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jazzprogrammingon GifCities

This brings back so many memories. I was a kid in the 90's but I still remember that era well. The fall of the Berlin wall had still not faded from memory. Everything felt new and sparkling and fresh and every late night dial up connecting to the internet was an exploration brimming with endless possibilities and wonders of discovery. There was magic in the air.

Well, now it's all grown up and so am I, I guess and this is probably just me but it feels like big brother has now taken over. No more computer & internet ga ga. Playtime is over. Things are dead serious now even when we're supposed to have fun. You can't say anything or even get out of the house without something recording everything you say or do.

It's like in a way, things have lost their innocence, like in some dark fairy tale when you find out what the lovely old lady who lives in a house made of bread, cake, and sugar actually actually feeds on. You didn't really think it was bread, cake, and sugar, now did you? I know I did.

jazzprogrammingon We're gonna need a lot more mathematicians

Love, hopefully?

But you can use your imagination (or ask Claude).

One day machines will probably do most of the work to be done better than we can. Which is fine. But then we'll also lose the meaning and purpose that work used to provide. I don't think it would necessarily lead to a dystopia, but that world would be a pretty strange place to our current eyes, to say the least.

jazzprogrammingon We're gonna need a lot more mathematicians

> If AI designs a terawatt fusion plant, then of course we're going to meticulously pore over every detail

But suppose some future holy grail AI can do much more than that.

Suppose it could find a cure for cancer, fix the climate, build fusion plants, Dyson spheres and so on.

But nobody can understand anymore how any of it works. We just ask and then trust the AI to deliver (as it always has).

Isn't it fun to imagine how life would look like in that scenario?

We would probably no longer care about code, engineering or even physics and mathematics among other things. We would probably mainly care about

jazzprogrammingon The Curious Power of Punctuation

You're right of course, that is the grammatically correct way. I guess I was dangerously forcing my poetic license.

But it's still a good example of where a comma (or lack of) can make all the difference.

jazzprogrammingon The Curious Power of Punctuation

- Verily I say unto thee today, shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.

- But when, Lord, when?!

- Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.

- Ahhhh.

jazzprogrammingon 16-bit Intel 8088 chip (c. 1985)

DON'T TRY

- Bukowski

I've loved that from the moment I stumbled upon it.

Both funny and serious at the same time.

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)

I am working on vorfract, a Voronoi voxel world which uses Voronoi cells as voxels instead of the regular cubic ones.

It's an early version so many (if not most) things that would be in a game are still missing at the moment (though planned on paper).

One interesting thing is that because the Voronoi voxels are so malleable, things like round or hollow worlds are a pretty natural outcome.

In parallel to working on it, I've been mostly using it to build and improve my own voxel castle with a pointy roof, slanted walls, custom built stairs, tables, chairs and all those nice things.

In the last update I added a CRT filter and some pixelation options as I find that appealing. As for the future (maybe as the next thing?), I guess I'd probably like to add the ability to build less blocky things like round towers (or flower vases!), but that is still very much a work in progress.

The Web version (WebGL) is completely free (and will stay that way):

https://jazzprogramming.itch.io/vorfract

jazzprogrammingon GPU World

I was thinking of something similar.

Waxing poetic, it's been a while since the wheel was invented and we've gone through a lot since then, yet the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor and the loved are still loved and the loveless still loveless.

Would one GPU data center/person make a difference? Probably not, but it could be quite fun to have your own personal genie. And then we get used to it.

Still, I'm not sure if most people care to make the distinction between technology (a rocket promising to reach for the stars) and the human condition (has it ever changed since the dawn of time?).

jazzprogrammingon Show HN: Voronoi Go

Love it, such a novel idea!

Honestly, as a long time Voronoi enthusiast, the idea of turning a regular grid into a Voronoi diagram is kind of obvious and I admit that this is definitely something that I would like to have come up with myself, but the idea never occurred to me.

The implementation is obviously pretty complex though. And I remember trying to get into regular Go several times along the years and I've always found it very difficult to grasp it (the computer thoroughly beat me every single time!) and I lost the motivation.

I read your tutorial pages, but I learn best by doing so I guess only playing for some significant amount of time will actually help me have a more than skin deep understanding of the game.

I do wish there was a Windows desktop version as the web version is eating 90% of my laptop's CPU when playing against the bot.

jazzprogrammingon The German Mittelstand

Sometimes I'm taken aback by the visceral reaction some people have when their spider sense detects LLM impurities in the writing.

I read that same sentence (and the whole article, which I loved) and it didn't trigger anything in me.

It reminds me a bit of the OMG GMOs! craze people used to have a while back (and might still have?).

jazzprogrammingon Show HN: Beautiful Type Erasure with C++26 Reflection

4 comments to heap your scorn on someone's work and what you don't understand. And you say their work is useless.

jazzprogrammingon Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

One thing that always comes to mind when I read articles like this is that, suppose he's right and the economic value of 8 billion people becomes close to zero at some point because of AI or something else:

What will 8 billion people be then doing with their time?

Will they be watching Netflix all day in the future?

Or building their dream castle & kingdom in Minecraft instead of IRL?

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)

I am working on vorfract, a voronoi voxel world. I've always found the shapes generated by voronoi diagrams so interesting and I quite like the aesthetic.

What new ideas am I thinking about?

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of things left to discover about voronoi diagrams, but for the time being, I'm mainly exploring what's possible to build by using voronoi cells as voxels and devising various tools for cutting them.

Since they're convex polyhedra, almost any shape is possible (in principle, if not in practice) by combining several cells.

What I find particularily interesting is that a solid 3D world can emerge from just a collection of points arranged in different patterns.

https://jazzprogramming.itch.io/vorfract

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: Share your personal website

https://vorfract.com

To be honest, it's actually more of a game development log, but it's the closest thing I have to a personal website.

It's hosted on an old Linux PC at home.

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

I've been working on vorfract (a voronoi voxel world) for some time now:

https://jazzprogramming.itch.io/vorfract

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

I'm working on vorfract, a voronoi voxel world:

https://jazzprogramming.itch.io/vorfract

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)

Same as last time, I guess. It's a voxel building environment that uses irregular voxels (voxels with sloped faces). I've been working on fixing the bugs for a while now (and there are still a lot of them left).

Browser version here, if you're curious:

https://jazzprogramming.github.io/vorfract/

jazzprogrammingon Why I chose Lua for this blog

Speaking of unconventional languages for web development, there's also Wt, for people who are used to building things using C++.

I found it surprisingly good and considering how little I know on how to use HTML/CSS/JS/PHP, the usual web stack, it would have taken me months or more to learn how to build an equivalent site using the standard stack (and then have to maintain it).

Of course, if you're already familiar with web development, that's the best way I guess, but for those who aren't and don't have the necessary time to learn, there are probably alternatives using languages they're familiar with.

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

A voxel building environment using cellular voxels, which allows voxels to have sloped faces.

WebGL version:

https://jazzprogramming.github.io/vorfract/

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

I've been working for some time on a voxel building environment which uses irregular voxels (cellular voxels) instead of the usual cubic grid ones.

If you're curious, you can see it here (needs WebGL2 + Wasm):

https://jazzprogramming.github.io/vorfract/

jazzprogrammingon Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)

I' working on a voxel building environment, but using irregular (Voronoi) voxels instead of the usual cubic grid ones. Still very much a work in progress:

https://jazzprogramming.github.io/vorfract/

jazzprogrammingon Louis Armstrong's Last Word

Yes, same here! I was hooked after that, on Louis Armstrong first and then jazz in general.

jazzprogrammingon Louis Armstrong's Last Word

My favourite Louis Armstrong recording is "A kiss to build a dream on".

Even today he seems to be larger than life..

I so wish I could have seen him at the height of his career.

Thank you for this.