a picture of the menu on Google Maps because it is easier to navigate. They explain that mobile-friendly menu sites typically only show a few items at a time, which requires constant scrolling to see everything.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the concept of visual salience and how it relates to information density in user interfaces. It argues that a good interface should maximize information without sacrificing visual salience. This can be achieved by using clear boundaries between information sets and encapsulating information in something visually distinct, such as whitespace. It references a paper by Kadir and Brady for further explanation on the relationship between saliency, scale, and image description.
9. Formatted spreadsheets can still work in R
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
The article discusses a workflow in R for working with problematic formatted spreadsheets. It suggests using functions from the unheadr package to address issues with the spreadsheet. The article provides step-by-step instructions for parsing variables, handling awkward dates, and dealing with units of measurement encoded as text formatting. It also mentions using tidyxl to unravel formatting issues and suggests following good practices for organizing data in spreadsheets to avoid problems. The article concludes by thanking Jeremy Selva for the idea and providing further reading suggestions.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses the importance of data quality by using the analogy of water quality. The author argues that if you come across one piece of bad data, you cannot simply ignore it and proceed with the rest. Instead, you need to address the issue and investigate the source of the bad data. The article also questions the reliability of data that starts with a “cursed date” such as 32/1/2017.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the use of color to indicate units of measurement in data. Instead of creating a new column, the author suggests using different text colors, such as black for pounds and green for kilograms. This approach is seen as a unique and effective way of marking data.
10. An Ode to Deluxe Paint (2023)
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
The article states that access to the resource on the server is denied because LiteSpeed Technologies Inc. is not a web hosting company and does not have control over the content on the site.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is about the author’s last picture created using Deluxe Paint II in December 1998. They spent around 40-50 hours working on it to make sure every pixel was correct.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s experience transitioning from a Commodore 64 to a 386AT PC with a VGA card and screen. They were amazed by the artwork included in Deluxe Paint II, particularly pieces called Pueblo, Kingtut, and Celtic. The author provides links to images of these artworks.