Top all-time · #4119
mattferraro.dev
Personal blog · mattferraro.dev/postsmathscience
mattferraro.dev is a personal blog at mattferraro.dev about math and science. Since 2021, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics of Magic Windows”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Matt Ferraro's blog for hands-on engineering posts: caustics and light optics, a CNC router build guide, geometric algebra, Joule-Thomson thermodynamics, and the Cadmium CAD project.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics of Magic Windows8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-08-18
- What is the inverse of a vector?4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-11-02
- Everything you need to know to design your own CNC router3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-01-19
- CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-05-21
What Hacker News says?
Someone else's work that alters light transmission (instead of reflection): https://mattferraro.dev/posts/caustics-engineering
Comment linking /posts/caustics-engineering
on “3D printed mirror array”Submitted Poisson's Equation as a story · 766 points
HN discussionThat's impressive. Here someone created a slab of glass that turns the caustics into a picture of his cat: https://mattferraro.dev/posts/caustics-engineering (discovered via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29063617 )
Comment linking /posts/caustics-engineering
on “3D printed mirror array”Submitted CADmium: A local-first CAD program built for the browser as a story · 669 points
HN discussionThis guy has exactly two posts on his blog. The other one is on a completely different topic but great read as well: https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cnc-router
Comment linking /posts/cnc-router
on “Poisson's Equation”Submitted Everything you need to know to design your own CNC router as a story · 329 points
HN discussionFor people interested in this topic, here's a good set of slides going over Grassman/Clifford/Geometric algebra concepts: http://www.terathon.com/gdc12_lengyel.pdf And another good site: https://mattferraro.dev/posts/geometric-algebra
Comment linking /posts/geometric-algebra
on “Look, ma, no matrices”Submitted What is the inverse of a vector? as a story · 317 points
HN discussionI love the last section of "Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics Of Magic Windows"[0] >I know what you're thinking. What about the hologram?! >Does the math above imply that a hologram will always be created, or is this one cat hologram just an incredible coincidence? >Well you see, I've discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this website's margin is unfortunately too narrow to contain :) [0]: https:…
Comment linking /posts/caustics-engineering
on “SoME1 results”Submitted Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics of Magic Windows as a story · 272 points
HN discussion> Joules-Thomson effect is what allows for refrigeration I don't think this is true. The "simple" model of refrigeration taught in highschool is just a carnot cycle running backwards, and this can be modeled with an ideal gas. The author of the post covers this the section on "the Thermodynamics 101 Answer"[1], where all you need to drop the temperature of a gas is to let it do work on the piston. That's not to say…
Comment linking /posts/joule-thomson
on “The Joule-Thomson Effect and Models We Know”Submitted What is the inverse of a circle? as a story · 224 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cadmium People are building cool stuff, and happen to do it in Rust.
Comment linking /posts/cadmium
on “Memory-safe, clean implementation of classic Posix "BC" calculator”Submitted The Physics of Magic Windows (2021) as a story · 178 points
HN discussionSince we're sharing links, here's my collection of interactive pages too: Interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms, with motivating examples from computer games. https://www.redblobgames.com/ The world's first linear algebra book with fully interactive figures. http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html The Textbook of the Future. Interactive. Personalised. Free. https://mathigon.org/ Structure and Interp…
Comment linking /posts/geometric-algebra
on “Visualization of Common Algorithms”Submitted The Joule-Thomson Effect and Models We Know as a story · 83 points
HN discussionSome other open source 3D CAD tools: Code-based - CadQuery - https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery/ - build123d - https://github.com/gumyr/build123d - OpenSCAD - https://openscad.cloud/openscad/ GUI (browser-based) - Cadmium (abandoned, cool idea) - https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cadmium
Comment linking /posts/cadmium
on “Dune3d: A parametric 3D CAD application”Submitted Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics of Magic Windows as a story · 15 points
HN discussionMore useful is one of his references on how to build a CNC router.[1] This one covers all the usual mistakes one can make building a CNC router. (He skips the real n00b mistake - trying to use a Dremel tool in a CNC router. That never works. Dremel tools slow down or stall under load, and the CNC controller doesn't detect that, so it keeps pushing a stalled tool around.) [1] https://mattferraro.dev/posts/cnc-router
Comment linking /posts/cnc-router
on “Building a DIY Pen Plotter”Submitted Geometric algebra: what is the inverse of a vector? (2022) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hiding Images in Plain Sight: a magic window that projects a picture as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics of Magic Windows (2021) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Geometric algebra: what is the inverse of a vector? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
