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jamcohen

29 karma · joined December 27, 2017

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jamcohen··on A Brutal Sex Trade Built for American Soldiers
The same thing happened in France when American GIs were stationed there during WWII. I'd recommend "What Soldiers Do" by Mary Louise Roberts if you're interested in the details.
jamcohen··on A Shader Trick
Outer Wilds does this as well.
jamcohen··on Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain
I also find comfort in the idea of becoming food after we die. I remember reading somewhere how a beached whale in the arctic can be a life-saving windfall for the scavengers there. Helped me see the positive in something I’d always seen as purely tragic.
jamcohen··on Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?
It also depends on your stove. Mine’s electric and alternates the heating element on and off to try to maintain the desired temp. The heat capacity helps to smooth out temperature fluctuations but if I had a nice gas stove I’d probably switch to carbon steel.
jamcohen··on Computer Science from the Bottom Up
Richard Feynman's lecture is a great resource for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA

He proposes a file clerk that gets progressively dumber and faster until they get so dumb that they can be simulated by an electronic circuit.

jamcohen··on Learnimprov – Just the first improv game site
Does anyone know any good improv in the bay?

Pre-pandemic I would go to the 11am text message show at UCB Franklin in LA and it was consistently amazing.

jamcohen··on Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer
Definitely agree about “juicing” your game, especially from a visual perspective. There’s so many graphics concepts that I didn’t know about and didn’t have the eye to recognize.

Things like ambient occlusion, bloom, reflection probes, and physically based rendering/materials were totally unknown to me but were really essential to making a game look “AAA”.

Adrian Courreges has a great list of graphics studies that expose you to the space: https://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2020/12/29/graphics-stu...

Following technical artists on Twitter is also a great way to get exposure on more one-off techniques (how to make a fire effect etc.)

I’m a big fan of @minionsart and @adrianmendezzg but there’s tons of other indie devs and technical artists sharing their work.

jamcohen··on Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer
Catlike coding is great. I’m also a fan of Alan Zucconi’s tutorials: https://www.alanzucconi.com/tutorials/
jamcohen··on Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment
For anyone using iterm2, copy mode (https://iterm2.com/documentation-copymode.html) was a big help in reducing my mouse use.
jamcohen··on Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut interview each other (1999)
A lot of Caro’s responses are included, almost verbatim, in his more recent book “On Power”: https://www.amazon.com/On-Power-Robert-A-Caro-audiobook/dp/B...

Definitely recommend the audiobook if you haven’t heard it already. Caro’s got a thick Brooklyn accent and a manner of speaking that’s really compelling.

jamcohen··on DALL·E: Creating Images from Text
I get the same feeling, to the point that I occasionally let out a brief scream when browsing GAN images.
jamcohen··on Shackleton's Medical Kit (2012)
I just finished listening to audiobook yesterday. Really gripping stuff. Amazing what people can endure.
jamcohen··on The Total Beginner's Guide to Game AI
Is this what you’re looking for? https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130663/gdc_2005_proce...
jamcohen··on World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1T this year
I think it's just a consequence of the fact that having money enables the acquisition of more money. It explains the long tail in wealth distribution.