smokel

58 ms·

931.
by smokel 3y ago
I remember Alone in the Dark (1992) as having a totally crazy rendering engine. Looking at footage on YouTube [1], I now see that a lot of the more complex background rendering was probably done offline. The Sierra adventures at that time
932.
by smokel 3y ago
Could there be a categorical mistake at play here? Sure, scientifically speaking, we may all be deterministic robots. But the complexity of those robots is so astounding, that free will, regardless of it being an illusion, an emergent prop
933.
by smokel 3y ago
The paper (2012) can be read on Adam Alter's homepage [1] Sadly, no mention of Samir Nagheenanajar, though. [1] https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~aalter/namefluency.pdf
934.
by smokel 3y ago
[arbitrary number] is currently limited to somewhere in the low billions, which is unlikely to be of much help, even for finding the ASCII representation of "Hello, World!".
935.
by smokel 3y ago
Don't be afraid -- personally I am still totally amazed by new stuff coming out. Freespin/Reflex [1] for example instantly gave me the 1995 [2] chills. The demoscene virus stuck, and I can really enjoy people doing unimaginable s
936.
by smokel 3y ago
I like your "medium" analogy. I think there are similar processes at work in the fine art world. There, for example, painting is considered old-fashioned by some, but a lot of contemporary artists are pushing that medium to new
937.
by smokel 3y ago
There was also Timeless [1] (1994) by Tran/Renaissance which could be run with a random seed, if I recall correctly. [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2878
938.
by smokel 3y ago
This is a very interesting addition to the discussion. The digital art world and the demoscene sometimes briefly met, but I assume that most of the time its members look down on eachother. An interesting artist in this respect is Karl Sims
939.
by smokel 3y ago
No need to be so harsh. You seem to be misinterpreting and misunderstanding my comment. I get it that there are still people who are trying to keep the spirit alive, and I wish them all the most of fun, but as I try to explain it is no lo
940.
by smokel 3y ago
Download ASM-One [1] and try to implement a triangle filler and rotate your first 3D cube. Once you succeed, you will certainly get some of that demoscene feel! Bonus points if you consult only books, and disconnect from the internet. [1]
941.
by smokel 3y ago
I totally agree that this was the opinion of many demosceners. However, my point is that this would seldom be the opinion of the general public. The demoscene grew organically, and trying to define what it should be about seemed a bit sil
942.
by smokel 3y ago
I have another pet theory on why the demoscene died. Up until the late 1990s it was not possible to playback full screen video on regular PC hardware, because of both CPU and storage limitations. This meant that if you wanted smooth high re
943.
by smokel 3y ago
Or even a click away: https://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~stamp/RUA/HMM.pdf
944.
by smokel 3y ago
I apologize for the harshness and sarcasm of my previous reply. I should have taken some more time to find a way to explain my personal gripes that were triggered by your remark. Please allow me a second chance: I am often a bit disappoin
945.
by smokel 3y ago
I'd be interested to hear from some of the more well-off people here: what would be a good approach to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich? Someone in this thread proposed changing the law, which seems to be a bit hard. The 8
946.
by smokel 3y ago
If you'd be slightly more precise in your wording, you'd see that the overloaded use of the word "you" results in some problems here. If by "you", you mean a poor individual living in the United States, then I
947.
by smokel 3y ago
This kind of reasoning is slightly problematic. What does it mean if properties of "logic" are "logical"? Does that lead to tautology, recursion, symmetry, or worse? I notice that you put "logical" in quotes,
948.
by smokel 3y ago
For those too lazy to look it up: ˘ is called a "breve", and it is rounded, not even pointy as the typical "hat" is in physics and mathematics literature. Obviously, a rounded hat like that will stay on top of a human he
949.
by smokel 3y ago
There might well be a connection between the two. However, there are much more obvious connections between electromagnetism, or all of physics for that matter, and numbers [1]. Even though I prefer to interpret things differently, the pape
950.
by smokel 3y ago
Also, Dijkstra was from The Netherlands, and the word "dijk" is Dutch for dike, i.e. the water barrier. "Dikestra" has a shorter path to the Dutch pronunciation than Djikstra.
951.
by smokel 3y ago
I'm happy to be on the agnostic front. A colleague at my first job was working on some software that wrapped around other software, and he dubbed it "Burrito". When his project turned out not to be as useful as expected, he
952.
by smokel 3y ago
It is unfortunate that HN is not very well suited for long-running discussions. A topic mostly dies out after about a day or less. Early reactions seem to score more karma, and that probably spurs people into writing hasty replies. To mo
953.
by smokel 3y ago
If you compare "thinking" to "text generators", don't you need to understand what "thinking" actually is, before you can conclude that these are unequal?
954.
by smokel 3y ago
Ehm. The article does not actually give any evidence, so this argument is becoming rather absurd.
955.
by smokel 3y ago
I think this is actually a mistake. More often than not I find myself not paying for something that I really like, because it is such a hassle. Privately, paying for apps is fairly easy, but I don't because there is enough free stuf
956.
by smokel 3y ago
The irony is that it required a lot of capitalism to reach this point in time where we got to see a glimpse of what might have been possible. Is the sad thing reality itself, or is the sad thing that one can envision a better reality which
957.
by smokel 3y ago
I sometimes wonder how people will remember the invention of computers, smartphones, and the internet in a few centuries. People will most probably learn that either Bill Gates or Elon Musk invented it all in one evening when an apple fell
958.
by smokel 3y ago
Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37730894
959.
by smokel 3y ago
Great. Now I only need something to make the right choices.
960.
by smokel 3y ago
The reasoning in the article goes way beyond such a simple statement. A simple fact being true does not magically make all related arguments true. Also, to be overly pedantic, people don't die immediately after not eating for an hour,

More ›