The scenario I'm talking about is not synthesising a RAW file from scratch, but being able to freely edit it and save the result back into a RAW file that looks "original". I don't think you've made any statements that indicate that doing that would be complex.
Again, this is not about faking a RAW file from scratch, just being able to edit it in place.
Interestingly, some major photo competitions require 'original' RAW files to be submitted along with processed jpegs. The idea is that they can check that the image hasn't been modified in a way that breaks the rules.
Of course, software people know that it would be tedious but technically straightforward to concoct a fake RAW file from another 'raw' format such as a PPM image. The stakes in these competitions can be quite high so it's a bit disconcerting that they rely on a presumption that converting RAW files to editable images is a one-way process.
Just the other day someone posted something here about defunctionalizing continuations. That's the way to go: whatever amount of state the server has to hold, you have to hold anyway, and clever defunctionalization will let you just hold that amount even with a continuation-based approach.
The concept of continuations is well-established and they have their uses. They have been part of the landscape for years. They can be confusing, and that's impossible to separate from their power.
The inversion of control that this paper is talking about is the way an application running on a webserver typically gets called by the browser rather than the other way around. Continuation-based webservers reverse this inversion and create an illusion of continuity of control flow on the server side. The application is suspended when a page is sent to the browser and resumed (via a continuation) when the response arrives. So this is about permitting server-side applications to be written in a nicer style as far as control flow is concerned.
I think you are getting downvoted because your comment more or less says that you don't know much about the background, and haven't read and understood the paper, but are inclined to dismiss it anyway.
This comment is like a red rag to a bull for me, because why wouldn't some artists want a basic grasp of calculus?
Bear in mind that a secondary education, for most people, involves learning the basics of calculus. You might be thinking that all artists are bad at math or too stupid to grasp calculus. You might be thinking that there are no applications of calculus in art. I don't know. But given the role artists are supposed to play in society, it seems pretty reasonable to expect that some of them will have an interest in learning calculus to a high school level like a significant fraction of the non-specialist public.
A concrete example of this might be an artist who is interested in systems theory from an ecological perspective. Once you start talking about stocks and flows (of fish or minerals or greenhouse gases) then calculus and differential equations are really the next thing to tackle.
I don't know the Observable folks personally, but I've been watching what they post on Twitter. It's not snobbery to say that the level of polish and sophistication present in what they put out (in terms of the reactive architecture and the graphic side of it) is second to none. Their product has got so much class that the idea that they would spend time on SEO is kind of incongruous, right?
I know more about how this works in the arts, where the relevant term is "residency". Access to exclusive residencies is usually allocated on the basis of previous career success, and they are usually funded by endowments of some kind. It's an example of institutional support for artists, and the top residencies are extremely elitist. There are lots of humble ones too, though.
To describe the article as an application of modern control theory is an exaggeration; these rules (proportional navigation and proportional pursuit) are extremely simple and ancient. It's difficult to imagine a time when humans didn't intuitively understand the law described in the paper as proportional pursuit, and the idea behind proportional navigation predates guided missiles by hundreds if not thousands of years.
It's a relief that the heavy mathematical prerequisites of optimal control theory aren't needed to understand what the birds do.
Aeronautics is (still) an incredibly glamorous field, and fighter jets and aviation disasters are a stereotypical topic of fascination for male engineers. HN is all about the "cool", charismatic side of engineering, and it doesn't get much cooler than critiquing warplanes and analysing air disasters.
Geeking out about this kind of topic is routine for people with an interest in engineering. And let's be clear: it really is just a matter of geeking out, people getting a thrill out of playing at "appearing to really know their stuff".
You haven't taken into account the difference between mean solar time and apparent solar time. The system you describe is essentially the old local mean time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_mean_time.
NB, the line taken by the cables of a suspension bridge with a deck of uniform weight is a parabola. I think this is what causes the popular confusion.
Thanks for the characteristically rude HN assumption that I don't know what I'm talking about.
I know all about Chipperfield, at least to the extent of having seen him lecture about his work in Berlin. He was inspired by Dollgast's work http://www.prewettbizley.com/graham-bizley-blog/dollgast
and to be honest I don't see the contradiction with what I said. Not everything Chipperfield did in the Neues Museum falls into the category of "restoration" but the parts that do absolutely follow this principle of discreet but identifiable replacement.
Please don't further pollute the already toxic environment on HN by assuming the person you are talking to is incompetent, acting in bad faith, or knows less than you do.
The standard interpretation of this is something like the following:
If you replace an element (e.g. a brick) with a new brick, you should aim for it to blend in discreetly and convincingly with the existing structure BUT you should not try to conceal the fact that it is a repair (by distressing it, for example).
This is like the argument that comedians who make funny jokes about human nature must therefore have good insight into politics. Anyone who watches comedy knows that the ability to be funny doesn't equate to having a good analysis of the situation.
I think you are exaggerating the expertise of both men. Gates was successful, but that doesn't mean he had rock-solid knowledge of all aspects of business and technology. Pratchett wrote humorous fiction, but that doesn't make him an expert on sociology.
Pratchett's comment didn't require a lot of insight to come up with—it's just the (essentially reactionary) observation that publishing on the internet is a free-for-all. And Gates correctly observed that ranking systems like HITS (or PageRank) would recreate, online, the way information sources gain authority in the offline world.
The fake news problem has nothing to do with the web's openness—it thrives on FB. Offline, and independent of the web, the narrative Fox pushes is arguably very close to fake news as well. Neither Pratchett nor Gates displayed significant insight into the that kind of political problem.
Again, this is not about faking a RAW file from scratch, just being able to edit it in place.