Top all-time · #8609
Vincent Woo
Personal blog · vincentwoo.com · on HN as akanetprogrammingculture
Vincent Woo writes close enough, a personal blog at vincentwoo.com about programming and culture. Since 2011, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Vincent Woo's 2020 Lambda School critique for its evidence, and his Sutro Tower 3D Gaussian splat scans, which commenters admire. One commenter is a fan of his Tunnel Vision post.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-02-20
- /2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-14
- /2013/03/08/above-and-beyond-the-affirm-job-puzzle/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-25
What Hacker News says?
there have been a few prominent criticisms of lambda school recently but it is all anecdotal and disorganized. closest in my mind was fulligin's takedown on NYMag ( https://vincentwoo.com/2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/ which found some bad facts but was sensationalized beyond proportion imo, still, make up your own mind) very hard to tell what specific allegations and changes have been made without also needing to que…
Comment linking /2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/
on “Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year”Submitted Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat experience of Sutro Tower, San Francisco as a story · 825 points
HN discussionWeirdly, that tower in the photo is also on the front page of HN right now https://vincentwoo.com/3d/sutro_tower/
Comment linking /3d/sutro_tower/
on “Why Ruby on Rails still matters”Submitted Arguing for Immortality as a story · 59 points
HN discussionFascinating! One of Affirm's old job application puzzles was about a hexagonal grid. I did a write-up[1] of how I solved it, unaware that I was reinventing the wheel. The cube coordinates abstraction would have been killer for being able to explain things to myself. [1]: http://vincentwoo.com/2013/03/08/above-and-beyond-the-affirm...
Comment linking /2013/03/08/above-and-beyond-the-affirm-job-puzzle/
on “Everything you ever wanted to know about hexagonal grids”Submitted NodeJS is easy, just ask her out as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThanks! Notice 12MB steak sandwich is the biggest of them all. Rest are < 10MB and several of those very compelling in the 1-3MB range (e.g: Iberico Sandwich 1MB, Clams and Caviar 1.8MB). Fancier compression methods are coming (e.g SOGS). This is 30MB! https://vincentwoo.com/3d/sutro_tower/
Comment linking /3d/sutro_tower/
on “Show HN: Spark, An advanced 3D Gaussian Splatting renderer for Three.js”Submitted Show HN: Interactive Google Doodle [HTML5] as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI highly recommend reading Vincent Woo's piece about Lambda to understand the criticism better with actual evidence. https://vincentwoo.com/2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/ It's also arguably not an equivalent comparison. Many people attending these bootcamps have already graduated college and tend to forgo work to attend - there is a huge opportunity cost even if they don't directly lose money. I have no reason to beli…
Comment linking /2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/
on “Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes”Submitted Love In The Time Of MapReduce (fiction) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionYes, this page is a must. Also, this problem has some relevance outside of games: http://vincentwoo.com/2013/03/08/above-and-beyond-the-affirm...
Comment linking /2013/03/08/above-and-beyond-the-affirm-job-puzzle/
on “Implementation of Hex Grids”Submitted Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat Tour of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIf you wanna play with that again, check out http://vincentwoo.com/google.html
Comment linking /google.html
on “Google I/O 2011 Countdown clock”Submitted The API for Google's most valuable resource sucks as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> you die at every femtosecond of living This is an interesting theory that has its roots in solipsism: the belief the world vanishes the moment you close your eyes. The fact of the matter is that it (and solipsism) just don't seem to be true , not even to solipsists. If you truly believed you were dying at every second, you'd act in all sorts of ways against your long term survival, but here you are posting on the…
Comment linking /2011/04/30/arguing-for-immortality/
on “On Mother's Day, My Mom Asked Me to Help End Her Life”Just wanted to thank you for the Sutro Tower work ( https://vincentwoo.com/3d/sutro_tower/ ), it was truly beautiful and I’ve been looking at it so many times, very nostalgic for me. This one is great too!
Comment linking /3d/sutro_tower/
on “Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]”Looking forward to it. I'm also a big fan of https://vincentwoo.com/2023/07/20/tunnel-vision-an-unauthori... , thanks for keeping the internet interesting.
Comment linking /2023/07/20/tunnel-vision-an-unauthorized-bart-ride/
on “Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat Tour of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco”From OP's prior work scanning Sutro Tower in SF: https://vincentwoo.com/2025/02/18/sutro-tower-in-3d/ . > This scan is made possible by recent advances in Gaussian Splatting. This is an emerging technology that lets us quickly create very detailed models just from photographs. For this model (or splat, as we call them), my friend Daylen and I flew our drones around Sutro Tower at a respectful distance for an afterno…
Comment linking /2025/02/18/sutro-tower-in-3d/
on “Show HN: Immersive Gaussian Splat Tour of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco”