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

Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

rarehistoricalphotos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 624 posts

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#191

Post by stjohnswarts »

matt-attack wrote: post #178
xwdv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fake, and pretty soon people will not even want to entertain the idea of looking at photos or videos that are not in color.

I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive. I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white. Recall that look is just an artificial limit imposed by immature chemical technology. It’s not like people wanted their pictures looking like that. It’s even a common trope in modern films to use black and white when showing flashbacks to time periods around the beginning of the 20th ce…

Well a colorized photo will only be more deceptive since it's just a guess. B&W aren't deceptive, they just are.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#192

Post by stjohnswarts »

nine_k wrote: post #168
ska wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impressive how deep some of these psychological things run nearly 50 years on. It was such a blow to self-image that, let alone all the related domestic political fallout, people still have a hard time accepting what happened. The sheer amount of ink and celluloid spent trying to come to terms with this is awesome, and a little depressing.

How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII? Korean war: half won, half lost. Vietnam war: lost. Grenada invasion: sort of won. Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power. Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition. Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden. Syria: can't tell yet. It's a pretty depressing tally. With that, I'd say that the US was…

We can win the battles but we can't win the War. Keeping the enemy out of Kuwait was the biggest win we've had since WW2. If you want to win the war these days it takes total war like in Japan/Europe. You have to break the enemy or they will keep coming back and the modern world doesn't have the stomach for it.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#193

Post by stjohnswarts »

enraged_camel wrote: post #150
ska wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impressive how deep some of these psychological things run nearly 50 years on. It was such a blow to self-image that, let alone all the related domestic political fallout, people still have a hard time accepting what happened. The sheer amount of ink and celluloid spent trying to come to terms with this is awesome, and a little depressing.

I'm not a native-born American and don't feel like I have skin in that game. I just feel like in war, there may be victors, but there are no winners . Especially in the modern age, if you get in a war, all sides lose. Victory is just a matter of who manages to lose less.

This is a cliche understanding. Wars can and have been won since warfare started. However, the actual people doing the fighting aren't winning, they're just dying and mostly (unless defending their own country) giving up their most valuable asset (life) so that rich men can play Axis and Allies.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#195

Post by foota »

skzv wrote: post #159
ghostly_s wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this.

I can understand the concern. It can mislead people about what the past really looked like. An example: this same model colorized the Golden Gate white: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/3487a03626fd86d4f8c814636... In my case I wasn't too concerned, since I was sharing the photos with my family, who understood they were artificially colorized. My father even asked me if it was possible to choose specific colours in…

I wonder at what point the photo would be colorized correctly. The golden gate bridge is almost certainly in the training data if it's random photos. Maybe it knows to color completed things?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#196

Post by trboyden »

aantix wrote: post #60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hiNanqC5aQ My dad was a hospital corpsman on the USS Repose (hospital ship) during Vietnam. Having seen some of his operating room photos, I can't imagine that we were on the "winning" side. The video above is his amateur footage he took while aboard the ship. Probably 1968/1969. I had the film digitized after he passed in 2016.

Quite a coincidence. My dad was an HM3 on the USS Frontier from 1964 to 1967. He also passed in 2016. He never talked much about his service though. I only remember one story he told where US soldiers were issued bullet proof vests for the first time, and they chose to try them out by shooting each other with M16s. The result wasn't pretty.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#197

Post by Firerouge »

skzv wrote: post #159
ghostly_s wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't do this.

I can understand the concern. It can mislead people about what the past really looked like. An example: this same model colorized the Golden Gate white: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/3487a03626fd86d4f8c814636... In my case I wasn't too concerned, since I was sharing the photos with my family, who understood they were artificially colorized. My father even asked me if it was possible to choose specific colours in…

> My father even asked me if it was possible to choose specific colours in articles of clothing, since it got those wrong.

Did you figure out a way to achieve this other than repeat attempts or recoloring in post?

Is there a setup that retrains with user input such as by inputting an image with an object manually colored the model will then recognize it in later input and color similarly?

It seems like this could also help with persistence of colors in videos, training with the previously completed frame step before producing the next.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#198

Post by yourapostasy »

nine_k wrote: post #168
ska wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impressive how deep some of these psychological things run nearly 50 years on. It was such a blow to self-image that, let alone all the related domestic political fallout, people still have a hard time accepting what happened. The sheer amount of ink and celluloid spent trying to come to terms with this is awesome, and a little depressing.

How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII? Korean war: half won, half lost. Vietnam war: lost. Grenada invasion: sort of won. Gulf war 1991: I'd say won, despite Saddam staying in power. Gulf war II: I'd say lost, despite Saddam deposition. Afghanistan: lost, despite the killing of bin Laden. Syria: can't tell yet. It's a pretty depressing tally. With that, I'd say that the US was…

> How many wars did the US win (as in "achieved the political goals") since WWII?

Depends upon whose interests are answering the question. These aren't so much "wars" as "resource shifting actions marketed as kayfabe [1] wars". This also isn't a new phenomenon. Such "wars" have existed throughout history, and is a side effect of a political sphere's emergent, loosely-defined requirements.

For common people in the path of destruction, a war has an unambiguous win/loss demarcation. For defense contractors if they are being honest with themselves, less so. For politicians with uncanny honesty, even more ambiguous.

With the scales involved today in not just people, speed, and destructive power, but also of information range and depth, I think it is time for a deep re-think of the "war is 'just' a political tool" paradigm.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#199

Post by aantix »

dopeboy wrote: post #112
aantix wrote: post #60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hiNanqC5aQ My dad was a hospital corpsman on the USS Repose (hospital ship) during Vietnam. Having seen some of his operating room photos, I can't imagine that we were on the "winning" side. The video above is his amateur footage he took while aboard the ship. Probably 1968/1969. I had the film digitized after he passed in 2016.

This is really cool, what an honor to see. Thank you for digitizing the footage and sharing it to the world. Couple q's if you're up for it: * What camera did he have? Was it common in that era for cameras to not have a mic? (not complaining, just curious) * Did he ever watch the footage, after the war? I know some veterans, depending on how they processed their experience, just block it all out. * Can you share more…

* I'm not sure of the specifics of the camera. But the reels of film say "KodaChrome Movie Film Super 8" on their boxes.

* I don't think he ever saw the footage. I would assume that at some point he had a projector, but as far as I can remember, he just always kept them in his top drawer. He always talked about getting them transferred to VHS. Never did it.

* He's in the video at 38 seconds in. I assume his buddy from the previous frames filmed him. https://youtu.be/1hiNanqC5aQ?t=38

He didn't like the military. He had a lot of explosive outbursts I remember growing up. Later in his life, when he was finally convinced to see a VA doctor, he was diagnosed with PTSD with - 100% related to the war. He received full disability but very late in life. He was fired from so many jobs during his lifetime.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#200

Post by anikan_vader »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #184

These are really neat. One photo has this caption: > Even using antiquated WWII rifles such as these, the Vietnamese were able to cripple or down many U.S. aircraft. Seems impossible? Allied aircraft were flying at least 5-10,000 ft, at least 300mph?

Small arms have a ceiling of around 10,000 ft, so aircraft flying at 5,000 ft would definitely be vulnerable. And 300mph is fairly slow compared to a small arms projectile traveling maybe 1700mph. Even today, fighter jets will often try to stay above 10,000 ft, roughly where small arms and flak peter out.

I could easily imagine WWII rifles having some success damaging helicopters, which were (and compared to modern fighters still are) low and slow.

Post reply on HN