Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Human Shader

humanshader.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 131 posts

Re: Human Shader

#121

Post by rkangel »

boondoggle16 wrote: post #79
ninju wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as depicted by the cool movie Hidden Figures ".. Based on the unbelievably true life stories of three of these women, known as "human computers", we follow these women as they quickly rose the ranks of NASA..." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340/

Quote from imdb movie description: > mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history In this case, aren't they more like hands than brains? The brains should be the ones who created the code. These people are just processing it, it's like manual labor.

Over the course of the film, the three women cover a broader range of capabilities than just doing arithmetic, and that tagline is not unreasonable. I'm not being very specific on purpose - you should watch the film.

Re: Human Shader

#122

Post by sgarland »

willis936 wrote: post #109
sgarland wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambiguity makes for interesting thoughts.

I used to think this way but I have become frustrated at my inability to intentionally convey interesting thoughts. I now strive to minimize ambiguity.

Yeah, this was a tad flippant. At work, I’ve often had something I write be received in a wholly different manner than I intended. My coping strategy for now is to preface anything that I think might be viewed differently with a “this does not mean…” warning. But of course, if I knew all of the sentences that might be received differently, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

Re: Human Shader

#123

Post by thih9 »

echelon wrote: post #108
chasing wrote: post #55

Pretty soon even tasks like this will be done by computers.

Next we need Human GPT and Human Diffusion. We'll start with inference, but maybe we'll eventually convince some folks to do a full training exercise.

Aren’t we all doing HumanGPT right now, pre-trained to some extent, reading prompts and writing answers?

Re: Human Shader

#124

Post by thih9 »

justusthane wrote: post #96
sgarland wrote: post #94

This was as much fun as it looked like. I got some nice paper, a nice pen, and made neat boxes for steps, rough columns, etc. I also converted the final RGB to hex for fun, and made a rough representation of it via colored pencil combinations. Total time was about an hour, I think, but the time wasn’t important to me. This was enjoyable.

It’s funny that “This was as much fun as it looked like,” could be interpreted accurately in either direction, depending on your personal predilections.

In other words, relative point of view.

Re: Human Shader

#125

Post by ygra »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #16

Fun, but it would be interesting if on the worksheet there was an explanation for each calculation

I found it interesting working out what the different sections were on my own. I can't write shaders, but it was enough to roughly judge which parts were ground, sky, and sphere, and where the ground included the shadow. I didn't spot the ambient occlusion or lighting on the sphere, though.

Re: Human Shader

#126

Post by shadowgovt »

boondoggle16 wrote: post #92
phist_mcgee wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unkind assessment. They used their brains to perform the calculations, I don't see how you could see it otherwise.

Sure they used their brains. But "brains behind the operation" is a term of art. Is the McDonald's cashier the "brains behind the operation" because they count change as part of their duties? Counting change accurately is very important to the continued successful operation of a retail establishment. But it's menial work. Even Wikipedia agrees with me: > Alan Turing described the "human computer" as someone who is "s…

> But "brains behind the operation" is a term of art.

Which art?

Re: Human Shader

#127

Post by kowsheek »

GuB-42 wrote: post #74

> Created by Inigo Quilez Of course... It you are into shaders and don't know that guy, well you are one of the "lucky 10000" and you should check him out. ( https://iquilezles.org/ )

I work with him every day and pinch myself

Re: Human Shader

#128

Post by Netcob »

Reminds me of the good old days when you didn't need an expensive GPU to play the latest path-traced games, just a pencil, some paper, and a few friends.

Re: Human Shader

#129

Post by Turskarama »

bagels wrote: post #57
cvoss wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author should implement an error correction system, where 1) the result is withheld from the display until a second corroborating calculation comes in, and 2) if there is disagreement, request an arbitration from a third user whose job is to pick which of the two is the best answer.

They already know the right answer for each pixel, presumably though?

If they didn't then maybe they could write some kind of computer program to find them.

Re: Human Shader

#130

Post by deely3 »

cdelsolar wrote: post #47

so someone can just write a script to generate the full image right? since instructions are the same for each pixel. Would make it easier to check your work.. edit: https://imgur.com/a/UO37L1b

Why it so low quality? Imgur issue?
Post reply on HN