Hacker News: martin_balsam

New comment by martin_balsam in "EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear"

martin_balsam — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:45:19 +0000

+1 to Ascension, one of the most fine piece of filmmaking that tries to explain the world of today

New comment by martin_balsam in "Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles"

martin_balsam — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 11:55:45 +0000

I went back to his website [1] and spent almost an hour of a boring zoom call playing Coin Counter [2]. [1] https://jacklance.github.io/games.html [2] https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=9ebe1e5ad44ac222593...

New comment by martin_balsam in "Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles"

martin_balsam — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 10:59:13 +0000

This interplay between different worlds reminded me of Enigmash, by Jack Lance [1]

[1] https://jacklance.github.io/PuzzleScript/play.html?p=cfdcc6e...

New comment by martin_balsam in "Show HN: Unflip – a puzzle game about XOR patterns of squares"

martin_balsam — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 22:29:45 +0000

I agree the ramp up is a bit slow, but I love the concept, and the interface. I am stuck at level 26

edit: found a way to solve it in 6, but not in 4

New comment by martin_balsam in "Bypass Censorshop of DEI Terms"

martin_balsam — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 15:18:44 +0000

This automatic word censorship reminds me eerily of the short story "The City of Silence" by Ma Boyong.

part 1 https://web.archive.org/web/20120118104342/http://worldsf.wo...

part 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20120201032550/http://worldsf.wo...

New comment by martin_balsam in "Show HN: Kreuzberg – Modern async Python library for document text extraction"

martin_balsam — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 14:33:04 +0000

Garbage collect module (cfr. Neuköllner for the past 12 years)

New comment by martin_balsam in "Stanley Kubrick did it his way"

martin_balsam — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 21:23:17 +0000

Chris Nolan famously drives all his production designers insane! No one has made more then one film with him. Apparently he also only shoots 3 or 4 takes per shot, and goes ballistic if somethings goes wrong.

New comment by martin_balsam in "Gödel, Escher, Bach is the most influential book in my life (2022)"

martin_balsam — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 22:31:17 +0000

I don’t know what language you speak, but GEB it’s been translated into multiple languages during the years.

I read it in Italian as a teen, the Italian edition is beautiful, and incredibly well translated (the book includes many puns and language tricks.)

New comment by martin_balsam in "Why Oppenheimer Deserves His Own Movie [video]"

martin_balsam — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 13:22:02 +0000

?? Dunkirk is imo the best one of his non-linear narratives, with 3 storylines intertwining: one taking place in the span of one week, one in one day and the last one (the plane) in one hour.

New comment by martin_balsam in "Office of the President of Mongolia: Top to bottom text on the web"

martin_balsam — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 10:53:48 +0000

Wow. They only agree with “Mongolia “ and the number 80

New comment by martin_balsam in "What is an eigenvalue?"

martin_balsam — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 16:33:33 +0000

But it is named after its characteristic, albeit in German

New comment by martin_balsam in "Disney Filmmaking Process"

martin_balsam — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 14:25:49 +0000

Not really, yes some interpolation is done automatically, but most character animation, especially for high budget films like Pixar is hyper finely tuned to the frame level, manually adjusting the interpolation curves to get the most expressive animation.

And then you have films like Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse where they did a mix of 24fps and 12fps for a more punchy and cartoony effect. In the end it’s not about realism but emotion and artistic representation

New comment by martin_balsam in "The Matrix Is Unreal"

martin_balsam — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 12:39:21 +0000

I remember reading that the end credits of Red Dead Redemption 2 was something like 7000 people

New comment by martin_balsam in "The Humble Brilliance of Italy's Moka Coffee Pot (2018)"

martin_balsam — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 08:21:44 +0000

And this is the ultimate HN answer.

Even in a thread about coffee, it must mention ThinkPads

But I also have the same moka. It’s good

New comment by martin_balsam in "The machine that saved Moore's Law"

martin_balsam — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 12:16:38 +0000

The number of people who believe that Moore’s Law is dead doubles every 18 months

-Jim Keller

New comment by martin_balsam in "The 'impossible' crane shot from Soy Cuba (1964) [video]"

martin_balsam — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 15:04:23 +0000

Thank you! Long Day’s Journey into the Night was the first movie I watch at the cinema after they reopened in 2020. I knew nothing about it. I was very confused by the first part, but when the second part started and I noticed they weren’t cutting I was locked in like few other times. I had never seen a movie that depicts so well how it feels to dream, and be in a dream.

New comment by martin_balsam in "Mars Helicopter successfully completed its second flight"

martin_balsam — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 19:46:24 +0000

Don’t forget vacuum welding

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_welding

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cementing

The first time it happened it must have been puzzling

New comment by martin_balsam in "Matrix multiplication inches closer to mythic goal"

martin_balsam — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:35:25 +0000

I think Quanta magazine is directly funded by Jim Simons, the billionaire mathematician who founded Renaissance Technology.

New comment by martin_balsam in "Implementing the Elo Rating System (2020)"

martin_balsam — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 20:33:40 +0000

Super nit-picky comment, but it’s Elo rating, not ELO. It’s not an acronym, it’s named after the physicist Arpad Elo

New comment by martin_balsam in "Cixin Liu's Postscript for the American Edition for “The Three Body Problem”"

martin_balsam — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 22:00:27 +0000

I think Ken Liu is a writer on his own right first, and a translator second. that might be part of the reason

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