Notices by Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social), page 29

What looks iconically CG tends to be lighting looking a bit off. Like, say, plastic. Because to maximize parallelism the Depth Buffering Algorithm used very approximate formulas, though we've now overcome this with Recursive Raytracing!

Also if you don't put enough human or computer effort in, animations can look a bit stiff especially especially in the early days. But it will always look smooth thanks to interpolation!

2/2 Fin! Tomorrow: vector graphics.

You may instinctually recognize it, but what exactly does it mean for an effect to look "computer-generated?"

We've by now overcome most of the limitations of the technology, but a tell which remains (especially as we overwork our CG artists) is inaccurate physics. CG artists spend massive effort perfecting every pixel, & in doing so they can lose track of the right balance between realism & exaggeration. I'm impressed when they don't!

Or their physics engine might not be enabled.

1/2

@vertigo I do read that there were memcpy back then, but they were part of the GPU for computers which had ones.

Inside the 8086 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry - Ken Shirriff: http://www.righto.com/2023/01/inside-8086-processors-instruction.html

Thinking with your hands - Scott Jenson: https://jenson.org/hands/

@markusl But Developer Experience! /s

Honestly I think that developer experience is worse, self-sobataging...

Online gradient descent written in SQL - Max Halford: https://maxhalford.github.io/blog/ogd-in-sql/
Simon Willison's summary: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/7/online-gradient-descent-written-in-sql/

WITH RECURSIVE is a fascinating SQL clause to a computer scientist!

This is why performance matters - Andy Bell: https://andy-bell.co.uk/this-is-why-performance-matters/

An end to typographic widows on the web - Clagnut: https://clagnut.com/blog/2424/
Robin Rendle's response: https://robinrendle.com/notes/an-end-to-typographic-widows-on-the-web/

This could be a nice feature to have in Haphaestus, but I won't promise it yet as this is a team decision.

Freaking out about TikTok on your work phone? You should look closer to home. - Heather Burns: https://webdevlaw.uk/2023/03/08/freaking-out-about-tiktok-on-your-work-phone-you-should-look-closer-to-home/

Weeknotes: NICAR, and an appearance on KQED Forum - Simon Willison: http://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/7/kqed-forum/#atom-everything

My ideal accessible components resource is holistic, well tested and easy to use - Hidde de Vries: https://hidde.blog/ideal-a11y-guidance/

Converting incoming emails on the fly with OpenSMTPD filters - Almost Secure: https://palant.info/2023/03/08/converting-incoming-emails-on-the-fly-with-opensmtpd-filters/

Could OpenSMTPD filters be useful for me? Would they work with Maddy? Can I use them to strip off HTML email before SourceHut tells you off?

Discord, or the Death of Lore - Jason Scott: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5509

How to build JavaScript projects from scratch - Go Make Things: https://gomakethings.com/how-to-build-javascript-projects-from-scratch/

Here's the conversation:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35068526>

@AshleyGullen's blog post is for the tool Construct Animate: <https://animate.construct.net/>

Contrast with the open source but framework-hobbled and decidedly less snappy Wick Editor: <https://github.com/Wicklets/wick-editor>

See also, the aforementioned Photopea, which similarly eschews with the conventional wisdom espoused by the self-appointed keepers of the sanctity of Modern JS "best" practices: <https://www.photopea.com/>

@colby They weren't taught better by the education-recruitment industrial complex.

Advocating good web practices amounts to reeducation, which many are resistant to.

An in-browser animation editor was posted to HN by @AshleyGullen. It's snappy and obvious that it's handcrafted JS, à la Photopea. Super obvious.

An HNer asks about what UI framework it's using. The answer is "none", and the founder replies, saying so: "all written from the ground up in house". This is beyond the comprehension of another user who chimes in. @AshleyGullen has to step in and reiterate that they wrote it all.

one final computer history question: why are Intel processors little endian? Why were some other processors big endian?

Mostly interested in pre-1980 reasons (before the internet)

I'd love citations / links if possible -- I got a lot of guesses and speculation in replies to the last computer history question.

I've got a bandaid solution for navigating that dependency conflict I've been having!

Once I've bumped the version number I could point Cabal 2.4 to my fork of Haskell-CSS-Syntax, without any of the other dependencies attempting to pull in an older incompatible version! That took too long to figure out...

I think I'll get back on track implementing CatTrap tomorrow...