starmole

9 ms·

61.
by starmole 10y ago
I love the approach for teaching! I also just recently wrote a reference GL-SW renderer. It's not much code.. 400 loc? But it really drives home the (simple) math. There are some things that are hard to do in SW - derivatives. Also wri
62.
by starmole 10y ago
Can somebody who knows about this tell me how much of the novelty in this is CS and how much physics? For example in graphics all the physics of light is well understood - it's just infeasible to compute - so all advances are in CS and
63.
by starmole 11y ago
I kind of agree! But think about performance. A fast pseudo random generator will/should create a random number in less cycles than one virtual function call has overhead. Also it's not hard to create your own virtual random class
64.
by starmole 11y ago
This story is about how useless LOC is as a metric. But negative LOC alone is just as useless a metric as positive LOC. It's easy to come up with examples where deleting unused code is actually harmful: - Just delete all comments - Rem
65.
by starmole 11y ago
Totally agree. Getting a salary ballpark out early can save both sides a lot of time. As a potential employee it's important to phrase it right as "If you are not going to pay at least X we are wasting our time". Where X does
66.
by starmole 11y ago
This is painful to read because it is true. It is very hard to explain privilege. Almost all (good) privileged people have a very hard time of seeing it. But how to fix it? My Fair Lady style? Trickle down? Charity? So far the only thing th
67.
by starmole 11y ago
I like this a lot! One big challenge in 3d today is making the jump from data to content: The jump we made for 2d in the late 80s when Photoshop changed the perception from pixels to images. But what is the equivalent to a histogram or a br
68.
by starmole 11y ago
600k including bonuses. Vested RSU bonuses. So real cash in hand. And those usually keep replenishing over time so after an initial delay it's compensation.
69.
by starmole 11y ago
Yes 600k is including bonuses. 600k base would really be crazy for dev.
70.
by starmole 11y ago
I strongly disagree with the repeatable idea. Any progress comes from people NOT repeating things. Computers are good for repeatable stuff. Repeatable means institutional. It is the enemy of progress.
71.
by starmole 11y ago
Kind of my point. As a startup dev you have to learn biz. And a really great dev should not have to do that. It is a waste of time and talent. OP was asking how to make money as an engineer. Engineers can play the startup lottery. But they
72.
by starmole 11y ago
No idea how to send a PM on HN. There should be an email in my profile though.
73.
by starmole 11y ago
Startups a great! I worked in few and learned a lot. I just tried to address op's pretty direct question on how to make money as a dev. Startups are a very bad odds lottery for devs in the end. Even if you are amazing it does not make
74.
by starmole 11y ago
I totally see your point about the advice being douchey. But in this case it was somebody specifically asking for how to make the most money as a dev. Not a struggling single mom making ends meet. In his context I think I made sense. But I
75.
by starmole 11y ago
It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed. Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40. But you do not get there by trying for the salar
76.
by starmole 11y ago
This post seems to barely scratch the surface of the problem. First you really need to specify by what metric you want the distribution to be uniform. Euclidean 3d distance? Arcs? The way I would do it would be to generate a lot of random p
77.
by starmole 12y ago
Sorry for not being clear. Of course you are right, they are not the same. What I tried to say was that in the context of rendering approximating cubics by quadratics will not be the bottleneck.
78.
by starmole 12y ago
100k of WHAT? :) It is easy for a 100k solid circles lines up in a grid. Impossible for 100k mitered lines overlapping the full screen at 1% opacity. In addition I would guess webgl would get around 10% performance vs native because it is
79.
by starmole 12y ago
I assume you read http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/cloop/loopblin... ?
80.
by starmole 12y ago
Cubics vs. Quadratics is not as big an issue as you thikg. Cubics flatten down to quads just fine. (side not: Flash was all quadratics). The hard parts is that vector graphics just doesn't map well to gpus. Way too much CPU work involv
81.
by starmole 12y ago
I was more thinking about it like Peter Thiel's monopoly: http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l... Interestingly he is also a Lyft investor.
82.
by starmole 12y ago
It might be, but then it's a commodity! I think the valuation of Uber and Lyft is based very much on a winner takes all model.
83.
by starmole 12y ago
I might be missing something here because nobody else brought it up: Is this not just a necessary move to salvage investments in Lyft? Assuming Uber won already, Lyft investors need to keep it dangerous enough to force a buy out or write it
84.
by starmole 12y ago
You are absolutely right. I was intentionally polarizing. But thinking about it more, one thing still stands out: Even long running mmos are planned "for the next 10 years". There is an end in sight. Facebook, Google, Uber, Bitco
85.
by starmole 12y ago
Interesting perspective! You bring up a lot of different points: - There are tons of positive "post mortem" [ http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/ ] write ups on gamasutra, but the ones with probl
86.
by starmole 12y ago
Wow. This is seriously impressive. Rust looks like it actually might be capable as a systems programming tool to match C. I have to learn more about it now! :)
87.
by starmole 12y ago
In case you did not know: This is closely related to an s-buffer (s for span) in graphics. And the first approach (height map) is pretty much a z-buffer. Your silhouette there is eye distance (z) across a single scan line. One difference
88.
by starmole 12y ago
Somewhat small bug: The edges wrap around, which you certainly don't want for image filters. Especially noticeable with the blur. You want to use either clamping or mirroring at the edges.
89.
by starmole 12y ago
Interesting article. Thank you for posting. I have a very limited understanding of physics but two questions spring to mind: 1) Why is there little doubt in the axioms, especially FIN? It requires the concepts of distance and time, either o
90.
by starmole 12y ago
This is crazy impressive. I'm still reading the source but so far what i see is really great already. Very concise and clean. I would love to see an embeddable C + portable ES2/CoreGL version of this. Edit: Just found the native v

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