8 ms·
Off topic: Always define your abbreviations. To find out what CNN stands for here, you either have to read a comment thread on HN, or go to the paper and read t
by calibwam 7y ago
Off topic: Always define your abbreviations. To find out what CNN stands for here, you either have to read a comment thread on HN, or go to the paper and read the introduction. The linked page doesn't even mention neural networks. And as some other commenter here has mentioned, CNN has other more well known meanings than Convolutional Neural Networks.
- usmannk 7y agoThis is a paper that was published in CVPR (Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition). In that context it is unambiguous that CNN means Convolutional Neural Networks.
- pedrocx486 7y agoIn that context, yes. But in the context of (eg) a person that just happened to drop here on HN for a quick read, it makes no sense in the headline.
- jiofih 7y agoWelcome to hacker news.
- GEBBL 7y agoSomeone who scanned the front page and didn’t delve into these comments might infere that the American news network CNN artificially generate images for their news stories. That’s how I picked this up.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoWhere artificially generated images are improbable. Oh wait. Also, let me quote the linked page: > malicious use of fake imagery is likely be deployed on a social media platform Nope, that couldn't possibly relate to any news network. Never never never gonna admit that!
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoWhere would you draw the line though? Would you want the same for e.g. HTML? HTTP? HN? YC? I mean personally I'm all in favor of more usage - or even automatic insertion - of the `<abbr>` tag. Can probably be done with a browser addon as well.
- m12k 7y agoOne relatively easy to draw line is whether the abbreviation has other commonly used meanings. CNN has, while none of HTML, HTTP, HN or YC do.
- kristopolous 7y ago"CNN generated Image" sounds like "Images generated by the Cable News Network, CNN" as if the corporation has some software/policy for editing and prepping images in a way they can be detected. It's not so absurd, photojournalism can be quite specific in rules. The ability to classify photos by news outlet based on identifying their photojournalism rules through computer algorithms sounds like a remarkably clever idea. HTML doesn't have that ambiguity.
- saystupidthings 7y agoLmao imagine seeing "CNN generated images" and thinking it was the news channel.
- kerakaali 7y ago
- deepnet 7y agoI found CNN a bit confusing, even though I did guess it meant Convolutional Neural Net. Perhaps my pre-caffeine morning brain is overly pedantic but Generative Nets use deconvolutions to generate images from latent codes, so using CNN rather than GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) is a bit confusing in this context. CNNs are used by VAEs (Variational AutoEncoders, also generative) use convolutions to produce the latent codes and the discriminator (adversarial) part of GAN training uses convolutions. I think Generative Networks ( or GNNs ;-) ) would perhaps have been clearer.
- p1esk 7y agoGANs use transposed convolutions to generate images. I haven’t seen anyone use a true deconvolution operation in deep learning. Not even sure it’s possible to invert the result of a convolutional layer, because it’s lossy.
- lp251 7y ago"Transposed convolution" was called "deconvolution" for a short period of time. The authors apparently weren't aware that "deconvolution" has meant "the inverse problem of recovering a convolved signal" since at least the 70s.
- rplnt 7y agoNot really, I just thought that CNN (the news network) uses generated images in their articles. The topic about recognizing them, or even generating them, would make sense in CVPR.
- mihaaly 7y agoEither the paper should not be presented elsewhere or should speak out the meaning! Did they really hoped for that their paper will remain in a specific group of experts? I seriously doubt so.
- taytus 7y agoYeah, we are not in that context, aren't we?
- pmelendez 7y agoAlso, the original authors are not necessarily the ones that posted it in here.
- notatoad 7y agoIf that were their justification, they wouldn't need to define the acronym in the paper. However, in the introduction section of the actual paper they do define CNN. But they use the acronym 9 times before defining it, which is what's kinda weird. And the website isn't published in the CVPR, it's published on the internet.
- alias_neo 7y agoIt was drilled into us in university (engineering) that you spell out abbreviations and acronyms on first use, no matter how well known you think it is. Some cases I've seen lately seem to forgo this not out of ignorance but as a form of eletism/knowledge gate keeping.
- ImaCake 7y agoThe same could be said for my biology education. But it never seems to stop those biologists publishing papers from invocing obscure acroynms and phrases without definition.
- everdrive 7y ago> Some cases I've seen lately seem to forgo this not out of ignorance but as a form of elitism/knowledge gate keeping. It's a natural tendency for ingroups. Nearly any video game forum, or anything else that's full of hobbyists will ultimately contain posts that are absolutely full of acronyms. And they're impenetrable. Bear in mind, I'm not defending this behavior, and certainly not disagreeing with you.
- Avamander 7y agoThis is why I like Discourse with it's abbreviation explainer. Musicbrainz's community forums have it and it's incredibly nice.
- yazan94 7y agoSeriously? You want to be able to join a community you might not be familiar with and understand the lingo/jargon off the bat? Of course people will abbreviate things when the word/phrase is sufficiently long, commonly used, and the abbreviation mutually understood (brb, tldr, OOP, etc.). There is no elitism involved, if you don't understand something either Google it or ask. No reason to act snobbish because people cater the the most common denominator in a community rather than the lowest.
- alias_neo 7y ago
- nl 7y agoThis github page is intended as an appendix to the paper[1] which does define it: "However, these methods represent only two instances of a broader set of techniques: image synthesis via convolutional neural networks (CNNs)." [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11035.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11035.pdf
- amelius 7y agoAlso, the convolution part is only a speedup thing. You can do very similar neural network operations without the convolution, except that everything will be much slower and you'd need a lot more memory.
- gjm11 7y agoIt's not really "only a speedup thing" because the training process is different: as a CNN learns to (say) recognize dog-noses in the top left portion of the image, it's simultaneously learning to recognize dog-noses everywhere else too. A fully-connected MLP with the same layer structure doesn't have that property. It's true that once you've trained your CNN you could make a non-convolutional NN that computes exactly the same things but less efficiently, but the point of an NN is not just what it can compute -- there are lots of systems that can, given enough parameters, approximate arbitrary functions well -- but how you train it.
- amelius 7y agoYes that's why I said "very similar". Without a convolution, you will have to replicate a lot of the network structure, and you'd have to train with shifted versions of your data. But fundamentally the convolution only gives an advantage in speed and memory, not in functionality.
- bilekas 7y agoGenuinely thought this was some reference to something on the topic of 'fake news' Abbreviations are great if you're using the term multiple time. Not as an intro.
- qubex 7y agoI also thought it was a reference to a manner of distinguishing genuine Cable News Network (CNN) screenshots from doctored ones divulged by “fake news” outlets.
- briandear 7y agoI would find it more likely that it was a reference to determine if CNN was being objective and truthful. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies
- dillonmckay 7y agoWhat does HN abbreviate?
- briandear 7y agoHacker News
- Grimm1 7y agoI work a decent bit with ML and even with that I'm just waking up and read that as the news Network so apparently pretty easy to confuse
- lingodayz 7y agoGlad to read that I was not the only one struggling with this. It reminded me of that [jargon is bad study](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200212084357.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200212084357.h...) that came out recently.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoWhat's "HN"?
- mikorym 7y agoI thought this was about the news channel.
- currymj 7y agoit’s a scientific paper from a computer vision conference, it would be absurd in that context to assume anyone reading it doesn’t know that it stands for convolutional neural network. they didn’t write this with Hacker News in mind.
- OJFord 7y agoIt seems fair enough in the title to me, but not spelling it out on first use in the abstract is poor IMO. Edit: Although, I see it does in first use in the introduction, so maybe that's just conforming to whoever's style guide.
- mbostleman 7y agoYes, with an abbreviation like CNN it is remarkably presumptuous to not define it in this article. I followed the headline specifically because it was in the title and I assumed it referred to the news network.
- danmg 7y agoIt's not ambiguous which CNN they meant from the rest of the words in the title.
- kick 7y agoThe character limit is 80. Many abbreviations on the front-page are almost certainly caused by the low character limit making it difficult to express concepts that don't have a singular word for them.
- mr-ron 7y agoThe article itself only refers to it as CNN, and doesnt have an actual definition of the abbreviation
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoSeriously, what does CNN mean for most people, even on HN. Would this be receiving as much attention if they had used "Convolutional Neural Networks" instead of just CNN?
- SkyBelow 7y agoI think it depends upon the audience and the work being written. Anything on the level of a news article definitely should spell it out, but a forum post about some game can get away with the common acronyms used by the community. It is part of knowing your audience.