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hyperthesis

778 karma · joined January 1, 2023

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hyperthesis··on JEP draft: String Templates (Final)
It's a whole new string: " unescaped; multiline

In 1996, I thought java would be the new COBOL, and could endure for 20 years - now almost 30. This prioritization of "whole product" concerns, like security (bobby tables) and error-proneness, ensures longevity.

Also capture developers and codebases with its intricate magical features.

hyperthesis··on The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit
~2020, the end of history
hyperthesis··on Super Mario 64 on the Web
I know intellectually that smartphones are more powerful than an N64... but playing this in a browser on a low-end smartphone is surreal.

  PSA: bluetooth keyboard: X, C, space; arrow keys. Adjust view with WASD
hyperthesis··on What does the cerebellum do?
Timing is also needed in speech, which is quite fast compared to conscious desponse; so the problem with conjunctions might just be that the cerebellum anticipates them.

Note that time perception is distorted so that we don't notice how slow conscious response is.

So the feeling of "competence" is when your cerebellum is anticipating correctly.

hyperthesis··on What does the cerebellum do?
Selective reproduction is evolutionary pressure; survival is mere prerequisite.
hyperthesis··on What does the cerebellum do?
Its striated structure matches sequential timed operations.
hyperthesis··on Two physicists who correctly predicted the mass of Higgs boson [video]
Sometimes the inability to stick up for themselves is less due to lack of skill than lack of a sense of value in themselves apart from their achievements.
hyperthesis··on Two physicists who correctly predicted the mass of Higgs boson [video]
It's amazing how impressive your achievements can be if you don't mind who gets the credit. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/21/doing-good-selfless...
hyperthesis··on Bad scientific code beats code following "best practices" (2014)
The rule-of-thumb of factoring out only when you've written the same code three times rarely gets a chance here, because as soon as you notice a regularity, and you think critically about it, your next experiment breaks that regularity.

It's tempting to create reusable modules, but for one-off exploratory code, for testing hypotheses, it's far more efficient to just write it.

hyperthesis··on Bad scientific code beats code following "best practices" (2014)
maintainable prototypes are overengineered
hyperthesis··on Procrastination is connected to perfectionism
https://structuredprocrastination.com/
hyperthesis··on "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
Reminds me of the Wright Brothers. After their incredible invention of controlled heavier-than-air flight (using a wind-tunnel - did they invent that too?), the focus was on patent royalties, while others innovated.
hyperthesis··on "No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
At that propitious 1900 banquet, perhaps pricing power was discussed?

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

hyperthesis··on In 2024, please switch to Firefox
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Be evil

hyperthesis··on Stirling-PDF: local web application to perform various operations on PDFs
Adobe is expert at software standards. They aren't compulsive about control, yet don't give the farm away. The know when to be open and how much. That is how they dominate.
hyperthesis··on Petrov: A man who lived in the woods of Mendocino County (2022)
I was responding to this:

  you can plant beans and have a crop in weeks.
hyperthesis··on Petrov: A man who lived in the woods of Mendocino County (2022)
do beans need to be in season, or are some varieties year-round?
hyperthesis··on Petrov: A man who lived in the woods of Mendocino County (2022)
also https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language
hyperthesis··on Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable
> once they hit a certain wall, growth slows down drastically.

Deliberate practice addresses these plateaus. I think you need to constrict your focus, zoom in, change the scale so the slowing of progress doesn't feel slow. If you can accept that, it can be just as satisfying. A great coach/mentor can help here [but how can you evaluate them?] As the frontier of your knowledge expands, there's more of it.

funfact: Usain Bolt hit a plateau as a teenager, but got a new coach who addressed a congenital spine defect with specific strengthening exercises, and to train less (he was overtraining).

hyperthesis··on Ask yourself dumb questions and answer them (2020)
Even being around other people can conform your thoughts to normal terms: get them back "on track", where your only choices are which track, which direction. It's not just the thoughts, but the terms, the dimensions.

I think a most fragile stage is when you've part-imagined a new track, and unclear if it's a good idea, if it works, even what it is. This can collapse like a house of card in the lightest breeze, a dream upon waking.

Human beings are automatically conformist - crucial for learning, language, custom, law, cooperation and trade, from the beginning - so it's good we need special circumstances for "creativity".

hyperthesis··on Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
Bridson's course notes also cover most of this https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/fluidsimulation/fluids_notes... There's a second part by Muller, who's also very active in the area: https://matthias-research.github.io/pages/tenMinutePhysics/i...

It became a book, now in 2ed: Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics

hyperthesis··on Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
An imperceptible inconsistency can become perceptible if it is cumulative, such as mass not being conserved very slightly, but over time the amount of water changes significantly - one ad hoc solution is to redistribute the missing water (or remove surplus) everywhere, to compensate.
hyperthesis··on My failed attempt at using a closet as an office
Ronald Dahl and George Bernard Shaw wrote in sheds. https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/from-roald-dahl-t...
hyperthesis··on Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
Yes, consistency. Similar in scifi/fantasy, where an absurd conceit is believable if internally consistent, i.e. self-consistent. (I also call it principled) Too much ad hoc prevents suspension of disbelief.

Reactions are an important part of this, it's not just how good an actor is, but how other character react to them. If they are ignored, it's like that character doesn't exist, has no effect, is inconsequential, doesn't matter... is not real.

In a fluid simulation, when water does not react to the shoreline, rocks in the water, columns supporting a pier etc, it is like the water (or the obstacles) don't exist. In this sense, the water (or the obstacles) "aren't real".

For example, the water in Sea of Thieves looks magnificent... but because it doesn't interact (it's procedural), it doesn't feel real. It isn't real.

A further problem here with water is that it's difficult to make a continuous fluid that is consistent and isn't realistic, because the basic principles of fluid are so very very simple: conservation of mass, conservation of momentum.

[ Of course, you can still vary density, gravity. There are other effects beyond these: viscosity, surface tension. Also, compressible fluids, different reynolds numbers, adiabatic effects, behaviour at non-everyday temperatures, pressures, scales, velocities, accelerations etc. ]

There are also simplifications, like depth-averaging (Shallow Water Equations aka St Venant), but again, it's hard to vary it and yet remain self-consistent.

Cellular methods - similar to conway's game of life but for fluid - maybe are an exception, because thet are self-consistent - but pretty far from "water", because not lack momentum (and aren't continuous).

The final issue is error: simulations are never perfectly self-consistent anyway, because they must discretize the continuous, which introduces error. In engineering, you can reduce this error with a finer grid, until it too small to matter for your specific application. For computer graphics, it only needs to be perceivably" self-consistent - and perhaps pixel size is one measure of this, for the appearance* of consistency, in area/volume, acceleration, velocity, displacement (...though, we can perceive sub-pixel displacement, e.g. an aliased line.)

hyperthesis··on Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
This is the laplacian operator (in 1D, just the second derivative, or curvature). The sharper the crest, the more negative; the sharper the trough, the more positive. If you change the value there, by that much, the effect is averaging (and the discretized form is literally averaging).

You've been doing calculus the whole time. There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.

Here's a 3Blue1Brown video with intuitive graphics on it https://youtube.com/watch?v=ToIXSwZ1pJU

hyperthesis··on Simulating fluids, fire, and smoke in real-time
A VP at Nvidia has a cool (marketing) line about this, regarding frame generation of "fake" frames. Because DLSS is trained on "real" raytraces images, they are more real than conventional game graphics.

So the non-generated frames are the "fake frames".

hyperthesis··on Gokrazy – Go Appliances
To some extent, android is this with java.

For a low-powered device, would a Go usespace bring particular benefits? (Though, even the cheapest phones today aren't really "low-powered" anymore)

hyperthesis··on Lessons from a never-ending personal project
> I should’ve known what I was gonna say, right?

It does feel like you should know... but knowing all the parts does not mean you know the whole. The rules of chess do not make you a gramdmaster. The axioms of geometry, of predicate calculus do not make you know all theorems and proofs. Being able to program does not mean you know all programs.

hyperthesis··on Lessons from a never-ending personal project
> This was an extremely dumb use of my time, and it won’t help me in my career or make me money or get me clout.

The things you do for themselves are the only things worth doing - because the value of all other things is merely derived.

hyperthesis··on Lessons from a never-ending personal project
Voltaire: “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
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