Vesuvius Challenge

Vesuvius Challenge is a competition focused on employing technology and open source development to read and analyze ancient scrolls, primarily through segmentation, ink detection, and machine learning. It offers significant monetary prizes for advancements in these areas and promotes community collaboration and innovation among developers, researchers, and historians.

Ancient Scrolls Analysis Machine Learning Competitions Open Source Software Development Digital Humanities Papyrology Monetary Prizes and Incentives Community Collaboration

The hottest Substack posts of Vesuvius Challenge

And their main takeaways

Exciting news from Scroll 5!

117 implied HN points • 05 Feb 25
📚 Literature History Classics Philosophy Writing
  1. The P.Herc. 172 scroll from Oxford shows dense ink, which helps in identifying the text better than other scrolls. This makes it easier to detect letters and understand its content.
  2. Preliminary findings suggest that the scroll might be written by Philodemus, a famous philosopher. Some words found indicate it could be a complete work, not just a draft.
  3. This scroll has unique physical traits that might help decode other scrolls with unclear texts. As research continues, the hope is to develop better methods for reading ancient writings.

Vesuvius Challenge Progress Prizes: December Edition

31 implied HN points • 24 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Data science Machine Learning Computer Vision Community Engagement Open Source
  1. The community is focused on improving data quality, like using better labels and refining how they categorize information. This will help them create automated tools for analyzing scrolls more effectively.
  2. Several contributors have made significant advancements in developing new segmentation models and tools, which will help in analyzing scroll data. These innovations are key for understanding ancient texts.
  3. 2024 has been a great year for teamwork and progress as everyone shares their findings. The hard work from many people is leading to quick improvements in technology for studying historical scrolls.

Awarding the amazing autosegmentation work from 2024

21 implied HN points • 24 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Software Innovation Artificial Intelligence Research Data science
  1. Two teams were awarded for their amazing work on automating scroll segmentation. They worked really hard, using only a few hours of human help to get impressive results.
  2. The new methods focus on breaking down the task into smaller parts, like surface prediction and fitting, making it easier and faster to recover lost texts from ancient scrolls.
  3. Even though there are still challenges, the community is excited about the progress and future plans, like getting better at detecting ink on more scrolls.

Vesuvius Challenge Progress Prizes: November Edition

14 implied HN points • 23 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Data science Software Development Open Source Machine Learning
  1. Community members contributed a lot to the Vesuvius Challenge, earning prizes for their work. This shows how teamwork can lead to great progress!
  2. Some projects focused on improving how we visualize 3D scrolls and extracting data from images. These tools could really help researchers understand ancient texts better.
  3. Awards are given for various types of contributions, encouraging creativity and technical skills. It’s exciting to see different approaches being recognized in the community.

Vesuvius Challenge is hiring!

9 implied HN points • 21 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Computer Vision Data science Software Engineering Machine Learning Infrastructure
  1. The Vesuvius Challenge is looking for team members to help recover texts from ancient scrolls. They need people for two key roles: research in computer vision and platform engineering.
  2. The computer vision role focuses on using advanced tech to read the scrolls, which involves solving complex problems with CT scan data.
  3. The platform engineering role is about creating tools and systems to manage and share large datasets, making research easier for the community.
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

First letters found in new scroll

62 implied HN points • 27 Nov 24
💾 History Ancient Archaeology Literature Culture Research
  1. A new scroll called PHerc. 172 has been discovered, and it was buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius around 79 AD.
  2. Scientists are excited because they clearly see ink in the scroll for the first time, allowing them to start reading its Greek text.
  3. The team is looking for help to further analyze the scroll and unlock more of its content, as many words are already close to being readable.

Three weeks to go in Vesuvius Challenge 2024!

18 implied HN points • 10 Dec 24
📚 Literature Writing Competitions Prizes Research
  1. There are three weeks left to enter the Vesuvius Challenge 2024. Make sure to submit your entries before the deadline!
  2. The challenge offers over $500,000 in prizes for various achievements in reading ancient scrolls. It's a great chance to win while exploring history!
  3. They are hiring for their Segmentation Team, giving you a unique opportunity to work with ancient writings that nobody has seen for thousands of years.

New tools to use with new scroll

10 implied HN points • 27 Nov 24
🕹 Technology Open Source Data science Machine Learning Community projects Innovation
  1. The Vesuvius Challenge has introduced new tools to help with studying ancient scrolls. These tools are meant to improve our understanding of scrolls found in Herculaneum.
  2. There is a total of $18,500 available as prizes for community contributions. The rewards are aimed at motivating open-source work that supports the reading and analysis of the new scroll dataset.
  3. Several contributors have developed techniques and tools for better image segmentation and data analysis of scrolls. These advancements help make the process of interpreting ancient texts easier and more accurate.

Exciting acceleration in community activity

12 implied HN points • 30 Oct 24
🔬 Science Archaeology History Technology Research Innovation
  1. The Vesuvius Challenge is rewarding contributors with $48,500 in prizes for their innovative work on ancient scrolls. This money encourages creativity and progress in understanding these old texts.
  2. One exciting project introduced a new method for segmenting scrolls, which could make the process faster and more accurate. This kind of innovation is really important as it helps researchers figure out how to read the scrolls better.
  3. Several contributors are developing tools and techniques to improve ink detection and data analysis for the scrolls. These advancements are pushing the boundaries of what we can learn from these ancient artifacts.

$500,000+ in New Prizes!

21 implied HN points • 27 Feb 24
💼 Business Prizes Challenges Community Milestones Tutorials
  1. Over $500,000 in new prizes announced for 2024, including a $100,000 Grand Prize.
  2. Various prizes like the First Automated Segmentation Prize, First Letters Prizes, and Monthly Progress Prizes aim to drive progress towards community goals.
  3. Opportunities for second place prizes add to the total prize pool, providing even more chances for participants to win.

Open Source Prizes awarded

16 implied HN points • 25 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Open Source Prizes
  1. Four open source prizes of $3,000 each were awarded.
  2. Diverse projects were recognized, including a segment maps tool, large segments and colab notebook, and a Crackle Viewer.
  3. More open source and progress prizes are expected in the future.

Prizes overview & community updates

5 implied HN points • 30 Mar 23
🕹 Technology Prizes Feedback
  1. The newsletter highlights ongoing prizes, including a $100,000 Ink Detection Progress Prize on Kaggle.
  2. There is an invitation for feedback on how to structure the remaining prize money to encourage more participants.
  3. Community updates include shared resources, discussions about the scrolls, and collaborations among participants.

Vesuvius Challenge newsletter

0 implied HN points • 27 Feb 23
📰 News Newsletter
  1. The post is about the Vesuvius Challenge newsletter.
  2. The post encourages sharing and subscribing to stay informed.
  3. The post includes ways to copy the link, share on Facebook, or send via email.

Increasing Kaggle ink detection prizes to $100k, and announcing open source prizes

0 implied HN points • 24 Mar 23
🕹 Technology Open Source Competition Livestream
  1. Ink Detection Progress Prize now has $100,000 in prizes, with 10 winners awarded for finding solutions to the ink detection problem.
  2. Introduction of 'open source prizes' to encourage public contributions in software, documentation, research notes, etc., with 3 prizes of $2,000 each for the best contributions by April 11th.
  3. Judging of open source contributions will be subjective by the Technical Team, and submissions must be publicly accessible and usable by other contestants.

Papyrology Q&A pre-game

0 implied HN points • 24 May 23
💾 History Archaeology Research Expertise
  1. Papyrology Q&A session happening on May 25th at 8am PST.
  2. Experts discussing whether Scroll 1 was folded before being rolled up.
  3. CT scans suggest that the folded portion of Scroll 1 may have been intentionally done to create a more solid middle.