Hacker News: markusMB

New comment by markusMB in "OpenCV 5 Is Here: The Biggest Leap in Years for Computer Vision"

markusMB — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:44:47 +0000

Done a few projects with OpenCV myself, and your list of issues reads as if you throw OpenCV and opencv_contrib into the same bucket. Which you shouldnt. And maybe your assessment is outdated here and there and it is time to look again.

- OpenCV is Apache license. Yes, it used to be more complicated.

- The only patented algorithm I am aware of, SIFT, used to be part of opencv_contrib. And the README in opencv_contrib would greet you with a warning, that the code may not be fit commercial use for various reasons. Only when the patent expired, it was moved into OpenCV core.

- Same observation for Aruco marker detection, which was in contrib for a long time because the options to choose from were either not-well-maintained or GPL-licensed code. It is now in core OpenCV (and Apache).

- Despite its age, I think that OpenCV is still more than relevant today. And being part of modern languages like C++, Swig, Java and Python (and for years already) is part of that. Still I was surprised how long they maintained OpenCV 2 and 3.

- Over the past releases and few years, my impression was actually that core API was very much stable(izing). Cant say what happened in contrib – or what it feels like when you treat core and contribute as one and a feature progressed from contributing to core.

- I do agree, that I usually I would check that a MINOR releases wasnt actually a MAJOR release, breaking some API or behavior I was relying on. I am hoping that Version 5 is pulling the ambitions for making things differently away from Version 4. So v4 can be used stably ;-)

New comment by markusMB in "Playing with Vision Embeddings"

markusMB — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:06:25 +0000

Beautiful illustrations I find, 'Playing' is just the free and motivated version of 'exploration'.

One thought on your nicely illustrated "key observation [is] that neural networks tend to place features along directions": my guess is that the neural net was TOLD to behave that way by choosing e.g. Cosine Loss?

Ask HN: Wishlist for an Immich-macOS-App?

markusMB — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:15:40 +0000

Thanks to HN coverage here, I learned about Immich, got curious, tried it, became excited about it. The other day, I wanted to share my excitement with a non-tech relative – but didnt really dare to suggest how simple it is to get going. I am sure I would have lost him way before "Docker", "Linux", or "Hetzner".

So I thought I put together an app that 1. runs Immich using Apple's container VMs, 2. takes care of Immich's containers, 3. opens Immich in a local browser at the click of a button, 4. displays its current IP address in order to connect with your smartphone, 5. handles configs and updates (restarts containers as needed).

What features would you suggest or would be important for you? My personal items on the list:

- single data directory containing image data as well as database backups

- data directory on an external drive: it may not be connected or be ejected while containers are running

- current IP address as a QR code

- ...?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48311064

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by markusMB in "5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens"

markusMB — Sun, 03 May 2026 19:18:33 +0000

Turns out, just by adding a 1 pixel border, you can (visually) turn the characters into a Aruco AR code dictionary :-) The dictionary created from the whole font does have uniqueness collisions – it depends on your use case if that is problematic. But you can create a font of AR codes that can be read by machine as well as human: https://codeberg.org/markusBM/ARuChars#readme