Has the world become less colourful? • Hacker News Board

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#61

Post by shaftoe » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:01 AM UTC

snedfree wrote: post #17

tiborsaas wrote: post #11

Maybe this is why the Instagram article was a bit weird yesterday? " On Tuesday morning, Instagram head Adam Mosseri appeared in full damage control mode. Facing the camera and wearing a bright yellow sweater, he attempted to quash a growing revolt from some of Instagram’s most prominent users. " https://archive.ph/FF2d1 Why even mention the color of the sweater? I can see that clearly on the video.

not everyone who can use a screen reader can see

Are there a lot of people using screen readers who also use or care about Instagram? Seems incompatible.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#62

Post by aussieshibe » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:05 AM UTC

snedfree wrote: post #17

tiborsaas wrote: post #11

Maybe this is why the Instagram article was a bit weird yesterday? " On Tuesday morning, Instagram head Adam Mosseri appeared in full damage control mode. Facing the camera and wearing a bright yellow sweater, he attempted to quash a growing revolt from some of Instagram’s most prominent users. " https://archive.ph/FF2d1 Why even mention the color of the sweater? I can see that clearly on the video.

not everyone who can use a screen reader can see

I understand the objection to the general "why write X when I can see X" point. Obviously not everyone who can read some text can also watch a video.

In this specific case though, is conveying the color of the sweater to people who can't or don't watch the video important? Why mention the color of his sweater, but not the color of his eyes, his hairstyle, or any of countless other unrelated visual details?

Trying to put myself in the shoes of someone using a screen reader, maybe these little details give some extra context which, while irrelevant to the topic, help to give "color" to the story which I, as a person who is able to watch the video, am taking for granted?

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#63

Post by nonrandomstring » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

pflanze wrote: post #39

nonrandomstring wrote: post #22

An explanation might be LED lighting. Sunlight, candle-light and resistive filament lights (incandescent) have a broadband spectrum. Through most of history we've viewed the world lit by these sources. Moving to fluorescent lights causes spectral quantisation as the frequencies are due to electronic band transitions in the gas. The phosphor absorbs and re-emits energy in different bands that fills out the spectrum bu…

> re-emission in valance holes Are you talking about single-colour LEDs? Since white LEDs use a "phosphor", just like fluorescent lights, that convert blue or UV light. In fact I thought that the phosphors used by LEDs today are much better than those used by fluorescent lights. Maybe you're talking about RGB lights, which combine separate reg, green and blue LEDs so that the colour mix can be changed. But even then…

> white LEDs use a "phosphor", just like fluorescent lights

Wow. I didn't know that. So I guess the junction actually emits UV which is converted to visible spectrum? Does that mean they're bad for your eyes if some UV leaks out?

How I thought it worked is that different doping materials are blended in the junction to get a mix of frequencies. Maybe that's impossible.

And yes, sure for RGB clusters the spacing is obvious even to my eyes.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#64

Post by soco » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:12 AM UTC

stuartleigh wrote: post #27

ThePadawan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a self-perpetuating problem. Maybe people prefer (red, green, bright blue), but they fear that they won't be able to sell their car because of its color. So they buy white. (I read somewhere [so take this with a grain of salt] that this effect happens with marble kitchen countertops: not that many homeowners actually like them, but they believe that potential buyers might, so an overproportional amount of…

As somebody who has recently renovated their kitchen and bathroom, it's not that I thought potential buyers would prefer white over a colour, it's just that I thought they were less likely to NOT like white over my preference of colour, and then either be put off, or feel like "this house is perfect but we'd have to redo the bathroom right away because I can't stand the pink" and then offer less.

So basically they renovate not for themselves, but for some fantasy future buyers. That's a bit sad...

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#65

Post by titzer » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:19 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #37

nonrandomstring wrote: post #22

An explanation might be LED lighting. Sunlight, candle-light and resistive filament lights (incandescent) have a broadband spectrum. Through most of history we've viewed the world lit by these sources. Moving to fluorescent lights causes spectral quantisation as the frequencies are due to electronic band transitions in the gas. The phosphor absorbs and re-emits energy in different bands that fills out the spectrum bu…

> Only by combining these do we trick the eye into seeing "white light" Vast majority of white LEDs are phosphor based and not color-mixing

The decorative programmable-color LED strips and such use RGB LEDs.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#66

Post by golergka » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:23 AM UTC

Another explanation would be rising car sales in Middle East, Africa and other economically developing regions with very hot climate where white colored cars are simply more economical as they don't heat as much in the sun.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#67

Post by mmmmpancakes » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:27 AM UTC

If you are like me and love vibrant colours and struggle to understand the postmodern(?) obsession with drab palettes, I recommend the book Chromophobia by David Batchelor [1]. It contextualizes this phenomenon within broader western art history and is just generally super interesting to someone who has an interest in art and design but isn't embedded in that world. The main takeaway, iirc, is that this isn't a particularly new thing.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/351621.Chromophobia>

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#68

Post by anothernewdude » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:28 AM UTC

thematrixturtle wrote: post #34

There is a famous if possibly apocryphal study where random people were asked to rate various toaster colors, and everybody swooned over lime green and hot pink and whatnot. After they finished, they were told that as their prize they could take one of the toasters home -- and everybody chose white, stainless steel or black.

My toaster is cherry red.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#69

Post by k2xl » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:28 AM UTC

The study of colors seems to neglect that back before taking photos were ubiquitous, photographers would have a higher likelihood of taking photos of colorful, more interesting things (why waste a photo on something boring?)

Regarding cars however, this is likely due to costs of colorful paint as scale.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#70

Post by tomashubelbauer » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #65

zokier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only by combining these do we trick the eye into seeing "white light" Vast majority of white LEDs are phosphor based and not color-mixing

The decorative programmable-color LED strips and such use RGB LEDs.

Not always, many are RGBW since the sole white LED consumes less power than the RGB LEDs shining together to produce white (I believe so at least) and the white color coming off the single white LED is nicer than the mixed color.