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Comment by JBiserkov | Hacker News Reader

It's incredible that they did it.

It's also incredible how much time and resources were _invested_ in this. Part of me wants to say _wasted_ on this. In the midst of a global pandemic. In the midst of an impending total ecosystem collapse.

Fiddling while Rome, scratch that, while the planet burns.

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I don't even know what feelings strike me most about this post. I think this post draws a really sad image about the poster. I have started my computer programming career in Minecraft, about 10 years ago and I don't know if I would have had the same motivation to do it without it's capabilities, community and problemspace. Sometimes, if you have nothing positive to say, rather say nothing.

People don't understand that "fun" is an essential evolutionary tool, and playing is a form of learning.

On top of that there's a nontrivial chance the person you replied to is a couch potato whose quarantine's greatest achievement was binging tiger king. I'm sure they have a lot to lecture others on how a massive educational project is wasting away the talents and gpus of society.

PS: programming career started in diablo 2 and wow. Hear hear, fellow gamer-dev :)

Well, there's a difference between doing something for fun that takes some resources, versus doing something for fun that takes a huge amount of resources. I don't know how many computers or how much energy was used by this effort, so won't pass judgment on whether it was worthwhile or a waste, just that I can understand the sentiment.

Also, great grandparent, at least by my reading, didn't comment negatively on Minecraft itself, so nobody is questioning the value of Minecraft, just the effort of finding the seed for the world where this image was taken.

> just the effort of finding the seed for the world where this image was taken

"Pointless" projects flood HN; my favourite from today obviously being the Typescript in-type SQL database. You posted your fair share of them in fact, I especially love this one from your history, COBOL on COGS: http://www.coboloncogs.org/INDEX.HTM

They're pointless in a very cold, medical sense but they're obviously works that foster interest. That make people think. That spark new ideas, and who knows what will come out of that.

Science and math regularly explores "pointless paths" just for the hell of it. From those pointless paths often rise critical, high-impact inventions.

The same applies to software engineering. Sometimes, there is a direct line to "usefulness" (such as via creating software that may end up being directly used, or via inspiring other tools used for high-impact applications). But sometimes it's more nuanced, such as by inspiring thousands of people to pick up programming and learn new skills. One of those people might be your next John Carmack. Maybe ten.

If this sort of stuff wasn't useful, we wouldn't have a concept of having fun at all. We wouldn't need it; hell we wouldn't even need to forbid it because nobody would want to have it. We'd have industrial-scale baby-breeders plopping out toddlers in factories, with robot arms stuffing them in a suit and forcing them to learn every waking hour until they're good enough to grease the gears of that very factory.

Its not about whether its pointless, but rather whether the resources spent on it (energy expenditure of the distributed BOINC nodes used) is worthwhile. Few people argue that "pointless" projects, done for fun, aren't worthwhile. The question, if I read the original comment correctly, is that this is wasteful of resources/energy, when it could be better spent elsewhere (covid research was mentioned) or saved (to not contribute to climate change?).

I don't know how much was actually used though, I didn't see it mentioned, so maybe its not enough to worry about. I'm perfectly cool with wasting a little energy for fun, we do it all the time after all.

> If this sort of stuff wasn't useful, we wouldn't have a concept of having fun at all.

I dunno, burning stuff can be fun, does that mean that its always good (for the environment or just the stuff being burnt)?

I'm not actually against this project at all, but I do wonder what resources were spent on it.

Think of all the resources you expanded in your life purely on entertainment.

Think of all the times you worked out to burn fat and calories amassed by not eating exactly what you needed.

Think of all the fuel you expanded on leisure, via planes, cruises, roadtrips, etc.

Think of all the recreational industries you supported throughout your life, by spending your viable, limited time listening, watching, reading and even buying their work.

Like I said, if leisure wasn't important and useful, we just wouldn't have it. It's such a ridiculously massive industry, I don't think you realize you are surrounded by it; it takes up the majority of your and everyone else's lives.

You can make these things more efficient, but arguing their existence is dangerous territory. And I certainly will die on a hill to defend how critical projects like this one are to introduce bright minds to the field.

> ... but rather whether the resources spent on it (energy expenditure of the distributed BOINC nodes used) is worthwhile

Is 8k gaming worthwhile ? How about 4k ? 1k ? text-mode gaming ? gaming in general ? Shouldn't we all better ourselves being productive to society rather than play mindless games ?

> Well, there's a difference between doing something for fun that takes some resources, versus doing something for fun that takes a huge amount of resources

Do you realize the whole gaming industry revolves around NOTHING but consuming HUGE amount of resources (including hardware development) for nothing but "fun". Do you really need 8k gaming, or maybe even "nethack" consume too much energy for you ? Btw, I'm not even getting started about the "entertainment" industry...

I didn't imply the poster questioned Minecraft, but this effort didn't come out of nothing. It came out of a community which exists in the ecosphere. The actual computation part was the least amount of time spent on this. The bulk was trying to narrow this seemingly 2^64 seeds down to a bruteforcable amount while learning something. There is a whole community around "seedfinding" now, which has done amazing work around reverse-engineering and pseudo-random number generation. Sure the sentiment of putting resources to anything of no immediate value is questionable, but I imagine so is modern day theoretical physics and mathematics :)

Warcraft 3 Map Editor got me curious and Minecraft really kicked it off! I always love to hear people coming from these areas :3

Warcraft 3 map editor was such an influential tool. Warcraft 3 map editor spawned multiple new game genres. DotA map spawned MOBAs, numerous tower defense games such as Element TD spawned the Tower Defense genre and recently the autochess genre has appeared, taking many inspirations from maps such as Legion TD.

There still are some popular map genres in Warcraft 3 that haven't been converted to standalone games, so there's still a lot of potential. Most notably I can think of are tag games.

Oh hey, I recognise that name (: You made EffectLib, right?

Yeah, it got me hired by Hypixel. I am still sad I never had time to rewrite it and apply the things I learned in the past :(

Or you know, somebody is ACTUALLY worried about the FACT that we've fucked up the planet, as a species, and that within 10-15 years we're going to experience it, and it's going to suck WAY worse than this "little" pandemic we got going right now.

Just saying how your post looks in perspective, bragging that you're not sure if you could've been arsed to learn programming if it weren't for a video game ...

And you just ignore it as if it wasn't said. It really saddens me, the defeatism of the younger generation.

I'm just here defending that person because you called them "sad", called them out in front of everybody. Fuck you. Being worried about what is going on with the fucking world isn't sad. It's literally the most important thing we have. Minecraft literally pales in comparison. You can tell them it's off topic, but you can't just fucking call them SAD for being worried about it. Show some fucking compassion.

Well, the humans that reversed that image don't necessarily have the skill sets to help fight a pandemic.

It's like saying your car broke down and the art teacher doesn't want to fix it.

So ... Can anyone recommend a game engine for making games in Minecraft style that also saves the world?

It's the only way I can learn.

Following along the stated lines, should all music creation be stopped, should artists only paint covid warnings, should sculptors only engrave monuments to the covid casualties? My point is, if art shouldn't stop because of the pandemic (and it shouldn't) then why should science? Just because a painting doesn't cure the plague, paintings and art provide pleasant distractions. This work can provide satiation to curiosity and perhaps the spinoff work can eventually be "useful" in some other way as well (I quoted useful because there is a deeper philosophic debate that could be had about utility here).

Had this never happened, all those GPUs would have spend many long nights doing nothing. Gamers have a disproportionate number of powerful PCs, and the people that contributed their GPUs did it out of love for the game, not for some greater societal good.

Idle GPUs use less energy than active GPUs.

They certainly paid for this energy

If you pay for something, that doesn't make it okay to do.

"They"... the GPU operators, or their parents? Furthermore, in most jurisdictions electricity generation produces externalities that aren't fully priced in, eg. air pollution or co2 emissions.

How can you post on HN at a time like this?

Posting on HN doesn't burn as much energy as running many GPU's to find a needle in a haystack.

Did you ran the math of first (your computer), second (transferring the data to HN), third (broadcasting the data back to all HN readers, including the energy spent by their computers) and so on (hardware requirement down the line, shipping line from manufacturer, manufacturing, historical R&D, mining, ore processing, ...) degree of the energy consumption related to each time you posted on HN ?

The whole tech industry is as dirty as can be...

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