errantspark

I used to be much more bullish on TS, I like the idea of strong typing in general but the more I use TS the more I feel like it's just the worst of both worlds. I much prefer my types to be deeply embedded in the language design, types as varnish don't make sense to me anymore.

In fact I took the time just now to run a few samples in Discord and it's looking like I'm getting the same 35-40ms keypress to photon latency as gVim with one 80ms outlier out of the 5 runs I did.

But with regard to the Dan Luu post I've tried to recreate his findings and maybe things have gotten better because with 170hz monitor and a run of the mill gaming keyboard I'm getting keypress to photon latencies in windows gVim of about 35ms as measured with a high speed camera.

Hierarchies are unavoidable and useful.

I'm more making the argument that cultural disgust at concentration of power, and a general erring on the side of flatness whenever we can would go a long way toward a healthier society.

Ideally that would be useless because things are properly salted and you don't know the salt, however with access to all of the source code as we have here I think it isn't as clear cut, as it may be possible to reverse out the salts as well.

I'm not a cybersec guy so please take my speculation with a grain of salt.

That being said I'm well aware of how load bearing "somehow thoroughly universalized" is in my statement. Perhaps it's only possible in a culture that truly rejects secret keeping as deeply harmful from an individual level up. I don't believe we can get there from here anytime soon, and if we tried it would just be another system for the people who figure out how to keep secrets to exploit that info asymmetry. In a world of cooperating actors though . . . yeah, I know I'm dreaming.

I will say I have been very impressed with Anker's GaN power bricks of late.

In fact I just tried it again on 4 computers and every one of them said "Wake History Count - 0".

I'm not interested in the standard "I make a penny and my boss makes a dime" and I think a lot of other people aren't either. I'm not comfortable with exploitation. I think (or hope, at least) some people are realizing that "making it" for the most part means becoming part of the exploiter class and they're not comfortable with it.

I don't think that's the best solution, but at least it's one I can personally enact, and if deontologically expanded it does lead to solving the problem. Don't play negative or zero sum games and ostracize those that do.

Don't be like this, don't corrode the commons for personal gain. By not speaking out you are endorsing a harmful asymmetry, make no mistake about your personal responsibility for perpetuating hostile norms.

In terms of my success as a human who is part of society I don't think anything has been as helpful as the social skills that I learned in high school. I don't think it's the only way to learn these skills, but I certainly feel like my social-learning velocity was by far the highest in high school.

Ultimately how other people perceive me influences my quality of life more than any other thing. I don't think as a "smart kid" skipping high school would have helped me, I think it would have hurt me a lot. I feel like my life opened up immensely when I accepted that being smart and correct and having a deep understanding of the problem at hand matters so much less than being able to get along with people.

This document is a good primer on a lot of the concepts that go into PBR. I have a few more open source/free resources on PBR and unbiased rendering as well and I will update this post if I can dig em up.

That's it. There's no shortcut to being good at this stuff, you just have to learn how the real world works and make sure that when you're simulating it in the computer you're using physically correct numbers for everything. Relentlessly comparing what you're doing to photographs is the only way to truly master the skill. It's a lot easier to take a step back and do stylized realism once you can nail the real thing.

That being said this is fantastically executed. I'm especially loving the ability to mix the baked GI live, it's a great effect for static scenes like this.

P.S. Ok I probably lied when I said there are no shortcuts. Here are a few:

- use a physically based (preferably unbiased) renderer

- use only energy conserving materials

- use light-probes to light your scene

That being said I also love technology. It's fucking magic and I'm a mage. I have immense power over one of the most effective forces in the world and I spend a depressing amount of it to circumvent annoyances forced upon me by people trying to part me from my money. It's so frustrating because I love what technology is and what it can enable for people, and I hate how trash the baseline is, and I especially hate most people don't even know how good things could be if we y'know had open standards and shit. I know that there isn't an easy fix, but my frustration is none the less valid. So much of humanity's effort in tech is spent on bullshit that doesn't add value at best, and is actively detrimental to all but a few humans on average.

If you work for a place that is largely just about shuffling money to yourself by exploiting info asymmetry sabotage it or quit. You most likely have a skillset that can earn you a living wage somewhere that's a net positive for society.

I hate how my relationship with Microsoft/Google etc is essentially one where they're constantly pushing the boundaries of what I'm willing to put up with. It's fucking abusive.

Maybe alien to some people, but I've spend the last 17 years of my life hanging out in Xfire/Teamspeak/Vent/Mumble/Discord and I think it's one of the absolute best things that tech has been able to give us, just constantly being in a room with all your friends.