Having traveled to several countries without formal addresses, this looks like a godsend for navigation. It has no regional segmentation (i.e. no drill-down reference like country-state-zip-city levels), however, so it's useless as a cultural reference.
Slightly off topic, but I'm stupefied at how much faster TomTom's maps (and Bing, apparently!) are than GoogleMaps.
The technology Jenison relies on can replicate art, but it does so synthetically, with no understanding of art's inner life
What a bunch of rhetorical diarrhea. This was nothing more than an exercise in curiosity, an exploration and evaluation of a hypothesis. This was not an attempt to disprove Vermeer's creativity, disprove artists in general, or disprove art.
Indeed. For the historical investigation that forms the backbones of the story, they had to do an imitation of the original work.
The paint strokes on the canvas are literally the superficial aspects of the painting. There is much more 'art' in the choice of subject, perspective, layout and so on. But had Tim chosen his own subject matter freely, then comparison's with Vermeer's technique would have been almost impossible.
I haven't done the math, but seeing the chapels in Cappadocia, Turkey seems to prove this. Most of the chapels contain frescoes that are significantly color-faded, but Karanlık Kilise ("Dark Church"), which is quite dim and has very little ambient light, contains frescoes with far richer color. [1]
Unfortunately, the guards stationed there like to yell at tourists even if their flashes are off, so I suspect most people don't understand the reasoning.
For what it's worth Buildasofa.com in the US seems to be making custom more affordable. I can't speak to the quality as I haven't ordered anything, but several friends speak highly of them and I believe their prices are far below the $5k number being thrown around.
As much as I dislike the stereotypical criticism on HN I agree completely. I still don't know what problem Lytro is trying to solve or what benefit it provides, and I've yet to hear about a successful application in the consumer space. Refocusing after a picture has been taken is interesting, but useless unless your camera/phone/whatever doesn't focus properly.
Depth of field is just one of many tools used to convey a photograph. For $1500 this camera better blow away other prosumer point-and-shoots like the RX100 Mk II, RX10, Ricoh GR, etc. Given the cost of light-field technology I suspect compromises in sensor sensitivity, dynamic range, and ISO will have to be made.
> Refocusing after a picture has been taken is interesting, but useless unless your camera/phone/whatever doesn't focus properly.
Ever try and take a picture of a kid? My Nexus 5's auto-focus can't keep up with my toddler at all. Getting this technology down into a compact shooter or cell phone sized camera would be a huge leap.
You will never get it in a camera the size of a cell-phone camera. This technology relies on the fact that each patch of their lens sees a different image of the subject; it's like stereo, but with a single lens, and many views rather than two. It fundamentally has to have a large-diameter lens.
You will never get it this small/big/fast/powerful/affordable is what has been said about a lot of industries/technologies in the past.
Question is, will Lytro be able to do it? Will they have the money&perseverance? With their financials they are not likely to move fast enough on this, 5mp equivalent in 2014 is not very impressive. I shelved my Lytro v1 after a couple of days because of the poor image quality, not because of the 'gimmick' disappointing me.
Pelican Imaging will be bringing out similar technology in cell phones this year or next. They're using a camera array rather than a single sensor + MLA.
I am not sure what you mean by each lens, since there is only one lens with this technology. The diameter of the lens has to be comparable to the separation between the two lenses in a stereo system. For meaningful stereo effect at distances we would find interesting (say, a few feet between you and your toddler), this has to be maybe an inch; I don't see a smaller lens being very interesting.
For a typical cell phone, the hyperfocal distance - beyond which everything is in focus with the lens focused at infinity - is maybe 6 feet; you can't get light field information, at all, for anything further than that. And it will be only a tiny bit of information for closer subjects; you can't take shallow depth-of-focus photos with a cell phone, and you can't apply this technology for the same reason. BTW, motion blur is likely a bigger problem for cell phone photos than focus.
Almost all DSLRs and I assume many point-and shoots have an automatic focus tracking mode for moving subjects. Canon's is called AI servo. That said, most people don't move beyond the "auto" setting on their high-end cameras, so I can understand the quest to simplify.
Autofocus in smartphones will hopefully get better over time, but if your options are an overall superior DSLR or an equally large camera that just gives you some flexible (albeit one-dimensional) focusing benefits then I think the choice is clear. Practice a little more with your DSLR and wait to see if Lytro can be implanted into a better supporting cast of parts at a reasonable cost.
I have a Canon T3i and 2 young kids. AI servo is the right idea in theory, but on even a lower-end DSLR it just doesn't help much. If a kid is running towards the camera, it will keep refocusing as the subject moves, but it's always focusing on where the kid was a split second ago.
IIRC the higher-end cameras have algorithms to track the subject and predict where the subject WILL be and focus accordingly. However, I have many friends with Mk III's and they say it's a very hard problem that even the high-end DSLR's don't solve. As you can imagine it's not actually a solvable problem with the present AF latencies as the subject can change course after the algorithm guesses. And when you're shooting shallow DoF even a small mistake will kill the focus on the shot.
The question is whether the Lytro can operate at 1/200 or faster to solve that problem. The specs say 1/4000 is max shutter speed, but IIRC the actual capture speed isn't that fast...
I'd guess that there's more benefit than just refocusing as a post process. This camera ships with a relatively wide aperture lens. Wide apertures are great for low light but they also have a very small focal range. I'd guess that with this type of sensor you could use the lens wide open but not be limited to a very narrow focal depth. This could allow you to take shots in low light that you wouldn't normally be able to get. Macro photography also has problems with focusing. You might be able to put a macro lens on here and take one picture completely in focus instead of combining a series of shots in photoshop.
1. That origin is just urban legend. Americanos started in the 70's.
2. Per ounce, you're technically correct about the strength of espresso vs. drip/brewed coffee. But brews have variable strengths, and most Americans drink 12, 18, and 24 ounce drip coffees (which ends up being more caffeine than even a quad shot of espresso).
Regarding #1, the urban legend legend is itself an urban legend. The only sources for "Americanos" originating in the 1970s is a dictionary entry and Wikipedia, neither of which are further sourced or authoritative.
2: I mean "strength" in a broader sense than caffeine content. I get more jittery from drip coffee (or french press, my personal poison of choice) than I do from espresso - I seem to recall having read that a shot of espresso contains less caffeine than a cup of regular coffee because of the quick extraction. But espresso has a much more intense (stronger) flavour.
I deal with this everyday selling software, and it's much more complex than being truthful and lying.
My job as a technical consultant to our sales staff is to bridge the gap between needs assessment and salesmanship. I have a 0 tolerance policy about lying during sales (I have to be to keep our sales guys from making false promises), but I struggle with finding that delicate balance between the truth, focusing on what's important to a prospect, and the manner in which you talk about capabilities you don't have. You cannot simply tell a prospect you don't have a feature if they don't actually need it because there's a lot of psychology at play. A competitor told them they needed that feature so you now have to mitigate their concerns. You essentially need to find a way to be truthful while simultaneously transferring emphasis to your selling points or to their needs.
It's one thing to have a product that will meet a customer's needs and make them happy and to not say anything during initial discussions that will present a distraction or needlessly turn them off. It's another to say something misleading or to elide a detail that is material, which the customer will reluctantly suffer later on, in order to close a deal. It seems to me that modern sales organizations have incentives perfectly calibrated to do just these things. This situation corrodes trust.
I struggle with finding that delicate balance between the truth ...
Oh, so you lie, but lie by omission? Or one of the other forms of lying we tend to morally wallpaper over? I don't see how else to read that because you said your goal was to avoid making false promises, not to avoid "bending" the truth.
Your inference was incorrect. I said my job was to keep our sales reps from making false promises, which includes (but is not limited to) bending the truth, lying by omission, making incorrect assertions, etc.
My industry is highly mobile and quite competitive so we don't gain anything by stretching truths. Customers can leave as quickly as they come, and since we're a small shop we use a consultative sales approach to ensure customers will be happy long-term.
Again, the solution is more complex than "just tell the truth." Tell the truth in a positive way, offer viable alternatives, and re-emphasize what matters. We're selling to humans, not Vulcans.
If a 5 year old child asks you if he will be killed by pirates (yes this has really happened to me), would you say no? If so, you're lying, but I don't think there is any "moral wallpaper" here, it's simply letting a kid sleep at night.
Not to say there aren't many dishonest people out there, but the parallels between sales (especially software) and this story are all too common.
If so, you're lying, but I don't think there is any "moral wallpaper" here, it's simply letting a kid sleep at night.
If the reasoning starts with "This lie is OK because..." you're using the fact it's easy to argue that the lie was moral to extinguish the weight typically associated with lying.
The reasoning here is based on the idea the child is really asking is if there are monsters under the bed/in the closet/down the street. You lie because the truth wouldn't be reassuring, because they can't handle the complexities of the answer "Anything can happen, but the chances are infinitesimally small if you stay out if international waters."
So, are you making bad analogies or do you consider your clients children that couldn't handle the idea you're selling a complex product? It's fine if you do, people can be real dumb sometimes, I won't mind.
It just seems like you're trying to build yourself a cozy little nest between the "truth" and "lying" that extends beyond genuine misunderstandings. The weight of a lie exists on a scale. I do lie to children, but don't consider it not lying, I just don't worry about it too much. I do tend to believe in telling less "white lies" to children than is typical but that's a tangent.
I had a similarly poor experience[1]. Many people are retorting that you have to go through this process with all financial institutions. To those, I say you're missing the point. We still have to answer a lot of questions regarding regulation around cryptocurrencies, but part of the allure is that you shouldn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to use bitcoin. Furthermore, the first (and only) time I dropped by the bitcoin markup was astronomical.
It's naive to think we'll resolve this overnight, but until then there's no point to using a robocoin ATM.
The flipside of this is that Walmart does not charge extra for small, individual items, and I suspect they're losing a lot of money by doing so. I'm a heavy Amazon user, but as an experiment (and because I needed some individual toiletries) I ordered ~15 items from Walmart.com. Walmart's answer to this shipment request was to send 5 separate packages from different places and taking anywhere from 1 day to 10 days. Shipping transit estimations were all off. One shipment was just a single loofah. Just a very annoying process altogether.
Even with these add-on products Amazon is basically forcing you to adopt a Costco / buy-in-bulk model, and I think it's the only profitable and sensible direction.
>>> Walmart's answer to this shipment request was to send 5 separate packages from different places and taking anywhere from 1 day to 10 days
Logically speaking, I would think this would actually be the fastest way to fulfill orders. Find the closest distribution center that has your stuff in stock and ship it.
The ten day delivery is a bit disconcerting for sure though.
