I now see that webp lossless is definitely from there, but the webp base format looks acquired from a US startup, was the image format also adapted in the swiss group?
> If you look at the issue tracker, the creator of Webp killed it because of untrue claims
I think for most modern software it's difficult to name the creator, but if you had to for webp, it would be hard to argue that it's anyone but Jyrki Alakuijala, who is in fact one of the co-creators of jpegxl and the person backing up the long-term support of the rust jxl-rs implementation, so I'm not even going to ask for a source here because it's just not true.
AFAIK Jyrki came after WebP was already announced to add lossless support; rather I’d consider Skal the creator inasmuch as it was originally just an image container for VP8 intra. He was working on WebP2 at the time Google rejected JPEG-XL and also was not involved in that decision.
I designed the lossless format and its initial encoder. Zoltán Szabadka wrote the initial lossless decoder.
On2 Technologies had designed the lossy format and its initial encoder/decoder. Skal improved on the encoder (rewriting it for better quality, inventing workarounds for the YUV420 sampling quality issues), but did not change the format's image-related aspects that On2 Technologies had come up with for VP8 video use.
In the end stage of lossless productization (around February 2012) Skal had minor impact on the lossless format:
1. He asked it to have the same size limitations (16383x16383 pixels) like lossy.
2. He wanted to remove some expressivity for easier time for hardware implementations, perhaps a 0.5 % hit on density.
Skal also took care of integrating the lossless format into the lossy as an alpha layer.
>so I'm not even going to ask for a source here because it's just not true.
Well it is up to you to decide. The link was submitted a dozen of times on HN and the whole thing was well reported. And Jyrki Alakuijala already classify its creator status.
> The confessed feeling guilt that he might not be able to have done the same
I don't know; it's very human, certainly, to feel that way and have that doubt about yourself, but I don't see any evidence of guilt in the text, or even a hand wave at wanting to work on that feeling or himself.
Even though I love the point it seems he's trying to make, the post definitely rubbed me the wrong way in that it reads as taking help you don't need from people who need it more, and the reward for them is they get to help someone, and the reward for you is that you get free stuff and be a tourist marveling at how kind everyone they meet is.
There's definitely a different way to write this article that doesn't feel like that, and it's not clear to me whether or not the author wrote it this way because they don't see the difference.
Sure, and a world where we're more dependent on each other would be a better world. It's clearer all the time that humans work much better that way.
But if you're only a "kindee", if you structure your life in a way that you can only receive help from other people and never be the helper, that's not humans dependent on each other.
The act of writing something like this can be a way of helping yourself do it. I'm not sure that's his intent, or not, but I like the idea of writing at an intermediate stage. Should he wait until his behavior is perfect before sharing his experience? If so it might never get written. There is a generosity in talking about your own flaws, it can help people who are working through their own flaws as well.
Paul Graham is among those who have written about how putting thoughts into words tends to change those thoughts: "You can know a great deal about something without writing about it. Can you ever know so much that you wouldn't learn more from trying to explain what you know? I don't think so." https://paulgraham.com/words.html
I'll just say at the very least there's no evidence in the text itself this is his intent. In fact, he blows right past his observations about himself to underline how magical letting other people be kind is, so it doesn't appear to me that he's ruminating on himself.
> I’d like to think that I would without hesitation drive far out of my way to bring a sick traveler to the hospital (in the Philippines), but I am having trouble seeing myself emptying my bank account to purchase a boat ticket for someone who has more money than I do. And if I were a cold drink seller in Oman, I would definitely not give cold drinks away for free just because the recipient was a guest in my poor country. But those kind of illogical blessings happen when you are open to a gift.
> The first that comes to mind was the Keystone XL Pipeline.
> Biden cancelled it with EO 13990 when it was pretty much done.
I'll admit to not being an expert on the Keystone XL Pipeline, but at least according to the timeline on wikipedia[1], the reason Biden was able to cancel it with an executive order was because Trump had approved it with an executive order, after people had tried and failed for years to get it approved the proper way (through the legislative and executive branches).
And even when Trump personally tried to make it happen, there were still years of court battles stopping construction, so when Biden came into office and ended it, it was in fact not "pretty much done" but apparently 8% done[2]
Seems like it again comes back to Trump just doing what he wants, and it was in fact him trying to unilaterally make it happen that caused that last four years or so of disruptions?
Oh, which Congress members sponsored the laws on stealing people's stuff? I missed that one.
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