5 ms·

I love the fact that there are people, who when faced with photographs sent from a robot on mars, will crop out all the bits of image with mars in them, so they

by ktizo 14y ago

I love the fact that there are people, who when faced with photographs sent from a robot on mars, will crop out all the bits of image with mars in them, so they can get a better look at the knots used to tie all the cables down. They must have absolutely immaculate sock drawers.

dfc 14y ago
Or they just really like knots. Why do you think that an interest in knots means that someone is going to be OCD about everything else in their life? Different people like different things. Just because they geek out on something different from what you geek out on does not make them abnormal.
- ktizo 14y ago
  I was being nice. I genuinely do love them for this and I found it really interesting. I am also allowed to find it funny though. And I am sorry for stereotyping an entire group so lazily. I am sure that many of them actually have really messy sock drawers, if only in the hope of waking up to a really interesting variety of knot.
  - marshray 14y ago
    It may be that their socks are all a mess, but I bet their shoes are laced perfectly.
  - JonnieCache 14y ago
    If you like this, then Ian's Shoelace Site will bring tears of joy to your eyes. http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ I think it is perhaps the single greatest website on the entire internet.
    - arkhaix 14y ago
      Tonight I learned that I've been tying my shoelaces the wrong way (granny knot) for as long as I can remember. Thank you, JonnieCache.
      - aidos 14y ago
        I've been using the Ian knot for years, it's absolutely brilliant. http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot
      - henrikschroder 14y ago
        Join the club, I was 31 when I finally learned how to tie my shoes properly. So much for doing as my mother taught me...
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      I've been using Ian's secure shoelace knot for about two years now, it's really fantastic. http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
zerostar07 14y ago
Can't blame them. So far it's just rocks.
VLM 14y ago
Its hacker news, not daytime television. We don't have to pretend to be boring middle of the road when talking to each other. What I find fascinating about this story is I've seen much larger and much more elaborate cable lacing jobs that look just as good at telco central offices and data centers, but its always very vague about what exact part of my NDA or employment agreement I'd be violating by posting (or taking, or distributing) pictures. These mars pictures, cropped, may be the only chance for a civilian non-employee to ever legally see professionally done cable lacing, weird but true. There's a zillion other places to see the surface of mars, but only a few to see cable lacing. Its interesting that in advertising pictures they always use superglue to make the cables look "PHB-good". So you can't see cable lacing in ads, which is too bad. Done correctly, cable lacing is, literally, an art form. One guy I worked with "knitted" geometric patterns as he spaced the lacing in various locations and used different colors. Also I saw at least one large example of AT+T being "dot matrixed" into a large bundle of cables by careful spacing of lacing. Artistic cable lacing is kind of an "apprentice" masterpiece situation, you learn lacing well enough to do art, then you show it to other techs (and your boss) to prove you're not an apprentice anymore, then, sadly, for most techs, no more lacing art work. Oh well.
- mlni 14y ago
  Well, there's always http://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn http://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn
  - jedc 14y ago
    Whoa! I literally had no idea there were sub-reddits so, um, specific.
    - tripzilch 14y ago
      There's way more than you can imagine (or at least, that I can). Another interesting point is that in general, the more specific the sub-reddit, the less it is infected with the type of "reddit culture" that gets so much bad rep here on HN (although occasionally it always gets some, cause Reddit has a shared culture--I personally don't mind, really).
quux 14y ago
I zoomed in on the cable lacing, and my sock drawer is a disaster.
- ktizo 14y ago
  I found it fascinating, and I have a randomly sorted bag of nearly identical black socks at the moment as I find it easier than bothering with the whole draw and sorting thing.
flatline3 14y ago
Your backhanded compliment is a bit disturbing for being the top comment. I've largely dismissed the complaints about the HN community becoming more negative, largely thinking that mature realism was being mistaken for unwarranted negativity. However, this comment, along with the negative comments about the uptime of Tindie's blog (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472348 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472348), has me thinking that these complaints of undue negativity are justified. I find the attention to detail involved in selecting knots to be a tremendously interesting aspect of sending a physical vehicle to mars, and I find it to be a testament to human specialization and intelligence that there's a whole community of knot experts that can provide so much insight into the knot choices. Implying some sort of OCD around sock drawers seems incredibly rude, and counter-productive to building or maintaining a culture of technical excellence.
- libria 14y ago
  I've read and reread ktizo and I'm not seeing the negativity. He drew a correlation based on their attention to detail and if mistaken should be about as insulting as mathematical error. Perhaps there's a cross-cultural interpretation associated with sock drawers that I'm missing. Granted there has been negativity on HN lately, but are we not manufacturing drama here? //edit: I read it that he's impressed with their focus and passion, which sounds more like a compliment.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    Perhaps there's a cross-cultural interpretation associated with sock drawers that I'm missing I do hope so. As then there is a chance that we might find out what it is and then everything might just make sense. Otherwise I'm just going to paraphrase Keynes and assume that internets can remain irrational a lot longer than I can stay sober.
  - flatline3 14y ago
    "I love that ..." is the rhetorical equivalent of "Don't take this the wrong way, but ..." There's a pretty clear implication that it's silly to "crop out" pictures of mars, focus on knots, and the kind of people that would do that would be OCD in their maintenance of sock drawers. It's a silly, vaguely cutting generalization. Observe the top reply, which takes a defensive stance: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4474178 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4474178
kabdib 14y ago
I love reading about flight hardware. I have a bookshelf full of this stuff. Mars itself is neat. But they haven't done much exploration with this rover yet, and so: Knots is what we got. :-)

by ktizo 14y ago

dfc 14y ago

Or they just really like knots. Why do you think that an interest in knots means that someone is going to be OCD about everything else in their life? Different people like different things. Just because they geek out on something different from what you geek out on does not make them abnormal.

ktizo 14y ago
I was being nice. I genuinely do love them for this and I found it really interesting. I am also allowed to find it funny though. And I am sorry for stereotyping an entire group so lazily. I am sure that many of them actually have really messy sock drawers, if only in the hope of waking up to a really interesting variety of knot.
- marshray 14y ago
  It may be that their socks are all a mess, but I bet their shoes are laced perfectly.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  If you like this, then Ian's Shoelace Site will bring tears of joy to your eyes. http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ I think it is perhaps the single greatest website on the entire internet.
  - arkhaix 14y ago
    Tonight I learned that I've been tying my shoelaces the wrong way (granny knot) for as long as I can remember. Thank you, JonnieCache.
    - aidos 14y ago
      I've been using the Ian knot for years, it's absolutely brilliant. http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot
    - henrikschroder 14y ago
      Join the club, I was 31 when I finally learned how to tie my shoes properly. So much for doing as my mother taught me...
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    I've been using Ian's secure shoelace knot for about two years now, it's really fantastic. http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm

zerostar07 14y ago

Can't blame them. So far it's just rocks.

VLM 14y ago

Its hacker news, not daytime television. We don't have to pretend to be boring middle of the road when talking to each other. What I find fascinating about this story is I've seen much larger and much more elaborate cable lacing jobs that look just as good at telco central offices and data centers, but its always very vague about what exact part of my NDA or employment agreement I'd be violating by posting (or taking, or distributing) pictures. These mars pictures, cropped, may be the only chance for a civilian non-employee to ever legally see professionally done cable lacing, weird but true. There's a zillion other places to see the surface of mars, but only a few to see cable lacing. Its interesting that in advertising pictures they always use superglue to make the cables look "PHB-good". So you can't see cable lacing in ads, which is too bad. Done correctly, cable lacing is, literally, an art form. One guy I worked with "knitted" geometric patterns as he spaced the lacing in various locations and used different colors. Also I saw at least one large example of AT+T being "dot matrixed" into a large bundle of cables by careful spacing of lacing. Artistic cable lacing is kind of an "apprentice" masterpiece situation, you learn lacing well enough to do art, then you show it to other techs (and your boss) to prove you're not an apprentice anymore, then, sadly, for most techs, no more lacing art work. Oh well.

mlni 14y ago
Well, there's always http://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn http://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn
- jedc 14y ago
  Whoa! I literally had no idea there were sub-reddits so, um, specific.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    There's way more than you can imagine (or at least, that I can). Another interesting point is that in general, the more specific the sub-reddit, the less it is infected with the type of "reddit culture" that gets so much bad rep here on HN (although occasionally it always gets some, cause Reddit has a shared culture--I personally don't mind, really).

quux 14y ago

I zoomed in on the cable lacing, and my sock drawer is a disaster.

ktizo 14y ago
I found it fascinating, and I have a randomly sorted bag of nearly identical black socks at the moment as I find it easier than bothering with the whole draw and sorting thing.

flatline3 14y ago

Your backhanded compliment is a bit disturbing for being the top comment. I've largely dismissed the complaints about the HN community becoming more negative, largely thinking that mature realism was being mistaken for unwarranted negativity. However, this comment, along with the negative comments about the uptime of Tindie's blog (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472348 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472348), has me thinking that these complaints of undue negativity are justified. I find the attention to detail involved in selecting knots to be a tremendously interesting aspect of sending a physical vehicle to mars, and I find it to be a testament to human specialization and intelligence that there's a whole community of knot experts that can provide so much insight into the knot choices. Implying some sort of OCD around sock drawers seems incredibly rude, and counter-productive to building or maintaining a culture of technical excellence.

libria 14y ago
I've read and reread ktizo and I'm not seeing the negativity. He drew a correlation based on their attention to detail and if mistaken should be about as insulting as mathematical error. Perhaps there's a cross-cultural interpretation associated with sock drawers that I'm missing. Granted there has been negativity on HN lately, but are we not manufacturing drama here? //edit: I read it that he's impressed with their focus and passion, which sounds more like a compliment.
- ktizo 14y ago
  Perhaps there's a cross-cultural interpretation associated with sock drawers that I'm missing I do hope so. As then there is a chance that we might find out what it is and then everything might just make sense. Otherwise I'm just going to paraphrase Keynes and assume that internets can remain irrational a lot longer than I can stay sober.
- flatline3 14y ago
  "I love that ..." is the rhetorical equivalent of "Don't take this the wrong way, but ..." There's a pretty clear implication that it's silly to "crop out" pictures of mars, focus on knots, and the kind of people that would do that would be OCD in their maintenance of sock drawers. It's a silly, vaguely cutting generalization. Observe the top reply, which takes a defensive stance: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4474178 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4474178

kabdib 14y ago

I love reading about flight hardware. I have a bookshelf full of this stuff. Mars itself is neat. But they haven't done much exploration with this rover yet, and so: Knots is what we got. :-)