[HN Gopher] The Nettle Magic Project: Scanner for decks of cards...
___________________________________________________________________
The Nettle Magic Project: Scanner for decks of cards with bar codes
on edges
Author : fortran77
Score : 285 points
Date : 2022-06-29 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| This looks like an open source implementation of "Cheating at
| poker James Bond Style - Defcon 24 (2016)"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRgCvCTG_XQ
|
| Very neat. In the video, the illicit cheating device was hidden
| in a phone. It is theorized that these magic trick could be used
| in private poker houses to cheat players.
| suyash wrote:
| Nice to see this open sourced as devices like this have existed
| underground since it can be used for card cheating/stacking as
| well.
| omoikane wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing, I think there is a greater
| potential for these cards to be used for cheating rather than
| for magic.
|
| Related, is there a way for casino operators to assure their
| guests that the cards are not marked? I am thinking something
| similar in spirit to the transparent dice that show they are
| not loaded, but cards would require something different.
| gumby wrote:
| why can't you use just a diagonal line? That's what we used to do
| when I was a kid (to see if a deck was shuffled or sorted)
| wildzzz wrote:
| That would work well if the camera had sufficient resolution
| and the cards were stacked nicely. It looks like this can still
| read the cards when they are stacked unevenly since each card
| has a unique marking and a common marking to compare against.
| There are more bits than necessary in the barcode so it can
| contain error correction in the code. Trying to decode 1 of 54
| possible spots for the mark to be in is going to be harder than
| seeing which of 13 possible spots are marked with the added
| benefit of only needing to get at least 10 to 12 of them right.
| shagie wrote:
| The tangent to this is done with invisible ink.
|
| https://www.markedcardsshop.com/collections/poker-analyzer
|
| There is a corresponding custom phone that has a hidden camera on
| the side (facing the deck) that then communicates with some
| haptic feedback that the cheater is wearing.
| raphman wrote:
| Here's an article from 2017 talking about this class of
| devices:
|
| https://elie.net/blog/security/fuller-house-exposing-high-en...
| dwighttk wrote:
| Personally if I found out a magician was using this it would
| completely destroy my appreciation of the magic.
| everly wrote:
| "Never show anyone. They'll beg you and they'll flatter you for
| the secret, but as soon as you give it up, you'll be nothing to
| them."
|
| -Alfred Borden, The Prestige
| ggambetta wrote:
| Ah, I see you've been watching closely.
| MivLives wrote:
| If you found out a magician was using this they aren't a very
| good magician.
| gumby wrote:
| If I encountered a magician who could read a barcode like
| this in their head I'd really be amazed!
| bombcar wrote:
| Marked cards and other such systems have been common for
| decades, if not centuries; this is a variation on it.
|
| Many tricks are more than slight-of-hand, they often are
| "technical" and involve special decks that are modified in
| certain ways; you can even buy equipment to reseal decks and
| rewrap them in plastic so they appear brand-new.
| delecti wrote:
| It's it pretty common that learning the secret of _any_ trick
| has a chance to destroy the appreciation of the execution?
| dwighttk wrote:
| Eh. I've learned a few card tricks and the mechanic often
| makes me appreciate the trick more... differently, but more.
| This would fall into "cheating" for me.
| Hamcha wrote:
| To me the really fascinating magic tricks are the ones that use
| the basics like sleight of hands and misdirection to build a
| proper story and presentation, this is just blatant cheating,
| it's fascinating to know how it's done but it probably won't be
| part of your favorite magician's routine.
|
| And about those tricks, I recently played the demo of a game
| called "Card Shark" and it does a really nice job of
| incorporating the more cheating-style tricks into a compelling
| narrative.
| vore wrote:
| Aren't all magic tricks "cheating" in the end? Otherwise they
| would be real magic ;-)
| davidhay wrote:
| Very cool, feel as though a form of this would be in an Ocean's
| 11 type heist.
| [deleted]
| doerig wrote:
| Super cool project and amazing documentation! It's well worth a
| read.
| punnerud wrote:
| Wow, what a next level magic trick enabler. Just me that get the
| feeling that I am reading a documentation that could be under NDA
| in a billion dollar magic trick company?
|
| https://nettlep.github.io/magic/
| [deleted]
| gavinray wrote:
| I read things like this, and I am reminded of how mediocre my
| own intelligence and skill as a developer is.
|
| Still, compared to other possibilities, you take what you can
| get.
| paulmd wrote:
| Barcodes are an underapprecated technology for amateur
| projects in general. The technology is error-resistant,
| mature and reliable in a hardware sense, cheap at the entry
| level and cheap to deploy at scale, etc. I got a surplus
| commercial Zebra/Symbol 2D/3D barcode scanner gun with dock
| (or it also talks bluetooth, USB, or naturally RS232) for $35
| and a new OEM battery was $15, and tbh you could just have
| used a smartphone with an app instead if I didn't want the
| speed and reliability of the scanner gun. Barcodes are the
| cost of a sheet of printer paper and some tape (or sticker
| paper if you want to be fancy!) and are an extremely
| accessible and tactile way to operate all kinds of systems (a
| barcode doesn't have to be a "thing", it can represent an
| "action" too) via a control server, same as via an app.
| Pressing a button in an app is way slower and more cumbersome
| than scanning a barcode on the wall that says "advance belt
| to next item", a scanner gun is an enormously fast and
| tactile UX, and RS-232 and other low-level interfaces make it
| easy to tie into other stuff. It's a fantastic project tool
| that is really underexploited compared to "everything is
| ESP32 on the network".
|
| The bar-code and shipping container are probably some of the
| greatest inventions of the 20th century, and unlike a
| shipping container it's completely appropriate and accessible
| to individuals for messing around with projects.
|
| (no, your shipping container home is not actually a good
| idea)
| mbg721 wrote:
| How do QR codes compare for reliability and versatility?
| supergeek wrote:
| QR codes are much less resilient to interference.
| Barcodes can be easily read on flexible material and
| handle glare and obstructions quite well. QR codes need
| to remain flat and are very error prone if even a small
| bit of the pattern is blocked.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| christiangenco wrote:
| This is amazing! This tech unlocks some impossible card effects
| (ex: "shuffle the deck, pick your favorite card from it, hand the
| deck back to me, your card is the Ace of Diamonds").
|
| While reading through this repo I was reminded of a project I'd
| heard Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox Software (creators of
| the Borderlands franchise) talk about wanting to make after one
| of the magic shows he hosted at his house in Frisco, Texas.
|
| Randy is a huge fan of magic. He's the great nephew of Cardini
| and notably recently purchased the Magic Castle[1].
|
| Lo and behold, the primary contributor to this project--Paul
| Nettle--is an employee at Gearbox Software[2]. What a small
| world! I'm so happy they've made this open source.
|
| 1. https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/the-former-magician-
| who-n...
|
| 2. https://github.com/nettlep
| dhosek wrote:
| When I was a kid, my dad had my brothers and me pick a card
| from a deck without showing it to him then reinsert it into the
| deck. He then threw the deck into the air scattering the cards
| on the floor and then picked our card up from the floor.
|
| The secret? Amazing dumb luck.
| david_allison wrote:
| Sure it's not sleight of hand? https://www.reddit.com/r/nextf
| uckinglevel/comments/v4r8ex/ex...
| crehn wrote:
| > impossible card effects (ex: "shuffle the deck, pick your
| favorite card from it, hand the deck back to me, your card is
| the Ace of Diamonds")
|
| There is one deceivingly simple trick that is essentially just
| that.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's more than one that I can think of, and the best I've
| ever done is the "imaginary deck" one.
|
| Setup: shuffle an imaginary deck, fan the imaginary deck,
| tell someone to pick an imaginary card and remember it,
| shuffle it back into the imaginary deck and put the deck in
| your pocket.
|
| Remove a deck from your pocket, ask what the card was, fan
| the deck out, and - it's the only upside down card in the
| deck!?
| bena wrote:
| This is one where if you have the time and effort to
| dedicate to it, can be simple. You memorize your deck, so
| when they tell you the card, you thumb to it and flip it so
| when you fan it, the card they picked is upside down.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's close to how the version I know worked, but it was
| a step or two from that (and a bit simpler).
| gibybo wrote:
| The "Invisible Deck" is a very famous trick. It can be
| purchased[1] for about $10 and just about anyone can
| master it in about 10 minutes. With the standard method,
| you don't need to memorize the deck or flip the card.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/U-S-PLAYING-CARD-COMPANY-
| SG_B002MI1B3...
| klaudioz wrote:
| Sheldon Cooper's magic trick
| arjvik wrote:
| Definitively cooler, though much less funny, than Leonard's
| psychological trick!
| gostsamo wrote:
| This tech could be a game changer for accessibility. Many card
| games are not or cannot be adapted to braille, so I haven't been
| able to play them with friends. If cards can be sold with
| invisible ink in an open format, then I would need only a scanner
| and a earphone to be able to check my cards without other help.
|
| I've thought of doing with with QR codes, but I'm not sure if it
| will look okay for the other players and if the qr codes won't be
| recognizable enough by a human to give someone unfair advantage
| in some situations.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Duplicate bridge cards are often printed with barcodes on the
| card faces, to facilitate automated dealing machines with
| computerised hand records. I've never seen a system which reads
| the barcodes for a blind player, but I'm sure it's possible.
| (The traditional approach is with a human 'card turner'
| assisting, which sucks for all kinds of reasons). Or even just
| reading the standard face images: it's a much easier problem
| than reading codes on the edges, and has the advantage of not
| making it easier to cheat!
| gostsamo wrote:
| Normal cards are a solved issue. You can print two braille
| symbols on each and it is done. Imagine though something like
| cards against humanity for example, where the text on the
| card would take ten times the space in braille. In different
| games images and details could have different meaning and
| simple ocr would be the wrong solution.
| pmyteh wrote:
| That makes sense!
|
| If the QR codes or whatever are on the faces and only
| encode information already printed there (suit+rank for
| standard cards, the title and text for board games) I can't
| imagine there would be any cheating/unauthorised
| information problems.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Yep, this is the main idea at the moment. Currently
| looking for a game that needs the solution and is
| interesting for my social circle.
| btown wrote:
| Combined with a system like [0] on a head-mounted device with
| earbuds, it could make many card games accessible to blind
| and partially sighted people! No idea if this prototype was
| ever put into production though.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0biAdmuons
| rocha wrote:
| Another option is an image recognition system trained on
| already existing cards. No need for special ink or qr code,
| just a camera as the reader.
| ISL wrote:
| Just OCR against the card-corners may be sufficient.
|
| I guess you also need suits, but that's only four special
| characters (all of which may be in more-modern OCR-
| libraries).
| gostsamo wrote:
| As I said in another comment, normal cards are easy. The
| issue is with everything else where each card might have a
| picture with different animals and you are looking for the
| lama giving you the bird.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Someone mentioned Penn & Teller's "Fool Us" show. You won't learn
| any trade secrets, but you'll sure discover that _they_ know
| them.
|
| A magician does a trick, then they come up and whisper to him
| what they think he or she did. You don't get to listen in on
| that.
|
| If they can't figure out the trick, then the magician gets to be
| the opening act for them at some show. Occasionally someone does
| fool them. Not often, though.
| lisper wrote:
| Amateur magician here. On more than one occasion I've felt that
| P&T have thrown the game and pretended to be fooled when the
| method was obvious to me, and therefore almost certainly
| obvious to them.
|
| This is one example:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufpoQmsvJEg
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Good to know.
|
| Las Vegas: Why do you think they call it "Lost Wages"?
| kazinator wrote:
| Because the expected return on a dollar is less than a
| dollar, but the variance is high. Nothing to do with any
| magician's sleight-of-hand.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| True about gambling in general, but OP's comment was that
| the "game" itself was dishonest, according to its own
| rules.
| RoddaWallPro wrote:
| I've wanted to build something pretty distantly adjacent to this
| for real-world spaced repetition cards. Have a deck of 3x5 cards,
| with qr codes at one corner. Dump the deck into your scanner
| (like a money counter) and it splits the deck, giving you a pile
| of the cards you should review today. Then you switch the scanner
| into "trying to remember" mode, and you put the cards you
| successfully recalled into one slot, and the ones you failed into
| another. The scanner reads their QR codes, notes that you
| succeeded/failed, so it can updated spacing windows for the next
| run.
| mrandish wrote:
| This is a stellar example of a quite rare class of magic trick
| where the method is actually more amazing than the effect. The
| vast majority of magic tricks are the opposite. The effect is
| amazing but the method is actually quite mundane. This is one
| reason magicians don't reveal "secrets". The reality is most
| magical methods are rather disappointing compared to the
| astonishing impact of the effect created.
|
| For any magical effect there are almost always many possible
| methods and, conversely, for each method there are multiple
| possible effects. This method provides a way to know the location
| (or absence) of each card in a shuffled deck without the
| performer handling the deck. For most of the effects which could
| be accomplished with this method there exist a wide variety of
| alternate, _much_ simpler, methods. Using any of those easier and
| cheaper methods would likely appear identically amazing to
| audiences. And _that 's_ why I love this method. As a
| technologist and magician, I've always had a special fondness for
| wildly complex methods - that rare kind of magic where the method
| actually IS as amazing as the effect.
| orlp wrote:
| One of my favorite magic tricks is one I've learnt. You have 31
| cards prepared in an order determined by a linear shift
| register. The audience is allowed to cut the deck as often as
| they want (thus maintaining cyclic order) after which they draw
| 5 cards. Simply by asking which audience members hold red cards
| you can compute which cards they're holding.
|
| I've also performed this trick by combining two decks with
| different patterns on the back, allowing you to 'divine' their
| cards without ever asking a question.
|
| See here for details:
| https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2015/01/mathematics_and...
| bena wrote:
| Penn likes to say that a lot of magic boils down to no one
| really believing anyone is going to spend the time and
| resources to do the obvious thing. Magicians are people who are
| willing to spend the time and resources to do the obvious
| thing.
|
| Like people who seem to swallow things and then reproduce them
| later. The easiest method to do that is to swallow the thing
| and then regurgitate it. And you can train yourself to do this.
| But it takes time and effort. And is a little gross and if
| you're working with live animals, you are also on a time limit.
| happimess wrote:
| My favorite example he gave: Buy 52 decks of cards. Put all
| the 7s of diamonds together in one deck. Let your audience
| member pick a card. It's the 7 of diamonds.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > The vast majority of magic tricks are the opposite. The
| effect is amazing but the method is actually quite mundane.
|
| You're probably right about it being the majority, but I'd say
| a lot of good slight of hand also falls into the category of
| the method being amazing.
|
| Penn and Teller are also famous for doing tricks with the
| secret in full view, and they're often more impressive than the
| trick done normally.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The routines in that case are designed to be entertaining,
| they don't give away secrets that aren't theirs to begin
| with, and there's often a double bluff where they purport to
| give away secrets, but there's still an element they don't
| disclose, or the supposed secret is just misdirection (e.g.
| the phone inside fish trick)
|
| A lot of P&T tricks are boring once the secret is revealed.
| They don't reveal those tricks.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > A lot of P&T tricks are boring once the secret is
| revealed.
|
| This is the mindset I don't understand. Unless the secret
| is something the spectator might reasonably consider
| "cheating" (like, if it turns out that a video production
| that's ostensibly of a live performance actually used post-
| production visual effects), I don't see in what sense
| knowing the secret ruins the trick. Perhaps for some people
| it might, but as long as the "secret revelation" content is
| separate from the "trick performance" content, I trust
| people to identify for themselves which content they want
| to watch.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I find the secrets more interesting than the tricks in
| most instances. I see it as a form of social hacking.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I find the secrets more interesting than the tricks in
| most instances. I see it as a form of social hacking.
|
| It depends. I've seen more than one person learning the
| French Drop _fool their own eyes_ despite performing the
| trick themselves, feeling the object in their hand, and
| knowing exactly how it works.
|
| Our brains are interesting, and the degree of surprise we
| can get from cognitive dissonance or mismatched
| perceptions is hilarious.
|
| IMO, most of the secrets are boring. But the overall
| performance that makes it work is fun.
| zbuf wrote:
| All magic tricks are cheating. It's just sometimes the
| cheat is just something you didn't think of and not a lot
| more. Sometimes it's a gadget or gimmick; not something
| that requires a lot of practice.
|
| Of course there's amazing sleight of hand -- you are
| correct. But a lot of magic is creativity & performance,
| not necessarily skill. The lines are blurred and that's
| the fun.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > All magic tricks are cheating. It's just sometimes the
| cheat is just something you didn't think of and not a lot
| more.
|
| I think we're using different terminology here. I think
| there's a pretty big distinction between, for instance,
| the widely known variants of the sawing a woman in half
| trick where there are two people in the two halves of the
| box, and watching a video broadcast of a magic show where
| it turns out they just used visual effects to accomplish
| the effect. Perhaps the lines are blurry and different
| spectators might disagree in some cases, but I think
| there's a set of explanations that would be considered
| "cheating" in the negative sense.
| zbuf wrote:
| I'm not sure we are really disagreeing. Being receptive
| of magic is to enjoy the idea of being "cheated" on, so
| I'd agree that it's not necessarily rational to feel
| cheated in the way you were cheated. Whatever the end
| justifies the means, and so on.
|
| But I think the role of good magic is somewhat to test
| the boundaries of negative cheating in almost anyone.
|
| For example, you've made it fairly clear you'd think of
| any visual effects to be negative cheating. But what if I
| actually do use visual effects, but successfully double
| down and convince you that it _isn't_, even though you'd
| normally be technically aware to spot such a thing. Would
| you enjoy being misdirected like that?
|
| We're far from the original point, but what I think I'm
| saying is there's a selection/survivorship bias here; a
| smaller number of great tricks with fascinating
| explanations and, often, decoy explanations. And the rest
| is just cheating ;-)
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I'm not sure we are really disagreeing. Being receptive
| of magic is to enjoy the idea of being "cheated" on, so
| I'd agree that it's not necessarily rational to feel
| cheated in the way you were cheated. Whatever the end
| justifies the means, and so on.
|
| I'm confident that we're disagreeing. Sure, you expect to
| be deceived at a magic show. But that's a necessary part
| of magic, not a sufficient one. If you attend a magic
| show and it's just someone playing acoustic guitar for 2
| hours, you'll feel cheated. That's different than
| thinking the magician's hands were empty when in fact he
| was palming a card. There are clearly two very distinct
| senses we're using for the same term "cheated." You can't
| just sell someone a fake ticket to a magic show then say
| "tada!"
|
| > For example, you've made it fairly clear you'd think of
| any visual effects to be negative cheating.
|
| If I'm watching a video production that is ostensibly a
| live recording of a magic performance, then of course I
| think post-production visual effects are just straight up
| cheating, in the same way that I would feel cheated if it
| just ended up being a video of someone playing acoustic
| guitar.
|
| > But what if I actually do use visual effects, but
| successfully double down and convince you that it
| _isn't_, even though you'd normally be technically aware
| to spot such a thing. Would you enjoy being misdirected
| like that?
|
| If I literally can't tell the difference and thus I'm
| completely deceived, then obviously I can't be upset. But
| if I later found out, then of course I would be upset.
| Again, being "misdirected" is necessary but not
| sufficient.
|
| And at the end of the day, I still enjoy learning how a
| magic trick is done _more_ than I enjoy just watching
| magic tricks.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Exactly. When the audience needs to observe the trick by
| proxy, because it's not practical to have everybody
| touching the object, standing on stage, or being in the
| TV studio, that proxy must be honest.
|
| If I can't trust that to be the case, I'd only be
| interested in a trick if I can be the one on stage
| touching the object. No more global audience for you,
| cheating magician.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Right. It's the same with audience plants, _unless_ there
| 's also something specifically interesting about the way
| the audience plant operated. If the magician just picks a
| stooge from the audience, says "the number you're
| thinking of is 17," and the stooge says "wow, how did you
| read my mind?" that is not a remotely legitimate magic
| trick in my view. Likewise, if you're watching a
| guerrilla magic television special (e.g. David Blaine:
| Street Magic) and it turns out it's just a completely
| staged, fictional production using post-production visual
| effects, paid actors, etc., then in my view that's not
| remotely legitimate.
| mrandish wrote:
| > a lot of good slight of hand also falls into the category
| of the method being amazing.
|
| That's true but when slight of hand is amazing it's usually
| amazing in a different way than the OP's method. At the
| highest conceptual level, the "secret method" of most sleight
| of hand can be boiled down to "You hid something in your
| hand." At least to other magicians, uniquely good sleight of
| hand is amazing due to the insane level of skill and years of
| rigorous practice required to "hide something in your hand"
| in a way that appears impossible.
|
| While developing the OP's method did require amazing effort
| and serious engineering skill, someone else could then
| perform with that method without the same unique level of
| technical skill.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > At the highest conceptual level, the "secret method" of
| most sleight of hand can be boiled down to "You hid
| something in your hand."
|
| I'm not sure if I agree with that. There are certainly some
| clever and skillful methods for how an item is literally
| stored and retrieved, but what's more interesting and
| impressive to me is the overall choreography. The way all
| the moves are sequenced and how one move provides
| misdirection for another move is where the _magic_ happens.
| Agamus wrote:
| I too have a passion for complex magic tricks. And while what
| you say may be true for tricks which rely on gimmicks, with
| sleight of hand, the opposite is often true. I was a stage
| illusionist in a 'former life', and started practicing sleight
| of hand at age 6. The thing that kept me interested is that the
| methods of producing the effect were almost always far more
| interesting than the effect they produce.
|
| In my own art, I focused on vintage effects that were complex.
| I recreated dozens of effects from Dunninger's book, and relied
| on technological principles from that era - lots of clockwork
| and curious mechanisms. I could have produced the same effect
| in much easier ways, but what would be the fun in that?
|
| Many methods require inconceivable practice to master. One
| example is an obscure method of the "front to back palm" with a
| coin, which thereafter goes back to front - the most complex
| sleight of hand I worked on, which produces a completely
| mundane effect (showing the hands empty). In my experience, if
| you see someone doing sleight of hand - making cards, balls,
| coins, cigarettes appear and disappear - watching how they do
| it is much more interesting than watching the effect!
| turtlebits wrote:
| The method is interesting, but magic entertains because of the
| performance/mystery. If you use this tool without providing any
| of that, it's boring, and people will probably assume you're
| some form of camera/tool/cheat/hidden helpers and leave
| unimpressed.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| > a quite rare class of magic trick where the method is
| actually more amazing than the effect
|
| I once heard this described as when you hear the method of a
| trick, a great trick is one where you go "Ah!" with amazement
| instead of "Oh", disappointed.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > This is a stellar example of a quite rare class of magic
| trick where the method is actually more amazing than the
| effect. The vast majority of magic tricks are the opposite.
|
| I don't know much about magic, but I've always felt that the
| method is _almost always_ more amazing than the effect. I am
| _vastly_ more interested in the methods, skills, and
| preparation that goes into a trick than I am in just watching a
| final performance.
| joisig wrote:
| Very cool project! I'm curious how the magician would typically
| use this, would the scanner and an output monitor be hidden
| somewhere on stage or similar?
| suyash wrote:
| that would be a trade secret and as a magician I won't disclose
| in the open forum.
| Youden wrote:
| Not a magician, just watch tricks occasionally and enjoy
| thinking about how they're made.
|
| I wouldn't necessarily expect the monitor to be visual as card
| tricks usually just need knowledge of a couple of cards. This
| could be communicated through sound (e.g. discrete earpiece or
| bone conduction headphones) or even haptics (e.g. Morse code
| vibrations from a phone in a pocket).
|
| As for the scanner, it'll depend on the trick, the goal is just
| to hide a camera. It could be concealed in a prop or an item of
| clothing. The scanning could even be incorporated into the
| trick, for example by sealing the cards immediately in a
| "safe".
| jwhitlark wrote:
| I would think it would mostly be for practice and rehearsal, to
| see if you've gone wrong before you reach the end of the trick.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I could see someone using this on stage in Penn & Teller's
| Fool Us. The camera hidden in the table, on the table an
| elaborate box that never comes into contact with the cards,
| is used as some elaborate red herring (maybe you have to
| knock on it, or draw something from it), but really serves to
| hide a small screen.
|
| Now you only have to come up with some impressive card trick
| that seems impossible to pull off with conventional methods.
|
| Of course you could also come up with a better method to
| communicate the information than an ipad screen. Maybe a
| tactile signal.
| goosedragons wrote:
| It's like a modern day Nintendo eReader for magicians! Neat.
| ImJasonH wrote:
| "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
| magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
| angst_ridden wrote:
| A magician I know talks about the three kinds of magic: sleight
| of hand, mechanical, and mathematical. The first requires a lot
| of skill and practice (e.g., palming coins, manipulating cards).
| The second requires a lot of preparation and engineering (e.g.,
| sawing a person in half, floating person illusions). The third
| relies on the nature of reality (e.g., dividing sets of cards in
| a known pattern that forces a result, or manipulating numbers
| that force an unexpected result).
|
| So this is a cool example of the second type. All three types
| require some showmanship, and good patter. Some of the best
| tricks combine the types.
| bergenty wrote:
| Can we have the barcode printed in invisible ink that's only
| visible to the raspberry pi?
| ImJasonH wrote:
| It's almost like you didn't read the article.
|
| https://nettlep.github.io/magic/#marking/irabsorbinginks/use...
| paulmd wrote:
| Woah woah woah, you can't just say that! this is HN, we have
| rules about pointing out when people obviously didn't read
| the article, it makes them feel bad!
| blamazon wrote:
| That's not a rule, it's a guideline.
|
| Rules don't start with "please":
|
| > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that."
| bergenty wrote:
| I did actually. Must have missed that part.
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