Hacker News Reader

technomalogicalon Demoscene, the secret behind Finnish game industry

And don't miss Fabian Sanglard's review of the code. He was featured on HN recently for the reviews of the engine behind Another World/Out of this World and how it was ported to different platforms.

http://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/index.php

technomalogicalon Terrain rendering algorithm in less than 20 lines of code

I'll have to check out some of the old issues, I thought it was more of an industry magazine and not covering algorithms or coding.

Archive.org has most (all?) issues in a collection: https://archive.org/details/game_developer_magazine

technomalogicalon Building a Dark Web Crawler in Go

gopher://

technomalogicalon Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer

I don't think that's been the case for a long, long time. Almost every new game on modern consoles and PCs will see one (or many) updates in its lifetime. Game cartridges, things we used to think of as immutable, are merely storage devices for delivery of the original game code. Two recent games I purchased for the Nintendo Switch, on cartridge, both required a download before I could play them.

technomalogicalon Teaching CS in the schools

It does now. But will that be the case in the future? History seems to indicate that the interfaces and paradigms will continue to change. There will be an awkward period (now?) where you need to know both types of interfaces, but there may be a period where touch, voice, or other interfaces replace the now-archaic file cabinet metaphor that the desktop uses today. Look at Windows and all the metaphors that a child today has no context with which to relate: a manila folder, a file cabinet, a floppy disk, an address book, a wall calendar. It seems likely that this will change, and with it the need to understand today's (and that of the last 20-30 years) desktop computer.

technomalogicalon Inferring the Future of FPGAs

FPGA still has some advantages over ASIC development:

- development speed of FPGA over the typical ASIC lifecycle is much shorter

- the ability to field-program and correct a design flaw can not only save expensive iterations, but also to add new hardware features essentially as a "firmware" upgrade (provided the FPGA in the system has extra capacity)

There will always be a place for ASIC, but FPGAs provide some capabilities that are not available (impossible?) for ASIC.

technomalogicalon Nuklear: A single-header ANSI C GUI library

My first thought: I wonder if I can invoke this with ctypes from Python? I'll check this out, thanks!

technomalogicalon Yuzu – Nintendo Switch Emulator

They've also lowered the price significantly since then. Entry-level units can be had for $199, much less than the $399/$499 launch prices of the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively.

technomalogicalon The Lego Storage Guide

My nephew has been making Transformers out of his LEGO sets for a few months now. I asked him how many hinges he had (thinking he must have a lot). He said "I dunno... 2?"

I went to the LEGO store and raided their pick a brick wall. He'll be getting lots pieces that are hinged, wings for transforming planes, and tons of small plates for decoration. I think he's going to like it.

technomalogicalon The Lego Storage Guide

LEGO has increasingly made a number of pieces with Studs Not On Top (or SNOT, as the adult LEGO community refers to them). These allow you to attach standard bricks in a number of different directions and angles.

technomalogicalon The Lego Storage Guide

My wife's aunt just gave us one of those this summer! I had never seen one made of denim before, I didn't realize it was a marketed product.

technomalogicalon Exploring the BBC Micro:bit Software Stack and OS

I'll add my anecdote: my family and I visited friends in California this past summer for vacation. We visited the local Fry's and I saw these and picked up a pair. Our friends' oldest son was mildly interested, but didn't see the appeal. We looked at the peripherals on the boards and decided to make a remote sensing thermometer that we'd put in the freezer. Literally 15 minutes later, we had built working code in the block editor for both components (the broadcasting thermometer, sending the latest temperature once a second, and the receiver which showed the data) We popped it in the freezer and watched as the temperature slowly creeped down to below freezing. He was amazed that we could build something like that so quickly. Our friends went out and purchased their own micro:bits the next day :)

technomalogicalon Show HN: Datasette – Create and publish an API for SQLite databases

The database is opened immutably, so my guess is you’d either make a copy and update or regenerate it from another source (a la Simon’s CSV to sqlite tool. You could have a symlink that points to the current DB

technomalogicalon Multiprocessing in Python with Fortran and OpenMP

As someone with a budding interest in this, are you finding this stuff on the web? Any specific sites or books where you're finding these implementations?

technomalogicalon ZFSin: A Windows kernel-mode ZFS driver

Your hobbies make my hobbies look pathetic. Kudos :D

technomalogicalon Neural Language Modeling from Scratch

Misread this, I thought this was Neural Language Modeling in Scratch, the visual programming language.

technomalogicalon A camera that snaps a GIF and ejects a cartridge that displays it

Looking at the animated gifs in the OP, it does appear to "fade in" similar to a Polaroid print.

technomalogicalon Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

On the flip side, not knowing about that content means you might not increase your pledge to a level where you could access it.

technomalogicalon LeoCAD – A CAD program for creating virtual Lego models

https://rebrickable.com/

It seems to be mostly geared towards sets, so if you don't know the sets you have it may be more difficult (impossible?) to use.

technomalogicalon A Mac Podcast App You Can't Have

I love a low-tech approach to solving a problem! Kudos!

technomalogicalon MMIX 2009: A RISC computer for the third millennium (2011)

TIL deep linking URL syntax for PDFs in Chrome, thanks!

technomalogicalon Comma Separated Vulnerabilities

Is this it? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tilt/

technomalogicalon Raspberry Pi Zero W, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, priced at $10

Check out PiBakery, it allows you to take a stock image and do some post-startup config, including setting up keys for SSH and changing passwords.

http://www.pibakery.org/

technomalogicalon Homebrew Amiga Graphics Card (FPGA, Open Source) Finished [video]

Indeed, it has been argued. A great YouTube look at Doom's impact on the Amiga can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv6aJRGpz_A

technomalogicalon Nintendo Switch

Only if they are available digitally (no DVD slot for Wii U discs) and only if Nintendo offers some digital game transfer program like they did between the Wii and the Wii U (digital games are tied to your console, not an account)

technomalogicalon The Programmer as Navigator (1973) [pdf]

It looks like the lectures at ACM go all the way back to 1966 as well, thanks for the link!

technomalogicalon GIMP development - What’s the point?

Did you mean Design Fusion, from Blackmagic?

technomalogicalon 30 years later, QBasic is still the best

If I was going to start a child on coding javascript, I would probably do this or codepen rather than a full fledged text editor, ide, or browser built-in console. Move them to the console once they're comfortable and teach them how to use the debugger.

technomalogicalon I’m a web developer and can't make anymore the simplest web app

I looked at them and bookmarked your comment listing them. Thanks for posting them.

technomalogicalon Programming in BASIC on the TRS-80

You might be able to find it here: http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/

It's a huge repository of Color Computer and TRS-80 software, books and magazines.