thegrossman

8 ms·

31.
by thegrossman 15y ago
You mean the wind velocity data directly from the doppler radar? Yeah... it turns out that wind velocity isn't super accurate for predicting where the storm is going. If you watch a storm building up over time, you'll often see it staying i
32.
by thegrossman 15y ago
As promised in an earlier thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3186978 ), I've written a blog post describing how Dark Sky operates under the hood.
33.
How Dark Sky Works (Weather prediction using computer vision)(blog.jackadam.net)
13 points by thegrossman 15y ago|7 comments
34.
by thegrossman 15y ago
As promised, here's more info on how Dark Sky works: http://blog.jackadam.net/2011/how-dark-sky-works/
35.
by thegrossman 15y ago
The whole idea from Dark Sky came when I was stuck at a rest area off Interstate-90 in western New York. It started to downpour and I had no idea how long I'd have to wait if I wanted to stay dry. Even looking at the radar map online didn't
36.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Nearly all local new stations use the same source of radar data as we (at Dark Sky) do: The NOAA NEXRAD network: http://radar.weather.gov/
37.
by thegrossman 15y ago
With a lot of hand-waving. We figured out how much we needed to survive for 3 - 4 months, plus the cost servers for a certain amount of time, then factored in Kickstarter / Amazon's cut and the cost of the backer rewards. We kept getting a
38.
by thegrossman 15y ago
We've been working on the app for a while, but our day jobs always came first. We eventually realized that without a source of funding, it wasn't going to happen any time soon. And we're completely in love with the idea of Kickstarter, so w
39.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Hah! You don't. ;-) We'll be writing more about how it works for our fellow nerds soon.
40.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Our current thinking is that we're going to charge for API access to our data. But I must admit, we don't have a well thought out business plan beyond "make the best f-ing weather app and charge a decent amount for it".
41.
by thegrossman 15y ago
We constantly monitor how accurate our predictions are, and try to adjust accordingly. We'll have a blog post soon that explains more about how it works. As for competing with looking at NOAA radar images, try a little experiment: Next time
42.
by thegrossman 15y ago
We're going to write a blog post that goes into the technical details soon. Basically, we rely on the fact that while weather is chaotic and turbulent in the long run (by "long run" I mean hours to days), it's fairly linear on the timescale
43.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Learn the skills! We're not meteorologists, and we're not even fancy-pants computer science academic types. We just got sick of this app not existing... So we hunkered down and learned about Computer Vision and experimented a whole lot (whi
44.
by thegrossman 15y ago
One of the Dark Sky guys here... So yeah, we need money for servers, and to pay for rent / food / etc for the several months it'll take us to make this thing. When you start doing the math, a lot of the money we're asking for disappears. 10
45.
by thegrossman 15y ago
I think this is a good suggestion. Even worse than people using the vote button to save stories for later: I've found myself occasionally voting on articles because I assume I'd like the article, without reading it. I scold myself wheneve
46.
by thegrossman 15y ago
We're still experimenting with colors of the radar intensity values. It's turned out to be surprisingly difficult to make a color palette that is both clear and not totally ugly. Our best results have come from ripping off the color tables
47.
Show HN: Dark Sky, reinvented Weather Prediction and Radar Visualization(kickstarter.com)
3 points by thegrossman 15y ago|2 comments
48.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Relativistic effects are only taken into account when determining the position of the satellite itself, and the rate of it's clock. It can't compensate for the effect in the linked-to article (namely, the fact that the distance and flight t
49.
by thegrossman 15y ago
This is an almost trivial application of special relativity. It was be absolutely shocking if the dozens of scientists involves in the neutrino experiment didn't take this into account.
50.
Neil Illusions(ironicsans.com)
2 points by thegrossman 15y ago|0 comments
51.
by thegrossman 15y ago
For those interested in OpenCV on the iPhone, eosgarden has a nifty XCode project to get you started: http://www.eosgarden.com/en/opensource/opencv-ios/documentat...
52.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Gravity is attractive even if you run physics backwards in time. To see that this is the case, consider the following scenario: You've got a ball at rest 500 meters up, and you drop it. It falls downwards at 9.8 m/s^2. After 10 seconds, it'
53.
How Small Can You Make Your Face? (My experiments with computer vision on iOS)(blog.jackadam.net)
9 points by thegrossman 15y ago|0 comments
54.
by thegrossman 15y ago
Unfortunately that is easier said than done!
55.
Ask HN: What do we do with an iPad app built on a recently shutdown Google API?
2 points by thegrossman 15y ago|4 comments
56.
by thegrossman 15y ago
My coworker and I spent the last several months building an iPad app on top of the News Search API. And now all that work is for naught! That is a serious bummer.
57.
by thegrossman 16y ago
Yeah, I chose the color for that reason. Also, it's hard to find a color that stands out on a the extreme light / dark background of a galaxy. It just so happens that pale blue is better than most.
58.
The Size of the Human Radio-Broadcast Bubble in the Milky Way Galaxy(blog.jackadam.net)
240 points by thegrossman 16y ago|109 comments
59.
3D Rotating Molecules on the iPad / iPhone (in HTML5)(blog.jackadam.net)
6 points by thegrossman 16y ago|0 comments
60.
by thegrossman 16y ago
You shouldn't use this JPEG-transparency hack if you're dealing with images where PNGs are a better fit. (Which is why the example demonstrated an image where PNGs aren't a good fit). "The right tool for the job" and all that jazz.

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