TonyVladusich

dave, 1 month ago to random

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waitingforreview, 1 month ago to Podcast

S4E14: Quite in the weeds 🌿

@dave and @daniel haven't been feeling so well, but we get into the show, and end up right in the weeds !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tOjO3u_DvA

Join us, while we're Waiting For Review

#iOSDev #IndieDev #SaaS #SwiftVapor #Podcast

johncarlosbaez, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Lately I've been obsessed by Paul McCartney's song Jet. Pop music critics focus on lyrics because they're writers and they understand words better than music. So there's a lot of talk about what the lyrics mean in this song - though they're essentially nonsense designed to sound great - and not nearly enough about the startlingly abstract descending melodic line that's the centerpiece. You'll hear it in the first phrase:

I can almost remember their funny faces

and then, in a more elaborated form, in the second:

That time you told them you were going to be marrying soon

If you try to sing these lines getting the melody and rhythm exactly right, I think you'll find it hard! Or maybe I'm just bad at singing... but I don't think so - I think they're rather slippery. And so he put this melody in several extremely catchy frames:

1. Starting the song, a repeated ominous 4-note theme. This should remind you of the phrase "band on the run" from the title song of this album.

2. A recurring bump-and-grind thing on rhythm guitar, which anchors the whole piece. This is actually reminiscent of a reggae rhythm, since it plays the 3rd and 4th beats while leaving the 1st and 2nd silent.

3. Most obviously, the shouted chorus of "Jet!" The whole band sings this, and its intense while still sounding cheery. They do it 3 times before the main lyrics come in with that descending melody. From then on, the first 2 of the 3 are followed by an insanely catchy "woo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo". This instantly grabs everyone.

4. A chorus with a different type of melody:

Ah Mater want Jet to always love me
Ah Mater want Jet to always love me
Ah Mater, much later

(1/2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwRXxtwcJus

TonyVladusich, 1 month ago to random

Poisson Image Editing

by Pe ́rez, Gangnet & Blake

One of the most important & highly cited papers in all of computer graphics, "Poisson image editing" describes a gradient-based integral system for performing all sorts of image manipulations, including seamless cloning, where target objects are copy/pasted into a scene. This method underlies the cloning tool familiar to Photoshop users.

I conjecture that a similar gradient-based integral system underlies many computational properties of human vision, including color filling defined over segmented, isolated domains.

image/png

TonyVladusich, 1 month ago to random

And in today’s shocking news we learn that rich, powerful white men are, in fact, above the law.

dave, 1 month ago to music

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albertcardona, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to Neuroscience

The honeybee brain hosts over 600,000 neurons, at a density higher than that of mammalian brains:

"Our estimate of total brain cell number for the European honeybee (Apis mellifera;
≈ 6.13 × 10^5, s = 1.28 × 10^5; ...) was lower than the existing estimate from brain sections ≈ 8.5 × 10^5"

"the highest neuron densities have been found in the smallest respective species examined (smoky shrews in mammals; 2.08 × 10^5 neurons mg^−1 [14] and goldcrests in birds; 4.9 × 10^5 neurons mg^−1 [16]). The Hymenoptera in our sample have on average higher cell densities than vertebrates (5.94 × 10^5 cells mg^−1; n = 30 species)."

Ants, on the other hand ...

"ants stand out from bees and wasps as having particularly small brains by measures of mass and cell number."

From:
"Allometric analysis of brain cell number in Hymenoptera suggests ant brains diverge from general trends", by Godfrey et al. 2021.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.0199

#Hymenoptera #entomology #neuroscience #ants #honeybees

TonyVladusich, 1 month ago to random

The perception of gloss depends on highlight congruence with surface shading

https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2121251

Studies have shown that displacing specular highlights from their natural locations in images reduces perceived surface gloss. Here, we assessed the extent to which perceived gloss depends on congruence in the position and orientation of specular highlights relative to surface shape and the diffuse shading from which surface shape is recovered. The position and orientation congruence of specular highlights with diffuse shading was altered while preserving their compatibility with physical surface shape (Experiment 1). We found that perceived gloss diminished as the position of highlights became incompatible wit h the surface's global diffuse shading maxima. These results suggest the visual system assesses both position and orientation congruence between specular highlights and diffuse shading to estimate surface gloss.

18+ dave, 1 month ago to random

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TonyVladusich, 1 month ago to random

Translucency perception is another fascinating topic with applications in computer graphics. Here's a very nice recent review of the topic:

Translucency is an optical and a perceptual phenomenon that characterizes subsurface light transport through objects and materials. Translucency as an optical property of a material relates to the radiative transfer inside and through this medium, and translucency as a perceptual phenomenon describes the visual sensation experienced by humans when observing a given material under given conditions. The knowledge about the visual mechanisms of the translucency perception remains limited. Accurate prediction of the appearance of the translucent objects can have a significant commercial impact in the fields such as three-dimensional printing. However, little is known how the optical properties of a material relate to a perception evoked in humans. This article overviews the knowledge status about the visual perception of translucency and highlights the applications of the translucency perception research. Furthermore, this review summarizes current knowledge gaps, fundamental challenges and existing ambiguities with a goal to facilitate translucency perception research in the future.

https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2776540

huwr, 1 month ago to random

Grew this

dave, 1 month ago to random

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johncarlosbaez, 1 month ago to random

According to this security firm, 50% of all internet traffic came from bots in 2023. 32% came from "bad bots": malicious automated software applications. They say in Germany a whopping 67% of internet traffic is bad bots.

This sounds really bad, but it's a lot like nature. You contain about as many bacteria as human cells - and about ten times as many viruses! So if you weigh 70 kilograms, you've got about 38 trillion bacteria and 380 trillion viruses in you. Have a nice day.

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2024/04/18/automated-bots-internet-traffic/

TonyVladusich, 1 month ago to random

I just remembered a dream I had last night about @huwr. You rocked up to my house in a van and I hopped in (innocent that I am). I then poked you on the arm and asked “Are you real?”, and you replied “Of course”. I then promptly woke up and said to myself “liar”.

TonyVladusich, 1 month ago to random

The Dirichlet problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirichlet_problem

ryanbooker, 1 month ago to random

Today in our phones definitely aren’t listening…

My other half just grabbed a jar of left over easter eggs from its hiding place—those awesome little solid chocolate ones—made a joke about how they were hidden so I didn't eat them all, then opened Instagram to find a joke about eating too many easter eggs.

dave, 1 month ago to random

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